Strange Seed News

Strange Seed has found a publisher! We're happy to announce that we've joined up with Slug Disco.

In case you don't know Slug Disco, they're actually a developer too -- they make Empires of the Undergrowth, the world's best strategy game about ants. They're also the publisher of Adapt, a Spore successor. You can probably guess why we thought they're a good match.

[h2]What's changing?[/h2]
We'll take more time to polish Strange Seed. Originally we were rushing to launch and didn't have the funds needed to make the game its best. With Slug Disco's assistance and advice, we'll push that launch date back several months into 2025 and spend the extra time making the game great(er).

As far as the game's core mechanics, we won't be making any drastic changes from what you can see in the demo. The focus is on more creature parts, more abilities and more areas.

[h2]Want to test out the full game early?
[/h2]
In early 2025, we'll be looking for playtesters to try out some of the areas that aren't included in the demo.

If you're interested, join up to our Discord so that you can see our announcement when we're signing up testers.

We hope you're enjoying Strange Seed, and that we'll see you in the future!
- the Chronicle Games team

Build update: November 4, 2024

• Added performance options: Low, Medium, High, Ultra
  
• Auto-set performance option when player starts (check the Video menu to select your own!)
  
• Split out Audio and Camera options to new submenus
  
• Large performance improvements in the forest
  
• New Stag Beetle Mother event in the Forest
  
• Plus, a better way to roll compost in the forest
  
• Significantly increased Stamina regen rate
  
• New music in beach area
  
• Changed combat music in tree interior and forest
  
• Replaced the widely disliked error and pickup sounds
  
• Control change in snake minigame: now uses mouse pointer instead of arrow keys (controller users are unchanged)
  
• Color improvements in snake minigame (colorblind people, let us know if it helped!)
  
• Changed Japanese font
  
• Fixed some Chinese / Japanese font issues
  

The performance-related updates in this build were fairly massive, and there may still be issues in Low / Medium that we haven't found yet.

In case you find anything or want to report on how well the performance options work for your computer, please join us over at the Discord: https://discord.gg/8JfYdQW23W

Our demo will be going live on September 26. Here’s a link to the demo page:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3224660/Strange_Seed_Demo/

We’ll be closing the playtest at the same time. In case you never got into the playtest — the demo is the same, but with more content and more bug fixes. I hope you’ll try it out, and give us any feedback!

[h3]Here is the list of major features added or changed since day 1 of the playtest:[/h3]

• New Cliffs area with two quests
  
• Expansions to the Forest area
  
• Many changes to controls and camera
  
• Keybinds and video settings in main menu
  
• Creature part upgrade minigame
  
• Total revamp of attack indicators
  
• Destructible barriers and pushable buttons
  
• Player invincibility frames to prevent insta-deaths
  
• Rebalanced body parts and all enemies
  
• Polish effects like screen shake, water splashes, running trail, environmental sounds, dialogue typewriter, etc
  
• A boss that was pushover easy, then Dark Souls NG+ hard… hopefully now he’s at a good level
  
• Bug fixes… so many bug fixes 🫠
  

To everyone who has provided feedback so far, THANK YOU! It makes a huge difference; we’re changing and improving things based on your notes every day.

In case you didn't spot our feedback button in-game, you can access it here. Steam forum threads are also very welcome!

Do you want exclusive, early access to the next big game? The upcoming hit of 2025?

Then look elsewhere! 😅

But if you want to try out an interesting, quirky RPG, look for the button directly above this post that says “Request Access”. Then click it!

[h3]What’s in the Playtest[/h3]

• 9 enemy types with 45 equippable parts
• 3 areas: the Caldera, the Ant Tree, and the Mushroom Forest
  
• 3 quests and 1 boss fight (or 2 if we can jam out the second)
  
• Various other features — try it and find out!
  

[h3]Playtest, or wait for a demo?[/h3]
Your feedback will be an immense help to our development:

• What was most or least fun
  
• Whether the difficulty level was low or high
  
• What ideas YOU envision for what your creature can do
  
• And of course bug reports
  

We’ve got a playtesting form linked in multiple locations through the game; it looks like this:



Obviously, when we move on from the Playtest to the demo, the latter will be a bit more polished and have more content. If you’d prefer to wait for that, just make sure you’ve clicked the Follow Button at the top of the page!



[h3]OK, so when will the Playtest be open?[/h3]
We’ll be letting in small groups of testers from July 15 to July 30. If you request access, you’ll get to play within that date range.

Thanks so much for following our development! We’re trying to make the best, most interesting creature evolution RPG possible and every bit of feedback or encouragement is priceless.

We’re well into the phase where the game starts to feel pretty cohesive. Here’s our new “forest hallway” environment that I haven’t yet added to the Steam screenshots:



Some of the tasks that went into making our new environments included:

• A fully featured lighting and shadow system
  
• New shaders for all vegetation and environment objects
  
• Completing the climbing system
  
• A bunch of new vegetation models made in Speedtree
  

The challenge is getting these environments to work well on lower-end computers.

I’m testing on my old Nvidia 1060 laptop and they’re stable at >30 FPS; I wonder if anyone with a lower end rig will be wanting to play? Luckily there is still some low-hanging fruit left for optimization.

[h3]The quest system[/h3]
The other major feature we’re working on polishing right now is a quest system. After some back and forth about how to code the quests, we settled on a pretty powerful system using a visual scripting system, via a 3rd party package.

We've successfully put together a quest that involves grabbing a hat for the Queen Ant. Maybe you'll get to wear the hat afterward...?

Finally, a grab bag of other things we’ve been working on:

• Set up permanently flying creatures (like bees)
  
• Implemented a wrapper scene and sub-scene switcher that should both ease our workflow and make the game more stable
  
• Investigated and fixed various weird results from unexpected part combos
  
• Added a “treasure chest” feature tied to completing enemy encounters
  

Is a demo ever coming? Well, the game is nearly ready for it! … but, we kept putting off final polish on the movement system. Early playtesting surfaced a few bugs in that area, so we’re spending time stomping those out before doing a fully public demo.

I think we’ll be ready in a couple months (probably after Steam Next Fest, because releasing a demo in that time frame without being in the Fest is a bad idea). That said, if you want in on pre-public playtesting, DM me or join the Discord.

That’s all for today, thank you for reading and following Strange Seed!