The Darkest Files News

Hello, dear prosecutors!

We once again have a new patch for you to make some improvements, fix bugs, typos and grammar issues reported by you all. Thank you very much for all the reports when you find bugs. They really help us a lot to make The Darkest Files the best it can be as we continue supporting the game. If you encounter a bug or any inconvenience while playing the game, don’t hesitate to press F5 and write a bug report.

We are also on a continuous quest to make major performance optimizations which will make the game run on much less powerful hardware via a future patch so if you’ve been getting game crashes, rest assured that we’re on the case!

Changes

• Improved the viewing angle when in a kitchen talk with Simon Peters
  
• Fixed missing comic panel text in Naumann case
  
• Fixed an issue where the bullet hole and the graffiti above the mattress in the insurgent case were not highlighted
  
• Added Instagram Button to Startscreen
  
• Fixed Paula and Christoph dialogues showing up in the office instead of the kitchen area
  
• Disabled reconstruction blueprint in the epilogue
  
• Fixed an issue where the name of the cat Marlene had a blank space after her written name in dialogues
  
• Made the bigger font sizes slightly smaller
  
• Polished the artwork of the Looter chapter selection screen
  
• Added a phone symbol to Looter blueprint
  
• Switched out english environment texture
  
• Fixed a bug which could lead to the game getting stuck during court
  
• Optimized graphics memory usage so the game can run on more systems. This might prevent some crashes on lower-end hardware
  
• Fixed a bug where you would only receive the second half of a certain character’s diary
  
• Fixed some typos in the English and French versions
  
• Fixed a lot of typos and grammatical errors in the German version
  

Today marks the anniversary of May 8th, 1945 - the day that Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered, ending the Second World War in Europe. This pivotal moment in history not only liberated Europe from fascism but continues to shape our society and our collective responsibilities today.

For us at Paintbucket Games, this day of remembrance holds profound significance. Through our work, particularly with The Darkest Files, we strive to keep historical memory alive by telling stories of those who fought for justice and human dignity during and after one of humanity's darkest chapters. We believe that understanding our past is crucial to ensuring such horrors are never forgotten nor repeated.

We're deeply grateful to everyone who has joined us on this journey - for playing our games, sharing your impressions, and writing thoughtful reviews. Your feedback is invaluable, and we're actively working to refine The Darkest Files based on your comments. 🧡



If you haven't yet experienced The Darkest Files, it remains available on Steam as part of the LudoNarracon Sale with a 10% discount until Sunday May 11 - 7PM CEST. 🕵️‍♀️



We're also offering an "Investigating History" Bundle that includes The Darkest Files alongside Inspector Schmidt - The Ebbing:

In Inspector Schmidt - The Ebbing, you'll travel to the German North Sea Coast in 1870 to unravel a complex web of intrigues, lies, and secrets surrounding a mysterious death. Find the source of eerie telegraph signals, question villagers, decipher strange symbols appearing throughout town, and evade dangers lurking in the moor.

The bundle provides both games (or whichever you're missing from your library) at a 15% discount.

See you in court,

The Paintbuckets

Hello, dear prosecutors!

Today, we've got a new patch for you. This patch contains improvements to the notebook and adds a certain detail in a document to make things a little more consistent.
We’ve also fixed all the most urgent and some more minor bugs and issues that you all have reported to us on the forums, our discord server, or the in-game bug report tool which can be opened via F5.
Thank you very much to everyone who has been reporting issues in the game to us. Your reports enable us to improve the experience for everyone. We are still supporting this game with fixes and always look at every new bug report coming in, so if you find any issue in the game, we’d be grateful if you could press F5 and write a quick note describing the issue.

Thanks again for all the continued support,
See you in court!

• Made certain documents more consistent in the Insurgent Case. (Thanks, Staiy!)
  
• Various updates to the notebook related to font sizes, spacing, etc
  
• Updated some notebook glossary entries, changed the layout to be one entry per page instead of three per page.
  
• Changed the UI font size setting names to be more in line with what they actually are (from Small, Medium, Big to Default, Big, Huge (experimental).
  
• Did a leveling pass to make sure Paula is always loud enough to understand her properly.
  
• Made controller stick scrolling faster in the dialogue log.
  
• Updated petition to add one backer name.
  
• Updated 3D magazine textures, so the fashion, sport & people magazines look distinct.
  

• Fixed the game breaking in unexpected ways when opening the steam overlay.
  
• Fixed an issue where a letter would not be translated inside the document detail view in French and German.
  
• Fixed a bug which prevents the game from being auto saved before leaving for court.
  
• Fixed an issue which could lead to showing not yet obtained documents using a controller.
  
• Fixed an issue which could lead to not being able to add labels to paragraphs while playing in Story Mode.
  
• Fixed certain objects not being highlighted in some of the memory sequences in the Looter Case.
  
• Fixed an issue where character pages in the notebook were duplicated.
  
• Fixed a bug which prevents the game from being auto saved, before leaving for court.
  
• Fixed an issue where a dialogue on the following day would not continue if you choose to search Heidi.
  
