Dark Fracture News

Originally posted by author

TL;DR version:

• We discuss the future of NPCs in Dark Fracture
  
• A pledge for higher quality: new animations, new models, motion capture, and lipsync
  
• Prologue localization is on the way
  

One of the challenges of making a first-person horror adventure as an indie developer is not falling into the trap of becoming "just another indie horror on Steam". We believe that the solution relies on two keywords: quality and authenticity. How did we plan to implement them? Let's start explaining from the latter.


Have you ever wondered why the protagonists of many indie first-person horror games never actually meet other human characters during their adventures? The reason is simple: humans are complicated beings to represent digitally. While the appearance and behavior of fantastical creatures can be shaped in any way the developer desires, a human that doesn't behave or appear as such inevitably ends up looking uncanny. That is why most developers choose to introduce characters through diaries, audio logs, radio communications, and so on. However, we have decided to take the risk.

Some time ago, during the Reddit AMA, we revealed that Dark Fracture will not be your typical indie horror and actually has extra characters present as NPCs for our protagonist, Edward, to interact with. A facility like the body farm, albeit unique, needs more than just Edward to be run — which means he won't be the sole employee. Colleagues, however, won't be the only characters Edward will meet - take a look at this mysterious figure that wanders around the compound 👇

The face of someone who cannot unsee things

Provisional model of a researcher



While there is still a lot of work to do before we will be able to call Dark Fracture a high-quality game, we can confidently say that the bar has raised significantly since Dark Fracture: Prologue. 3D models and textures are being improved, and we have even started using mocap and lipsync technologies to make animations smoother. Here you can find some examples 👇

Edward's arms have now more realistic decals and those weird-looking stitches on his hand have been replaced with an actual scar

Interactions with items are being fully animated

A mocap and lipsync test using the model of that mysterious guy




As earlier announced, Dark Fracture: Prologue is being localized in 7 languages:

• French
  
• Italian
  
• Spanish
  
• Portuguese
  
• German
  
• Russian
  
• Chinese
  

As the integration of certain alphabets is particularly complicated and the development of the complete version of Dark Fracture takes priority over updating the Prologue, the localization update release will take a couple of months.



[h3]If you enjoyed Dark Fracture: Prologue, please consider writing a review and inviting your friends to play it – it’s free 👇 [/h3]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1389160/Dark_Fracture_Prologue/

[h3]Don't forget to add Dark Fracture to your wishlist to not miss any updates 👇 [/h3]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1268790/Dark_Fracture/

[h3]Lastly, if you want to get directly in touch with us, join our community on Discord (click the image 👇)[/h3]

A long time ago, when a-certain-virus-that-shall-not-be-named didn’t exist and physical events were still a thing, game developers like us used to fly around the world and showcase their games in front of crowds. While that’s no longer the case, events continue to exist in a digital format.

One of such events is PAX Online, which happens to have selected Dark Fracture as one of the winners for their Indie Showcase!

To celebrate the occasion, we have created a new gameplay teaser that is available NOW for you to watch on the YouTube channel of our publisher Feardemic, as well as on the storefront of Dark Fracture.

See the teaser on YouTube:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


[h2]And that’s not all![/h2]

On top of the many juicy streams offered by PAX Online, we invite you to take a look at hand-picked content creators’ gameplay commentaries of Dark Fracture: Prologue that are rolling out NOW on the storefront together with the new teaser!

Check the streams on the storefront:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1268790/Dark_Fracture/

Credits:

• staycation - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0xPGXzaQgd13fcakY3751A
• Matt McMuscles - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiP_FwGyJQ_6P8k5ON5mncQ

If you are a content creator and wish to be part of more activities like this, we invite you to sign-up to Lurkit, a platform for content creators in which you can get exclusive rewards for streaming Dark Fracture: Prologue as well as many other great games: https://www.lurkit.com/campaigns/dark-fracture-prologue


Lastly, as always, we invite you to join our official Discord server to stay in touch with us, and remind you to invite your friends to add Dark Fracture to their wishlist:

Hey everyone, Nissai from Twisted II Studio here. While the AMA on r/pcgaming is unfolding at the same time and this news is going live, we have multiple important updates regarding Dark Fracture.



If you have noticed the recent changes on our store page, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Feardemic is a publisher of horror games from Poland and is part of the same company behind psychological horror games such as Layers of Fear, The Medium, Observer – I’m obviously talking of Bloober Team.

[h3]How will the cooperation with the publisher impact the development of Dark Fracture?[/h3]

The role of Feardemic is to provide resources to develop Dark Fracture more efficiently, bring the game to consoles, and help to make it more popular. All the creative decisions regarding Dark Fracture will belong solely to us, the developers, and we will release the game only when it is truly ready — which brings us to the next update...



Nobody likes delays, but if there’s one thing that 2020 taught us, it is that people like incomplete games even less. This is the reason why we have decided to move away from Early Access and thus postpone the release to 2022 – to offer you a complete and well-polished horror experience.

