ASYLUM News

Salutations from malodorous, fungus-laden crevices of the abhorrent Hanwell Mental Institute. I have combined these assorted words to convey some degree of meaning and bring you a report of recent occurrences. There's been an influx of anxious inquiries since we announced that beta-testing of ASYLUM had commenced with fresh new eyeballs and bodily appendages. And yes, there be news. Here's the quick lowdown:

• People are truly liking it so far! They highlighted its atmosphere, what it feels like to explore the vast and intricate design of the decaying building, and the compelling story.
  
• No major issues were reported, other than technical annoyances to be expected during this period. The build we distributed is more stable than anticipated, and most feedback we received pertained to quality of life improvements, which the team is tackling en masse.
  
• There are design quirks we still need to sort out, notably characters being underused in latter stages of the experience. As in, they have little intervention in plot points and too few dialogue lines. I agree with this balancing issue, and it's wonderful to hear folks cared enough about our asylum denizens that they wanted more from them.
  
• Before you ask, no, we're not ready to disclose a release date. Yet. So please don't expect one in this update. When we announce it, rest assured you'll know. All I'm going to say right now is that we're very seriously gauging a launch window.
  

I'll elaborate more on the tasks at hand next, but overall, things are looking fantastic!



[h2]Elaboration[/h2]
So it's a pretty intense period in which decisions and approvals have that 'final, but really final' feel. The Senscape team is doing an exceptional job, and I couldn't be happier with the progress we're achieving every week. We recently onboarded new team members to apply a nice coat of polish to characters, lighting, animation and cutscenes. These are some of the same folks that worked on the hours of cinematics from Silent Hill: Ascension, and they're bringing plenty of experience in their respective areas. We even have a dedicated producer now who is flooding me with Jiras eeevery single day, but hey, I asked for it. I need to be kept on track too.



You could say we're entering in post-production mode. The gorgeous atmosphere, which testers enjoyed so much, is receiving profound attention in our QA, with scenes being color graded, brightness levels properly adjusted, ambient sounds everywhere, and lots of neat visual effects to boost the mood. Fans of Scratches will be glad to hear that we added masks to every window in the Hanwell building, so that at one point in the game we have rain and lightning outside. We almost scrapped the feature since it was a lot of work —remember, ASYLUM is stubbornly old-fashioned and all environments are pre-rendered— but it's worth it. I mean, no game can claim to be the true successor to Scratches without a gloomy, rainy night and suitably mysterious music, right?



Another area of focus has been animations, since quite a few of them were wonky and even the character rigs needed a bit of extra love (and don't get me started on the fingers). The cutscenes are more impactful now, and I'm happy to report we're nearly done with them. You might remember from earlier updates that I mentioned these were going to involve a good deal of work, and we're now close to wrapping them up. See, we ARE making progress!

Honestly, it's kind of surreal after all this time. Some of the more crucial moments in the story, the ones that were devised years ago, are reaching the place they were meant to be. I look at them with a big grin on my face and think to myself "yeah, this is good for launch".

One more note I'd like to add: testers have reported a healthy game length, averaging 10-12 hours. Some spent less, others more. That's in line with our estimations, and there's still some content missing (notably achievements and easter eggs we're keeping secret). Overall, folks reported the game length feels "just right".



[h2]It's in the details[/h2]
We can't thank enough the dedication from the folks who are currently playing the game, and we did listen to their feedback, which ranged from puzzle design to interface. For instance, one area we have been improving in the beta is the diegetic game menu. We've always wanted to treat this familiar aspect in all types of games these days with our own touch of flair, but that doesn't mean it should be impractical. So we addressed save game management while keeping that sort of journal approach, and added a feature to log conversations with NPCs, among other tweaks. It does add to the overall experience since folks sometimes reported missing key information in dialogues. This is a win for customer service.

Also, I like how this addictive menu has been dubbed by one of our most dedicated fans as "flippity-flappity pages". You nailed it, yo.