• Fixed wrongly displayed interrogation max count in the case summary.
  
• Fixed text display issue in french version in personal information by making the text field bigger.
  
• Various fixes related to texts in the game across all supported languages.
  

Hey folks,

📢 Thank you so much for all your support and reviews, this means a lot to us!
We also heard your valid critique and are excited to announce this big balancing patch of The Darkest Files.

But before I tell you more about the update, we also want to share that we now have Trading Cards! You can now collect and trade the whole team of Mr. Bauer, plus the cat Marlene. 😻



🔍 Patch 1.0.5 was released on April 8 and is a major update that adds a lot of possible solutions for conclusions and interruptions, making the game less strict and more open to different ways of thinking. We also added a new difficulty mode for a more balanced experience. The changes in detail are as follows:

• Adjusted the difficulty of Investigator Mode to make it a little easier. (Removed the requirement to specify the paragraph in a given document and enabled the counter in the testimonies that shows how many optional interactables have been found). From the feedback we received, we feel that this more closely reflects the kind of "normal" difficulty that people are looking for - whereas in our minds, "Investigator Mode" was always designed to be "Hard Mode".
  
• Added a new difficulty setting, "Prosecutor Mode", which is the former Investigator Mode aka "Hard Mode".
  
• Added a lot more documents & paragraphs as possible solutions for interruptions and conclusions.
  
• Removed Esther's misleading comments when combining documents into conclusions.
  

The reworked Investigator Mode should hopefully make the game more approachable for those who want a bit of a challenge without wanting to choose the highest possible difficulty.
We hope that you’ll enjoy this new update and are looking forward to reading your feedback about the new difficulty mode and newly accepted solutions.



🔍 And if you are still on the fence if you want to play The Darkest Files, read here what the press has to say:



If you can’t get enough of our characters and beautiful artwork, and amazing soundtrack and want to support our work, you can buy the The Darkest Files Complete Edition to add to your collection! This gives you a 25% discount on everything - if you own parts of it already, you can complete the set and get the discount on every item you add!🕵️‍♀️

The bundle includes

• A Steam copy of the The Darkest Files
  
• "The Chronicles of Crime - Art and Fact", a digital art and factbook exploring concept art, character designs, and historical research that shaped the game.
  
• A lot of hand-drawn digital goodies like Digital Wallpapers, Emotes and Digital Stickers, and high-quality Printable Posters featuring stunning artwork from the game
  
• In-depth Character Sheets revealing detailed backstories, motivations, and secrets of all key characters
  
• The complete Original The Darkest Files Soundtrack by the amazing Almut Schwacke
  

Thank you so much for your support!

See you in court!

This is a major balance patch which adds a lot of possible solutions for conclusions and interruptions, making the game less strict and more open to different ways of thinking. We also added a new difficulty mode in between the easy and hard difficulty for a more balanced experience.



Dear prosecutors,

After watching a lot of you play and make reviews and community posts regarding the game’s difficulty, we’ve carefully taken notes and created a major balancing patch. The game is a lot less strict about what it considers the correct solution now as we’ve added many alternative combinations for conclusions as well as many more alternative correct solutions for interruptions during witness interviews. Many of the steps can be solved with more ways of thinking than we realized initially, and this patch addresses this.
Furthermore, after watching people struggle with the difficulty selection between only an easy-mode and a hard mode, we’ve now added a normal difficulty mode in between. The new mode in the middle no longer requires you to select individual paragraphs. This should hopefully make the game more approachable for those who want a bit of a challenge without wanting to choose the highest possible difficulty.
We hope that you’ll enjoy this new update and are looking forward to reading your feedback about the new difficulty mode and newly accepted solutions.

As with all updates, it can happen that new bugs are introduced, even though we thoroughly tested every newly added solution. So, if you encounter any bugs while playing, we’d be very grateful if you could report them by pressing F5 while in game.

See you in court!
Your Paintbucket team.

[h2]Difficulty & Balance[/h2]

• Adjusted the difficulty of Investigator Mode to make it a little easier. (Removed the requirement to specify the paragraph in a given document, and enabled the counter in the testimonies that shows how many optional interactables have been found).
  From the feedback we received, we feel that this more closely reflects the kind of "normal" difficulty that people are looking for - whereas in our minds, "Investigator Mode" was always designed to be "Hard Mode".
  
• Added a new difficulty setting, "Prosecutor Mode", which is the former Investigator Mode aka "Hard Mode".
  
• Added a lot more documents & paragraphs as possible solutions for interruptions and conclusions.
  
• Removed Esther's misleading comments when combining documents into conclusions.
  

[h2]Graphics[/h2]

• Changed the used Anti-aliasing method(s) from MSAA + SMAA (Medium) to just SMAA (Quality), resulting in a sharper image and higher framerates on certain systems.
  

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed an issue where the interruption UI would display its animations abnormally.
  
• Fixed Theresa being called Edwina in the court opening cutscene of the second case.
  
• Fixed a bug which can lead to players being stuck when entering a coworkers office.
  
• Fixed various typos and grammatical errors in all languages in the game.