Dark Fracture News

Originally posted by author

TL;DR version:

• Dark Fracture is at EGX
  
• The body farm is getting bigger
  
• New movement features
  
• UI and interaction with objects has been improved
  
• Physics is being enhanced
  
• Implemented full controller support
  
• New accessibility options
  
• Prologue localization is almost here
  

Happy Spooktober, and welcome to the 11th development blog of Dark Fracture 🎃

As the virus-that-shall-not-be-named is loosening its grip on the world, things are slowly getting back to normal, and physical events are making a comeback. For the first time in almost two years, Dark Fracture: Prologue is playable at a physical location, more specifically at the show floor of EGX in London. If you happen to live in the capital of UK, don’t miss the chance to visit the event and grab some free merch at our booth!

Of course, we haven’t made a whole devlog just to tell you we are attending some event around the world. The last month has been quite intense for the development of Dark Fracture, and we want to share with you some of the highlights.



One of the most morbid yet fascinating aspects of real body farms is how many different “decomposition scenarios” are prepared to allow scientists as many different case studies as possible – bodies are placed on grass or dirt, unearthed or semi-buried, submerged in water or mud, exposed to insects and fauna or partially protected, and so on.

This variety allows for multiple scientific disciplines (forensics, biology, and entomology just to name a few) to be involved in the research, thus requiring appropriate laboratories to be available on the site. Add to that the metaphysical nature of Dark Fracture and how isolated our body farm is, and you can imagine how fast grows the need for virtual space for the characters of our game.

All of this is to say that the body farms environment is getting bigger and more facilities are being added to it. The teasers we released so far no longer do justice to what the body farm is becoming, and you can expect some very interesting shots in the future.



We often ask ourselves: how can we make Edward’s life more miserable (and scare the player more)?

Lately, we have figured that claustrophobia could be a fantastic way to achieve that, and while open-air environments remain a staple of the body farm, crawl spaces are now a thing. Take a look at this gif and observe Edward dragging himself through a twisted vent:



Moreover, as we want to raise the quality bar of our game and make it distinguishably superior to the original Dark Fracture: Prologue, characters movements are being enhanced, the UI is getting an overhaul to be more pleasant to the eye, and more interactions are being added.

For example, doors and drawers can now be physically moved using the mouse:



Physical objects trajectory is getting improved, and we have also added an option to drop them:





We cannot stress enough how much the feedback we received on Dark Fracture: Prologue has been helped us to understand the players' needs. That is why, due to popular demand, we added a lot of new game settings to give better control to players, including but not limited to a customizable field of view, chromatic aberration, brightness, crosshair size, subtitles settings:



Last but not least, full controller support has been fully implemented:




As we have mentioned in our previous devlog, the localization of Dark Fracture: Prologue (coming in French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian, Chinese) has proven to be quite labor-intensive. That doesn’t mean is not ongoing, and we are looking forward to releasing the update by the end of the year.


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

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/