Another one is a 'zoom' feature which is quite neat to use overall, but was in truth implemented with handhelds in mind. All we can confirm for now is instant Steam Deck support at launch. As a BIG fan of the device, where most of my gaming is performed these days, I'm eager to support it properly. It's currently the only way I have to gradually finish games from my Steam collection, and I'd be making tons of progress if it wasn't for Vampire Survivors. Of course, this also means that gamepad support is good to go as well!



As for me, in addition to leaving bucketloads of notes in the endless stream of Jira tickets that torment me every day, my next area of focus will be in-depth script revision. The big pending that I have left is to review every line of text in the game and further develop some documents you find scattered around, as well as key sections in the journal. Backers noted that a few moments in the game needed more nudging and feedback from the protagonist to avoid aimless wandering, which is another valuable note. This is my top priority, and as soon as it's settled we'll be ready to... drum roll... record the voices. Since this question was brought up in our Discord a while ago, adventure game fans will be delighted to hear that Josh Mandel is very much still attached to the project and ready to start working with us.

I'm sure a few of you are going to ask, but remember that we're currently testing with a subset of Kickstarter backers (about 300 people have access, but not everyone is playing), so we're pretty much covered with the QA and not accepting new testers at this stage.



We're reaching the end of this update, but I'm going to keep the line open with more frequent signs of life as things keep ramping up. A lot has been said about ASYLUM, and believe me, I understand the frustration (it's been a looong time coming). Yet everyone here is ready to wrap things up and launch a game we —along with you— will be proud to have been developing/waiting for the past few years.

Until next time.

—Agustín

Hello there! I come from the darkest depths of a dilapidated mental institute bearing news: for the past couple of months, we’ve been circulating a completable build of ASYLUM to our group of community mods, and it’s been an extraordinary success. This is was the first time people outside the Senscape team played the game all the way through, with barely any input from us.



Takeaways and general comments are as follows:

• Actual quotes: “it’s an instant classic”, “the writing is engaging, music is amazing, environments are creepy, love the small nods to Scratches and just like it, Asylum has that beautifully eerie exploration feel”, “mood and atmosphere is unmatched”. Also: “This will be the game everyone remember and use as an example of classic exploration horror point & click adventure game”. Wow!
  
• No show-stopping bugs! Yes, of course we received bucketloads of feedback –that was the whole idea– and we have our own to-do list as well, but the fact that folks without any prior knowledge of the game were able to complete it without handholding nor dead ends is good reason to celebrate.
  
• Our length estimation is spot on! Our mod team overall spent 12-15 hours on average playing, with only someone doing it faster on purpose. And yet, someone else claims to have spent at least 30-35 hours in the game (!!). Considering that we haven’t implemented all achievements nor readable documents, it will be up to you how much you’ll want to squeeze out of ASYLUM. But it’s an engrossing and lengthy experience, that’s for sure.
  

Oh, and Steam users will be delighted to hear that we have full controller support implemented already, with Steam Deck compatibility coming up, so you can lose your mind on the go.





We have more work to do. This first round of fresh feedback we received has been invaluable, but so far it presents a crucial milestone: the biggest worry for me has been the game might be too intricate, obtuse, or difficult to digest. Yet what I’m hearing is that, while further tweaks are required, ASYLUM is fun to play, the story is engaging, and keeps your interest until the end. Good exploration is hard to pull off: there’s a fine balance between giving the audience plenty of freedom and things to investigate while retaining a sense of direction and goals, to ensure the experience does not become frustrating. And it feels like we’re on the right track when one of the primary compliments I hear is that the Hanwell Mental Institute is a joy to explore. This is an accomplishment on a personal level, as the ability to explore at leisure has been the #1 thing I enjoy in games since I played King’s Quest for the first time many, many, many years ago.



I wanted to be careful before we claimed beta. We’ve said this a number of times in the past: it’s a large game, and it’s no secret it’s been a challenge to develop over the years. But, the preliminary feedback we received from dedicated fans of the genre has alleviated any pending concerns. So, we’re ready to deliver the final blow. There’s six people actively working on ASYLUM besides myself, and one or two more folks may join the team during January. The big areas of focus will be tightening the storytelling and of course fixing bugs. The plan is to roll out this beta build after a first round of polish to VIP backers (around 100 people) soon to gather more feedback and impressions. As we get closer to launch, we will share another build with the rest of our Kickstarter backers.





