Whispers of the Eyeless News

Thank you everyone for the passing year. It was a year full of great challenges, and your generosity has allowed us to reach this point. Next month will be very busy and full of Whispers as our first game will be released on Steam in Early Access.

We bid you all the best in the upcoming year, so long as everything you do serves the Dead Gods!

Take a look at how Whispers of the Eyeless changed in the last year.

Greetings from Evil Gingerbread Studio. We are sad to announce that we have mutually parted ways with Camlann Games. We hope to work with them again in the future and wish them the best with their other titles. Our studio is once again searching for a publishing partner, however thanks to the support of our Kickstarter backers and the dedication of our team, we are still on schedule for an Early Access release of Whispers of the Eyeless in January.

Our roadmap leading up to the Early Access release starts with backer testing of the current build next week. This build includes a revamped tutorial and improved progression through the campaign demo, as well as a number of new features and mechanics, including:
New Special Technique system. The Prophet’s Special is now dependent on the weapon you equip him with, and can be further enhanced through your chosen Special Blessing.
Improved and reworked Channel Divinity in combat.

• 7 new enemies.
  
• Artifacts in the Reliquary.
  
• City influence.
  
• Combat visual improvements.
  
• Sanctum visual improvements.
  

The build also includes an entirely new game mode, Fate’s Mirror. While Fate’s Mirror will eventually contain many different variations, for now there is only one Shard type, the Raids Shard, where your goal is to defend the Sanctum from three enemy Raids. Fate’s Mirror also includes the following features:

• All rooms operational in the Sanctum from day 1.
  
• Tales in the Dungeons and Old Town.
  
• Task system for cult NPCs.
  
• Dynamic Sanctum Events.
  
• Two special NPC vendors.
  
• Unlockable Greater Artifacts for future playthroughs.
  

Fate’s Mirror includes adjustable difficulty settings, and is designed to be highly replayable. Your starting equipment, Sanctum NPCs, Tasks, and Sanctum Events will all be random, making for a unique challenge for each playthrough.

The focus of our backer testing will be on bugs, balance, and general feedback. We primarily communicate through discord, so make sure to come in and say ‘hi, please don’t sacrifice me’.

Once Whispers of the Eyeless is released in Early Access, we will move to our Early Access Roadmap, which we will release at a later date, but in general, expect monthly updates, starting with a small update for balance and minor content in February, followed by a major update in March adding significant content (new district!). Starting next month, we will release weekly video blogs to pass the dark words of the Dead Gods on directly to you.

This is a very exciting, if somewhat scary, time for our small studio! We look forward to taking this dark journey with all of you, and truly hope that you will stop, and listen to the Whispers.

Evil Gingerbreads

Dark greetings, faithful followers. The Whispers have been silent these last few weeks as our team has been busy working on the latest machinations of the Dead Gods: Fate's Mirror. As we approach Early Access and the release of Fate's Mirror, we want to pause and reflect (heh) on our journey so far.

Evil Gingerbread Studio and Whispers of the Eyeless have come a long way over the last year, and while we naturally credit the Dead Gods for their unholy guidance, we must also recognize and thank all of you for your help as well.

We have received, reviewed, and discussed the feedback given during Steam Next Fest, and will be making some changes and improvements accordingly, particularly to the new player experience.

The Whispers are growing louder, so keep your ears and minds open, and you will hear more from the Dead Gods soon.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Broadcast is live! Watch Venris showcase gameplay during the Oct 2024 Steam Next Fest!

Dark blessings to you all!

The Dead Gods demanded that we expand and improve the Whispers of the Eyeless demo, and as always, we have obeyed. Our first public demo since our Kickstarter launch has many additions and improvements for prospective members of the Cult of the Dead Gods to experiment with and enjoy.

Steam Next Fest, October 14th-21st
Please note, this demo will only be available during Steam Next Fest, and will disappear once the event concludes.

If you want to hear more of the Whispers, give feedback to the Dead Gods, or just hang out with your fellow faithful, join our Discord server! The Dead Gods will approve (and demand fewer sacrifices from the dev team).

Join our Cult on DIscord!

Evil Gingerbreads


Whispers of the Eyeless DEMO ver. 0.32

General:

- Added demo timer. The demo will now end after 12 in-game days instead of after completing the main quest.
- Reworked main menu.
- Added game mode and difficulty selection.
- Reworked tooltips. Tooltips no longer float, they now stick to sources.
- Added Vsync, frame rate limiter, subtitles toggle, skip intro, and resolution options to settings.
- Smoothed music transition between scenes. Music tracks will no longer reset when changing to different game instances and will resume when returning to the scene.
- Added sounds to many specific UI buttons and options.
- Reworked Faith, Needs and Notoriety summary in Sanctum.
- Added new Needs and Notoriety icons.
- Added animations to several UI elements, including Gods Ascension bars and the Blood Chalice.
- Added wind effect to Old Town.
- Reworked choice UI with nice Cultist skulls instead of plain skulls in certain situations.
- Updated resource icon tooltips.
- Added tooltips to many small UI elements such as icons, buttons etc.
- Added ? information panels throughout the game.
- Separated tutorial path into smaller parts to lessen information overload. This, as well as properly locked mechanics, should make the tutorial less overwhelming.
- Added notifications when attempting to interact with locked mechanics to guide the player to the proper Sanctum renovation.
- Added initial quest summary screen showing the effects of player choices, and to hint at other possible outcomes. We still plan to rework this system to better represent branching choices.
- Added a Black Market shop in Old Town which sells items and resources with rotating offers. The offers change every 3 days but can be rerolled using Secrets.
- Reworked Notoriety mechanic. Notoriety no longer ends the game when reaching 100%, and no longer imposes any negative effects as it rises. Instead, when reaching 100% Notoriety, a Raid is triggered on a random district for 5 days.
- Added Raids! When a Raid is active, the Cult will suffer significant debuffs until the Raid is destroyed. Players can choose to attack the Raid instead of going on a normal Tale. Raids begin with powerful buffs that will diminish each day. The Prophet will be granted a full set of Blessings by the Gods when attempting to destroy a Raid.
- Reckonings (side quests) are now unlocked based on Gods Ascension. Information on how to unlock them can be found in the Insight panel.

Sanctum:

- Added fog effect to the Sanctum.
- Resource bar is now shown when visiting Aranthor in the day and in the Altar.
- Supplies can now be seen when in the Workshop.
- Reworked the Writings panel. It now opens automatically when a new day begins if new Writings arrive. The panel is now divided into New and Old tabs to better track messages and ongoing effects.
- Added unique event art to each Calling.
- Reworked the Gods panel in the Altar to better showcase Ascension effects.
- Added Cultist disputes which must be settled by the Prophet.
- Rooms will no longer show Cultist slots if the renovation that allows Cultists to be assigned to the room has not been constructed. Similarly, rooms cannot be expanded until Cultists can be assigned to them.
- Added notifications to all renovations to indicate when new mechanics have been unlocked.
- Added visual representation of room renovations in the Sanctum.
- Lowered renovation costs.
- Added visualization of overall resources to the Vault.
- Reworked Vault renovations with new effects and mechanics. Divine Renovations were reworked to be more clear and useful.
- Reworked Notoriety panel in the Hall of the Faithful into Espionage panel. Espionage operations allow the player to spend Secrets to trigger random events which become more powerful as Notoriety increases.
- Reworked Sacrifice effects to be more specific to different aspects of cult management.
- Lowered Sacrifice cooldown to 3 days from 5.
- Removed Sacrifice cost scaling. Sacrifices now have a static cost to activate.

Tales:

- Added new opening images to Tales.
- Increased damage values across the board to rebalance and accelerate combat.
- Lowered volume of fast combat speed sound effects by 25%.
- Extended combat music to have a more satisfying loop.
- Added new music to Old Town Tales.
- Added fog effect to Dungeons and rain to Old Town.
- Improved readability of character stats. Stats are now separated into offensive, defensive, and special categories. Stats with a value of 0 have lower opacity, while those with negative values are red.
- Gifts that are on cooldown or cannot be afforded will be darker.
- Reworked failing and abandoning Tales to have the same effects (Faith: -5% based on Tale tier and -50% gathered resources). Tales can now be abandoned at any time.
- Reworked Channel Divinity effects for Treasure and Rest events. Improved their notifications to be more clear.
- Reworked item cards to have different colors based on tier.
- Reworked Tales rewards so Old Town and the Dungeons have different purposes.
- Reworked Rest and Detection events.
- Rest event is now art based instead of text based. This system is planned for more events in the future.
- Old Town events now increase Notoriety.
- Dungeons events now decrease Sanity.
- Implemented first version of Followers effects. This mechanic will be expanded in the future.
- Added a chance for the Prophet to speak when performing his Special.
- Added many new voice lines for the Prophet after combat.
- Improved all character sprites to be properly sized and for attacks to connect better.
- Added colors to Prophet sprites for God Actions.
- Added new Prophet victory sprites.
- Added new evade sprites to all characters.
- Added new idle sprites to all characters.
- Added the first version of Prophet Archetypes which can be selected in the Chambers. Currently there are 4 archetypes. We plan to add more Archetypes in the future, and plan to add requirements to unlock them.
- Added 3 new enemies: Guard Enforcer, Guard Defender and Guard Commander.
- Reworked Standard Attack. It now grants +2 damage to the next attack used and no longer lowers enemy Evasion.
- Lowered Refugee Mob Damage by 5. We’re not sure why their weapons were so sharp.
- Lowered Rats Critical Damage by 5.
- Reworked Stone Afflicted to be less special but more tanky; Special Cooldown: +2, Health: +25.