ASYLUM News

Hello Steam community!

Have you heard the news? It happened. It's here. ASYLUM exists.



It's quite surreal to write this update, and it's gonna be days until the moment settles in. I'd like thank everyone for being such cool and supportive people over the years. I REALLY mean that. Everyone around these parts have been ultra nice, and even now our Steam forums are active and fun. I truly hope you all enjoy the game. It's no secret that development has been a nightmare and, as I write this, I still have Slack notifications popping up all over the place since the Senscape team is doing QA for the patch that we're about to launch.

About that: admittedly, the release had more bugs than I'd have wanted to see. We got a bit optimistic. Two dangerous decisions that we made too close to launch for comfort were to rework the main character's voice and translate ASYLUM to 10 more languages. Tackling this feat with a publisher would've been a crazy, now imagine self-publishing the game...

I think these were the right decisions, though — the new VO is being praised, and more people have been able to enjoy ASYLUM at launch. Of course, we are actively working on the bug fixing, and I'm perusing the forums to hear from you. ALL your reports and feedback are very much appreciated. Please, keep them coming! We want to ensure ASYLUM stands the test of time in pristine shape.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Launch has been successful, we're seeing positive reviews dropping in, and people are really enjoying the story, characters, and atmosphere. It's what we set out to do all this time: a love letter to the adventure genre, both a nostalgic trip, but featuring modern touches across the board. We can't wait to hear your thoughts and impressions when you're done with the game. About this: Steam reviews are extremely helpful at this stage! If you've already finished the game (quite a few of you did), feel free to leave a review, positive or negative, it doesn't matter. Even early reviews help too, and you can always change your rating if you loved/hated the game when you're done. Thank you for considering this, it's just that these days we are forced to fight against obscure algorithms. The machines are winning the war 🤖

ALSO, be sure to discuss theories and thoughts about the ending in the forums 👀


Oh, the story of ASYLUM doesn't end here. There's another story to be told, about how this crazy project came to be. Like The NeverEnding Story, everyone is part of it. YOU are part of this story too! Next steps are to release a special bundle in which you'll be able to acquire an Art Book featuring a glimpse into the early days of production, Soundtrack with variations on the music that you hear in the game, as well as the anticipated A Tour of Hanwell documentary, detailing the wild journey that was required to get to this point (all discounted for current customers, of course). And there's more too... more amazing adventures before we finally return to the ordinary world. But that's another story for another update.



Oh, and look at that. I finish writing the update and the patch is live! Check out the release notes, as surely a number of bugs that were annoying you have been fixed. Have a fun weekend playing ASYLUM, peeps!

—Agustín

Hello everybody! Well, this won't be one of the most exciting Steam updates ever, so let's make it blunt and to the point:

We're delaying the launch of ASYLUM by one week. New date is Thursday, March 13. Still 2025. Main reason is that we're recasting the protagonist since, following in-game clips that we shared in public, we received feedback that the character wasn't quite working out. We take such comments seriously and the Senscape team agreed, so during the weekend we made the difficult decision to make the switch.

I elaborate more on this 1-min video here:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

While not a huge setback, I know it's frustrating since we had committed to a date, you were excited, and there will be complains, and memes, and that's fine. We firmly believe this is what's best for the game. It's not a decision I took lightly either — we wouldn't be doing this if we weren't convinced that the game is special and worth this extra effort. I must say that the former actor gave a memorable performance in Serena, and he's a dear friend of mine. I'm really sorry this didn't work out. It's just that this important character (you, the players!) wasn't working out as was expected.

Details about the replacement actor will be shared shortly. Since the question popped up already: is this doable? Yes, because we're only doing voice-overs for dialogues, not every single feedback line (akin to Scratches). It's roughly 2000 lines, and yes, it can be done in a week. We've managed worse. It's going to tight, but hey, it's always been like that with ASYLUM. It was always meant to be sheer madness until the last moment. But the game is worth this rollercoaster of emotions, that I can promise.

So that's pretty much the purpose of this update. As I explained in the above video, this allows us to reconfirm all 10 languages (besides English) that we were aiming for launch: French, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and Ukrainian.

And that's it. If you need to ask questions or vent, go ahead!

—Agustín