2023 has been quite an exciting year for Senscape. It’s hard to believe all that took place! We’re about 40 people now remotely working across Latin America as well as a bunch from Spain.



One of the big developments was our involvement in the Virtual Production department for the horror movie When Evil Lurks, from acclaimed Argentinian director Demián Rugna. You might have caught Terrified in Netflix, a great entry in the genre, but When Evil Lurks blows it out of the water. Great story, sublime production and cinematography, and outstanding gore effects that rival the very best from Lucio Fulci. Have a watch if you enjoy horror, and pay attention to a number of interior shots of trucks in the road – the environments were designed by us in Unreal Engine to match real life locations.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Last, but not least, our involvement creating cinematic content in the interactive horror series Silent Hill: Ascension from Genvid was disclosed earlier this year. The series demands hours and hours of footage spawning over the course of several months. It’s like a community-driven Bandersnatch or TellTale Game (in fact, we get to work with wonderful ex-TellTale folks!). Here’s one of my favorite scenes so far – I’m very pleased with its mood and choreography: https://twitter.com/SHAscension/status/1720148103234572544


The show is currently in the mid-season break and set to resume in early 2024.

And that’s all, folks. As always, thank you for patience and sticking around. I think this year was only the beginning of a new era for Senscape, and we have a very exciting 2024 awaiting us.



Until next time, and Happy New Year!

–Agustín

Hello there! We take the dust off this news hub with, well, news. Yes, we are still here and, most importantly, ASYLUM is still very much here as well. And we keep working to ensure it gets there, wherever you are, as soon as humanly possible. You must be anxious to lay your hands on the game just as we are to get it out of our systems. So let me summarize where it's standing today, as I decorate this update with some GIFs and assorted stuffs.



It has been possible to play the complete story from A to Z for a while now, but only recently we began doing proper QA. ASYLUM is in a situation in which we can immediately identify areas that need polish while playing and fix on the spot – for example, graphical glitches, a puzzle not working as intended or (*shudders*) unexpected dead ends. Luckily that one is very rare and only happened once by now. While there's still placeholder stuff that needs to be updated, the experience is beginning to feel strong and cohesive.



I've mentioned this many times in the past, and yes, I'm sure I sound like a broken record by now, but ASYLUM is one heck of an intricate game. Its game design and story have remained virtually untouched since development began unfathomable aeons ago, save for a puzzle branch that needed adjustments. While areas such as visual style and UI/UX have received many iterations over the years, the core concept and philosophy never changed.



It took me some time to understand that ASYLUM owes a lot to classic Interactive Fiction: the map design, its highly non-linear nature, characters moving around the environments, passage of time, etc. It all should feel like playing an Infocom adventure of a bygone era, sans the annoying parts that didn't age well, in glorious 3D. And this why new people being able to play the game from beginning to end without relying on hints and without stumbling upon blockers is a huge relief. Thank goodness this thing is working well (for the sake of our sanity).



So in addition to QA, tweaking and balancing, we've been creating cutscenes for the game. Some are occasional transitions, others are story-related, such as flashbacks of past occurrences, or mysterious glimpses of how daily life was in the Hanwell Institute. These are video elements that can take their time to produce and render, but are quick to implement and test. All of this stuff can be spoiler-heavy, so we'll only show a few bits and pieces in blocking form. You know, this is often how entire cinematics are blocked out, and it's even common to work with rough geometry while other assets are being produced!





Finally, another area of big focus at this moment are text revisions: many passages and dialogue lines were quickly drafted for the purposes of programming and testing logic, and there's still a good deal of work we must beautify. In ASYLUM the story comes first, so expectedly we're putting the same amount of care in the script and the words you'll read as in the visuals.



