Valley of Shadow News

We are thrilled to announce that we're participating in the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase this year! It's a steam festival that features hundreds of puzzle games - over 200 this year - and dozens of demos. It's running from August 3-7. More info can be found here: https://www.cerebralpuzzleshowcase.com/

We personally will be trying out as many demos as we can get our hands on. If you're on our page reading this during the festival, please try out our demo and let us know what you think. We're always looking for ways to improve the game!

This update to the demo brings it to a new level of polish and performance that we're very excited about. Things should look and feel a lot less janky than before.

Here are the itemized notes for this update:

[h2]New Features & Changes[/h2]

• You can now cancel your spell cast! If you've already placed a perfectly-positioned Light, and you accidentally right-click, press escape to cancel the cast (while right-click is still held down).
  
• New "Real Memory" post-processing effect for when certain scenes play out, such as the Pup-Pup scene on the back porch.
  
• You can no longer jump in the Home. We decided to remove it because it didn't add anything interesting to the scenes, and only served to uncover & exploit collision bugs.
  
• Add Poetry Plaques to the Temple. Written entirely in the rune language, deciphering these plaques adds an extra layer of depth to the story.
  
• Diskettes now move to the bottom corner of the screen to dissolve. This doesn't have a major impact on the Demo, but has been put in place for future content starting in Chapter 2.
  
• The staff animates out of the way when inspecting something. This is really just a workaround for some weird transparency issue with VHS tapes.
  
• In-game menu now shows your current framerate.

[h2]Improvements[/h2]

• The beginning of the demo has been completely polished, with a better-looking UI and therapy hallway.
  
• Cover up many imperfections in the Temple, primarily where snow mounds intersect with other objects. The intersections should be much less noticeable now.
  
• "Song of Innocence" is now more obvious and dissolves when inspected. This is a relatively important aspect of the story that a lot of players were missing.
  
• Footstep System has been entirely rewritten, and it should bug out less often. The new system requires significantly less manual setup compared to the old system.
  
• Player breath now looks more realistic.
• Game posters stick to the wall more believably, and are anchored by their scotch tape now. Previously they were anchored semi-randomly, and looked a bit wonky as a result.
  
• VHS tapes now slide into a sleeve before they dissolve. Similar to the staff animation issue above, this is also to get around a weird transparency issue with the tapes themselves.
  
• Improve performance in Home scenes. Many thanks to the latest version of Unity for newly-added terrain features that made these improvements possible!
  
• Slightly shrink the default reticle. It was just ever so slightly too big for our liking.
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Shadow Creatures now properly render on top of (and underneath) other transparent things.
  
• Objects that dissolve look much more realistic now; they were previously not correctly normal-mapped.
  
• The Subtitle setting actually does something now, and defaults to Off.
  
• Fix bug that caused Quality to show as "Low" even though it wasn't.
  
• Fix bug that caused therapy door to sometimes not close.
  
• Fix animation bug when staff un-hides (after teleporting to each next floor in the Temple)
  

There's a new update for the demo, but (arguably more importantly) we are seeking testers for the rest of the game beyond the demo.


If you're interested in testing later levels of the game, please join our discord - https://discord.gg/QrDNXr9 - or email us - [email protected] - for instructions of gaining access. We are currently testing the entire second chapter of the game, including a new spell, dozens of puzzles, and a continuation of the story.

The following changes are now live in v0.4.6 of the public demo:

• Level Select - You can now return to any puzzle room you've already completed, straight from the main menu! Simply hit escape to open the menu and click "Level Select", then select the puzzle room you want to return to.
  
• Menu Facelift - The main menu has gotten a bit of a facelift. It now has more compelling animations and sound effects!
  

• Fix a bug that prevented floppies from being discovered and picked up if you ever quit and then re-started the game.
  
• Movement speed slowdown during voiceovers should now always recover.
  

This update bring with it some new features, bits of polish, and bug fixes.

[h2]New Features[/h2]

• Cloud Save: We've enabled Steam Cloud Save, so your saves should now transfer between computers! Not a big deal for the demo necessarily, but it is a pretty big deal for the final game.
  
• New visual and sound effects for casting spells into stationary crystals, and removing them!
  
• Improve the range of the sensitivity slider; it can now reach smaller values and has more granular control over the specific value.
  
• The staff now moves as the player moves, rather than remaining completely static
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Playing the game in a different language will now actually play the voiceovers (though they will still be in English - localized subtitles hopefully coming later)
  
• Add ice to a few walls & stairs that were missing them
  
• The game now continues to run even when not focused on
  
• Loading screen now fades out more smoothly
  

Tiny Teams is a digital festival featuring games made by development teams of 1-5 people, and it starts today! We are thrilled to be included in it, alongside some very impressive games.

View the entire Tiny Teams festival here!

If you've discovered us through Tiny Teams and want to keep up with development, follow us on here (Steam), Twitter, or join our Discord to help us hone the game over time!