The Obsessive Shadow News

Hello and Happy Halloween!

Spooky month is here; as promised, we have a big surprise! Today, we are finally able to say what that surprise is!

We have a new Halloween Demo with some spooky surprises available NOW on Meta Quest and Steam!

We also whipped up this cool teaser video to prepare you all!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Here are the patch notes, but do be warned this does contain some SPOILERS for the new demo, so please read after playing if you want to avoid any sort of spoilers!

Halloween:
- Added Halloween decorations to the Menu Area
- Added a new Halloween variant of the Main Menu theme

Gameplay:
- The Flashlight no longer has to be shaken! Now you have to recharge it by keeping it off (you can toggle it on and off with the index trigger)
- Added battery percentage counter to flashlight to monitor your battery level.
- Added a new extended Intro Cutscene
- Reworked Ending Cutscene and added new music!

Visuals/Other:
- Updated Enemy Character look and gave it new animations
- Made the Flashlight a grabbable object you can pick up instead of locking it to the player's hand
- Made grabbable objects highlight green when in grabbing range to make it clear that they are grabbable
- Lights now flicker out instead of turning off instantly during the intro sequence
- Added a new 'quote' splash screen after hitting start before the level loads.
- Added player voice lines!
- Added Native 90hz Support, so the game now, by default, runs at 90fps!
- Rebaked lighting at a higher resolution so that it looks even better!
- Added doors to the door frames because why wouldn't a bedroom or bathroom have doors on them? (That's just weird).
- Updated Credits


We believe this demo reflects more of what we have been doing in the main game, but there is so much new content you will only be able to experience in the full game.

As always, thank you so much for your continued support, and we can't WAIT to deliver the full game as soon as it is ready for you all to play! Happy Halloween, and be sure to keep an eye on those windows :wink:

Hey everyone! It’s been a little bit since you’ve heard from us, but behind the scenes, the team is working very hard to give you guys the full release of The Obsessive Shadow!

I recently got to attend Meta Connect and got some good feedback on some new content you’ll see in the full release, it was a great time and everyone was super nice! We do have a big surprise this October however, so keep your eyes peeled and your flashlights on to look out for big news later this month ;)

We also have some really cool Fanart by
my good friend Kam that we wanted to share here!
You can support her art here!



If you want to stay up to date with the game and everything happening, Join our community on discord here!

Thank you for the continued support and we are very excited to share more soon!

Pablo H, Sleepy Dog Studios

The second Steam Next fest stream takes place Friday at 7:30pm EST (4:30pm PST).

Tune in to The Obsessive Shadow Steam page to watch the Stream, chat with us, and ask questions!

Join the Discord server here to join our community!

This one will also be live on our YouTube Channel!

Hope to see you there!

Read this post on our official news website: https://news.sleepydogstudios.net/



[h2]Introduction[/h2]

Hey everyone! Thank you so much for staying interested in our game even with the slow pace of updates in the last few months! We can promise you we are still working hard on the game and we have hopes that the game shouldn't be in development for much longer!

Majority of our team is busy with university classes as well as working on the game! Both being huge undertakings so from the bottom of our hearts, we appreciate you sticking with us!

Anyways, we know you guys are sick of hearing about updates for the demo! We are too! But we hope it won't be long before we can bring you the real thing!

A quick not that we wanted to remind everyone of is that our goal with the demo is for it to reflect the game in a condensed way. With this information, know that changes made to the demo, often reflect changes that we may have made to the full game, often in a condensed way. We want to mention this specifically because of the fact that if you like something in the demo, we can assure you we will expand on it and maximize it to the fullest potential in the full game.

Anyways, enough of that! Let's dive into the patch notes!

[h2]New Trailer[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Changelog[/h2]

We have pushed out an update to our demo branch which include the following *specified* changes:

Added Post Processing Effects When working on improvements to visuals, post processing effects often are included. We hope to bring an optimized and realistic feeling post processing set to the game's visuals.

Improved Lighting Effects Good lighting changes help make the player feel like they are truly in the environment that we hope to immerse them in. We hope that these changes to the way that the lighting system works will improve the look and feel of the game!

Improved Environmental Details We improved some of the environmental details that were previously added to our game along with introducing new ones such as dust particles to once again improve the feel of the game.

Improved Flashlight Visuals We improved the look of the flashlight by adding some additional details. We thought this was an important change as the flashlight is one of the key features of our game.

Various Bug Fixes and Miscellaneous Improvements We made various other changes that aren't important enough to mention by name in the patch notes.

[h2]Screenshots[/h2]

The first four images show the lights on and off stages of the same location:

Kitchen with Lights On


Kitchen with Lights Off


Living Room Window with Lights On


Living Room Window with Lights Off


The next few images are examples of some other locations throughout the house:

Alternative View of the Kitchen + Front Door


View of Bedroom


View from Bathroom

The game's visuals are constantly being improved so they will most likely change again, but we are happy with the direction that we are taking it in.

[h2]Featured on RuffTalkVR Showcase[/h2]

The first annual RuffTalkVR Gaming Showcase is premiering today, February 2nd, 2024, at 1:00 PM EST. RuffTalkVR is a podcast that covers all things VR and AR. In this showcase we premiered a brand new trailer which you can watch here on YouTube, alongside other game developers working on various VR titles. You can check out the showcase at this link on YouTube. Make sure to follow RuffTalkVR on X, (formally Twitter), here.

[h2]Play Testing Opportunities[/h2]

Thank you to all the play testers that have helped us out in the past couple months! We appreciate your service to making our game even better!

With this thank you, we are going to conclude wave #1 of play testing!

We will be announcing information in the coming weeks on how to apply to be a play tester in our next wave. To keep up to date with information relating to this and other game news, please join our discord server here: discord.com/invite/2Aa9BR2YFW

[h2]Conclusion[/h2]

Thank you all for playing the game! We love you all and the game wouldn't be where it is now without the support of you! Have an amazing rest of your week!

Sincerely,
The Development Team at Sleepy Dog Studios

- Discord: discord.com/invite/2Aa9BR2YFW
- X (Formally Twitter): x.com/sleepydogdevs
- YouTube: youtube.com/@SleepyDogStudios
- Main Website: sleepydogstudios.net

Please report any bugs you find to our bug report page found at sleepydogstudios.net/report. Thank you for playing and we look forward to releasing future content soon!