And as we move forward, perhaps we stumble upon a room that feels somewhat empty compared to the others, so we might add an extra hotspot or two to spice up the exploration, maybe dropping a new item for the purposes of set dressing, including but not limited to the kind of creepy toys you'd expect to find in a seemingly abandoned asylum. Imagine yourself entering a surgery room covered in filth and decay with unidentified distant sounds echoing through the winding corridors outside and then this weird doll sitting on a table... yikes.


Well, that's it for this update. I know the pressing question in your minds is "When? When? WHEN?", but we're not ready to disclose a release date yet. There is a plan in action, and a tentative launch window. Next steps involve boosting our community management efforts, relaunching our Senscape website, and bringing you more frequent news. Just stick around, because there's more coming, and we're not going anywhere.

–Agustín

Well, hello there! Allow me to dust off this forsaken corner of the internets. Yes, it's been a while since my last mega-update around these parts, so I'm looking forward to give you the full heads up about all the happenings with Senscape. We have a lot of catching up to do!

Just let me say right off the bat 🦇 that ASYLUM is progressing terrifically, and we're swiftly getting to a point in which we can start testing the game with fresh new eyeballs. That is, we throw disembodied eyeballs at the monitor and see what happens. Very exciting (but messy). There's a chance the owners of those eyeballs might get to play the whole game too! But before we remove their eyeballs, of course, otherwise playtesting might get complicated.

Anyway...



[h2]The lowdown[/h2]
The haunting, twisted, and monolithic asylum you all have been expecting to play has seen advancements all across the board. Now that the game is fully playable, there's a lot of balancing and adjusting that we're doing. The main game logic (or critical path) is being finalized, we added a wealth of documents, notes, clues to flesh out the story, and also the implementation of achievements is underway. This decaying and utterly foul place is being brought to life with a gazillion things to see and do: there's something to discover around every corner, from a curious item that harkens back to past life in the asylum, to historically accurate documentation about early and sinister health practices, to an unexpected flashback as you're playing that brings chills down your spine. Even completing the achievements might feel like playing a separate game! As you may recall, these were designed with context in mind, and discovering them will reveal more of your profile as a patient. Me, I especially like the Scavenger and Melancholic ones 😊



Why, look at that! We're now using Confluence to organize our work. My, are we fancy.



Another big consequence of this balancing act was the polishing and regrading of most environments in the game. The so-called beauty pass, which is resulting in gorgeous new 4K captures that we'll be using to update our store pages soon, some of which you are already seeing all over this update. ASYLUM has never looking this gorgeous — and I'm saying this in a truly deviant way.



(btw, there's an Easter egg for fans of Scratches in that image — can you find it?)



Something else we're doing right now —and I hate not being able to tell you more about this— is beginning to implement the last moments of the game. It's both exhilarating and scary to finally be at this stage after all this time. Playing through the entirety of ASYLUM, and experiencing what was designed ages ago, has provided us with a new perspective on what the game was always meant to be. I mean, of course we knew what we were trying to accomplish all this time, but let's say that we are now... connecting the few remaining dots somehow. Every detail in the game has a purpose, and even seemingly random details that we included during early stages of the project have now gained a revelatory new meaning 👀



I really love how the game unfolds, and how everything converges at the end. I think you will too! There are no more questions left — everything works as expected. But, as I said in the opening paragraph, it's time to let new people play the game and give us fresh feedback. And our first test subjects (now that is appropriate!) will be the lovely Mod team of our Discord community. They don't know what's coming to them, hehe. Poor souls. Bwhahaha! They shall experience THE MADNESS in all its gory glory!! Hehehehe... eh... but I don't want to lose my Mod team 🤔



Anyways, that's the lowdown on the status. There's been many other developments, such as the logic behind Lenny (who essentially behaves like a character in Interactive Fiction games, featuring an internal "schedule"), many explorable items were added, and so, so much more. I wish I could show you what a hugely complex game this is, but alas, that would mean spoiling the whole thing for you. Just take our word for it: there is no other game like ASYLUM in the industry. It's going to be very special ✨