[h3]When exactly is Dark Fracture going to be released?[/h3]

It’s too soon to say when exactly it is going to be released, but both we and Feardemic will make sure to communicate any update here on Steam and any other relevant channel.



That’s right – Dark Fracture is coming to PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch.

Initially, Dark Fracture was conceived for PC and next-gen consoles only, but considering the ongoing global situation caused by semiconductor shortages, scalpers and miners, we want to make sure that people will be able to play our game on their favorite device without having to spend crazy amounts of money.

Obviously, PC will always be the best place to play it ;)



Dark Fracture: Prologue has been out for a while now, but that doesn’t mean we have stopped updating it. The next big update is localization, as Prologue is currently being translated into:

• French
  
• Italian
  
• Spanish
  
• Portuguese
  
• German
  
• Russian
  
• Chinese
  

We hope this will help players to enjoy Dark Fracture better and bring more awareness to our game.


Speaking of awareness – if you haven’t done it yet, please add Dark Fracture to your wishlist:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1268790/Dark_Fracture/

If you enjoyed Dark Fracture: Prologue, consider writing a review and inviting your friends to play it – it’s free!

And lastly, if you want to get in touch with us in real-time, join our community on Discord

https://discord.com/invite/ghuBPCt

In the last few months, a lot of things have been happening behind the scenes and we are preparing for a major announcement regarding the bright future of Dark Fracture (pun unintended).

In preparation for such an announcement, we have decided to host an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit to give everyone the opportunity to hear the latest news about the development of Dark Fracture and ask us any questions about it.




You can check your equivalent timezone here: https://everytimezone.com/s/3357ee8d
The AMA will help us to raise awareness about Dark Fracture, and we would greatly appreciate it if all of you could tune in that day on https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/ to participate in the conversation.

Be sure to follow our official Reddit account to be notified once the AMA goes live.


Lastly, if you haven’t done it yet, please consider adding Dark Fracture to your wishlist:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1268790/Dark_Fracture/

Originally posted by author

TL;DR version:
Thank you for your support, you're awesome and we love you.
New Dark Fracture: Prologue update with Steam achievements!
Some technical issues
Vote for us in the GDWC finals!
We work hard, dude, more updates soon.

Hello everyone! We would like to update you on some of our progress, a short retrospective about the year that's been, as well as a peek into what's to come and our plans for the future.

But first and foremost, we wanted to start things off with a thank you, thank you for all of the support you've shown us! Thank you to all of you who have spread the word, added us to your wishlists and of course, to all of you who have pre-purchased Dark Fracture! It's thanks to all of you that 2020 was such a blessed year for us!

Despite all that happened over this past year, your support has helped us through the lows and made the highs that much more impactful! We are deeply thankful to each and every one of you who supported us along the way. We've seen quite a lot of progress over the past year and your support made all the ungodly hours we've put into development worth it. And so, we are entering 2021 more eager than ever to carry on our work!

With your support and enthusiasm, we have been able to press on through the most difficult of times as we bring you all a brand new prologue update! Achievements are finally coming to Dark Fracture, and while the full game is still a while off, you can already play the prologue and get some achievements!

We have also taken the time to re-record and polish the voice acting you've experienced so far in Dark Fracture, so if you haven't played in a while, do give the prologue another shot! Take in the new voiced lines and hunt those achievements!
Please note that due to some technical difficulties we’ve experienced with our leading work machine during crucial development moments, one achievement is bugged (you will receive it automatically) and we cannot fix it until we resolve the technical issues, we expect the issue to be resolved within a week or two, and once it’s resolved we will post a full list of changes and updates of the new prologue version. Sadly, the issue also means Dark Fracture early access release will get delayed a bit further, but we can assure you we are doing everything we can to bring the game to early access as soon as we can!

If you want to support us as well, you can still pre-order Dark Fracture over on GameJolt! But don't wait too long, because this is a limited time offer. Even supporting us by adding the game to your wishlist on Steam is quite helpful for us and we genuinely appreciate it!

Next, as you might recall we have taken part in the 2020 Game Development World Championship Fan Favorites, and thanks to all of you, we have won first place in the weekly vote! But with 2020 behind us, the finals are already here! The voting will last for two weeks and we would be grateful to everyone who takes the time to cast a vote, so if you want to help Dark Fracture, be sure to check out the GDWC and vote for Dark Fracture!

And with all of that out of the way, you might be wondering what's next? As part of our unending work to bring the full experience of Dark Fracture to life and to make it accessible to as many people as possible, we have been working behind the scenes on localizing Dark Fracture and the prologue to several languages so that more people could enjoy the horrors.

And of course, there's more content from the upcoming Early Access to reveal, new and exciting sights that you would all soon get to experience and much more, so stay tuned for more updates from us!





As mentioned in the update above, there has been a lot of progress made during the development of the full game and upcoming early access. And so, we wanted to tease just a fraction of what’s to come and show off a few brand new assets from the "other world" for you to feast your eyes on!