[h2]Happenings at Senscape[/h2]
In other related news, it's been a rollercoaster of a year for us, and especially for me. Actually, mere months, which felt like a lifetime! Not too long ago, Senscape was only four people, a cozy little team that only needed a single Discord channel to organize their job. Yet since the beginning of the pandemic we have tripled our size. Yes, we're now a dozen folks at the company, with likely more coming! Reason for this growth of course was boosting the development pace of ASYLUM on one hand, and then forming a second team for a number of exciting opportunities that came our way. As you can imagine, I had to adapt to a whole new scenario at the company, at last needing to conceive something resembling an organizational structure. So we're slightly less scrappy than before, but still a cozy family who is super motivated to make great things together 😄



There's basically two branches at Senscape now: Video Games and Virtual Production. The game team is solely focused on ASYLUM and consists of 7 people (besides me). We never had so many folks working on the project at the same time! I've always been doing way too much myself: design, writing, programming, even sound compositing, and this larger team is relieving me of many of those responsibilities. I can focus on direction, management, and steering things forward, without becoming a bottleneck as before.



The Virtual Production gang have been tackling a number of exciting projects that I'll share with you in the future. For instance, we've been involved in the production of a film creating virtual backgrounds in Unreal Engine for LED volumes (the so-called "Mandalorian style"). We made an actual movie, folks! And with cutting-edge technology, which is pretty nuts. We learned a huge deal too, and the team is looking forward to bring some of this filmmaking experience back to games. Do we have fans of FMV adventures in here? 😬



Another big upside of this growth is that the company is enjoying good financial stability. So fear not about the development of ASYLUM: it's all in solid shape.

[h2]Brand new faces![/h2]
OK, now let's talk about the new faces in the ASYLUM team! In our last update we discussed the inclusion of Manuel, who did an outstanding job doing internal QA and making note of every corner in the game needing fixing and polishing. More recently, Tobías Moscoso and Anabela Stankiewicz hopped aboard to join the fun. Let's give them a warm welcome! 👏



Anabela is a crazy talented 3D modeler and sculpter, and is taking care of additional set dressing we're doing here and there to enhance your future exploration of the asylum. She's already bringing a special personal touch to the game! Then Tobías, an auteur who participated in our latest Adventurous Game Jam, creating one of the Top 5 winners, the quirky and mysterious if, which I strongly recommend you play. It features some first rate (and incredibly challenging!) puzzles. Fans of old school adventures, you are in for a treat.



Tobías is handling the additional design and writing to ensure the ASYLUM experience is always cohesive. This includes the achievements and in-game documents featuring a wonderful backstory. Details count, and Tobías is very attentive to them. It's a pleasure to have them both in the team! 🤗



Look at all those happy faces! Well, serious looking-faces of people doing very serious work.

Not pictured here is Azul who couldn't join this particular Zoom meeting. She's getting close to finalizing the writing of dialogues, including the intricate branching that was featured in our public demo. I've always been apprehensive of having other people doing writing, but Azul and now Tobías have excelled in this area. They brought fresh perspectives and ideas, a diversity that is crucial in a huge game like ASYLUM.



[h2]What's next?[/h2]
Well, this was quite the read — there's much going on. We had another period of uneasy silence, but remember that we're always here. I keep hearing words of comfort and encouragement, you know, insisting that the game will never be released, that is vaporware, or that we are complete failures. Guess we must be very stubborn people because we're still working very hard to get this project done. To all of you that are sticking around, believing in us, and taking the time to say something nice, THANK YOU! The Senscape team is creating the horror game of your dreams... ahem, nightmares, intricately designed and painstakingly produced. And now that everything is coming together, we are extra sure you will love every moment!

Remember that we have a highly active Discord community in which Manuel has been posting weekly updates. It's the best place to remain in touch and be up to speed with the latest developments.



I'll see you next time, likely with decisive news and impressions after new crew members have played ASYLUM! 👋

Have a disgustingly beautiful weekend,
—Agustín