Chasmal Fear News

[h2]Answering all of your questions about Chasmal Fear[/h2]

Let's discuss the future, what can be implemented and what can you expect in the full game

Hey there friends!
Firstly, thank you everyone for your amazing feedback. We're immensely happy that the game has received such positive feedback and the numbers continue to grow. Remember, you are the ones pushing us forward!



A few days ago, we shared on our socials (Twitter, Facebook, Tiktok, Instagram, Youtube) about doing a fun Q&A where we'll answer all of your burning questions about the full game, including:

• What can you expect in the full game
• And Whether particular features can be implemented

So, here it is. We'll be broadcasting The Developers Q&A where we'll do our best to answer everything you've sent us.

In case you miss the Q&A video, don't worry! We made sure to place it in the gameplay loop, so it will be replayed every hour until the end of Steam Next Fest. Furthermore, after the first play of the video ends (in case you don't feel like waiting for it again), we'll post it on Youtube for you.

Check out the Chasmal Fear demo on Steam Next Fest - a sci-fi bodycam survival horror game set in an underwater city. The demo features:

• Mutating Monsters
  
• Oppressive atmosphere
  
• Underwater sci-fi city
  
• Multiple playthroughs for replayability
  
• Player choices
  
• Multiple endings
  
• 4 Different Weapons
  
• Horror under the waves
  

Chasmal Fear is developed by a two-man team "MystiveDev".
If you like the demo, please consider wishlisting it on Steam.

[h2]We’ve been working hard on Chasmal Fear for the past two months, getting ready for Steam Next Fest.[/h2]

To celebrate Steam Next Fest and a couple of amazing events you'll read below, here is a new trailer for Chasmal Fear:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Closed alpha of the demo launched in early January and we invited some streamers to try it out. They got to experience the game mechanics, the atmosphere, and the different choices that affect gameplay. We watched them on Discord and took notes on how to improve the game based on their feedback. They also shared their thoughts and ideas with us after playing.



Thanks to the closed alpha, bugs were fixed, quality of life things improved, added some new features, did some major mechanics overhaul, new ending, improved signposting, and lighting, and polished the game as much as we could. It was a lot of work, but we’re very proud of the result. Oh, there’s also a new trailer to celebrate Steam Next Fest!

During this period, we got an email from Steam saying that they were considering our game for promotional materials. They asked us to make sure everything was ready by January 25th, when they would pick several journalists to play.



On January 25th, we decided to launch the demo publicly, but “secretly”. What does that mean? Well, let us explain. Chasmal Fear was featured in the official Steam Next Fest Announcement video on YouTube, and also in their marketing and promotional materials. It was such an honor and a dream come true!

But, we didn’t tell anyone about the demo launch. Why? Well, my brother and I (we’re a small indie team of two) thought: Let’s see who discovers the demo and plays it. But let’s keep it a secret until the Steam Next Fest. In the meantime, we’ll watch every streamer who plays it, take notes, and improve it.



Searched on YouTube, Twitch, and Kick and found players who stumbled upon the demo and tried it out. Thanks to those players, we were able to fix bugs, improve quality of life, signposting, and gameplay feel, and make the demo as awesome as possible.



Steam Next Fest is here. The demo is updated, tested, and good to go. Of course, we’ll keep an eye on players and content creators to see if we can make it even better. If you like survival horror games, you should check out Chasmal Fear on Steam and play the demo. And if you’re feeling generous, please give us a “Wishlist” and help us with the algorithm.

Want to stay in touch with our latest updates? You can always follow us on our Twitter:
https://twitter.com/MystiveDev

It’s been a while since we last posted an in-depth devlog about the development of our upcoming survival horror bodycam shooter - Chasmal Fear. And to be honest, it’s not that our indie game has stopped or anything, but more like, we were way too focused on the devving part.

During these past two months, we (my brother and I) managed to do a complete lighting overhaul of the game, optimize a few things, program and polish new gameplay mechanics, and improve AI behaviors. Moreover, a couple more enemies have been added to provide diverse gameplay.


Giving it a lot of thought, we decided to remove Unreal Engine 5’s Lumen from the equation and go with optimized, baked lighting for the game to be playable on more computers than high-end machines. Lumen is great, don’t get me wrong. It’s amazing. However, it is also a bit more performance-expensive than we thought. That’s why we decided to carefully re-do the lighting, the post-processing, and analyzing every tiny bit in the profilers, we managed to hit 120 fps on cinematic quality with baked lighting and a couple of other optimization techniques.


Besides the usual features we mentioned before such as limited resources, mutating monsters into new foes with varying strengths, weaknesses, and behaviors, and choices that affect playthrough, we thought of diving into the tiny details and adding some interesting gameplay mechanics to enrich the overall experience. Some of them include:

• New monster execution animations
  
• Puzzles (which won’t be hard and hinder gameplay, but are a good addition)
  
• Breakable floors (some areas will have breakable floors that have a small chance of breaking and sending you down into new, never-before-seen levels
  
• Health Station - added health stations similar to Half-Life 1 and 2 where players will be able to heal. We thought this way it’d be more interesting than the more generic way of finding a first aid kit or some healing item.
  
• Crawling AIs - at least that’s what we call them. We added “holes” and vent openings around every level that work with a chance. Be careful! By chance, a random monster might come rushing at you from them. They’re not really “crawling” per se, as they might drop from a ceiling or come through a higher hole with a different animation, but you know what I mean.
  
• Random Spawn Doors - we’ve added automatic doors which are almost indistinguishable from regular walls and these doors have a chance to spawn an AI behind them and open when you least expect it.
  
• Small visual addition - added different types of physics hair to enemies using code so that the computer will randomly choose what haircut to place on a mutant’s head.
  
• Weapons Addition & Improvement - we polished the current weapons in the game (pistol, rifle, knife) and also added a new weapon - Shotgun.
  
• 17 new levels finished since the first trailer (not all of them are accessed in a single playthrough)
  
• Added New Sequences - we’ve added a few animated sequences (like cinematics, but think like Half-Life where the player’s keyboard and mouse are not disabled and he may walk around).
  
• Continued working on the lore & story
  

If you read our last Devlog at IndieDB.com, we mentioned that due to some unlucky circumstances (lightning frying our PC), the old trailer we did was rendered on medium quality and although it was good, it did not reach our expectations. Luckily now, we finally managed to get a new, far better PC and this next trailer was rendered on maximum quality.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



I always say horror gamers and the gaming community are those who motivate us to keep on pushing and working hard on our indie games. It was like that with our two previous games too, and it’s far better with Chasmal Fear now.

Although we rarely check the Wishlist count now (the game is still very early in development), I thought about checking it two weeks ago just in case. What we found is that Chasmal Fear amassed over 1000+ Wishlists in just 3 days. And it has been growing steadily ever since. Thank you, everyone, for your amazing support and we can’t wait to watch you play it.

Demo Soon

We’re working day and night (full-time devs) to bring you the demo for Chasmal Fear as soon as possible. So far, the development has been going great and we’re nearing the polish phase for our demo. Make sure to Wishlist Chasmal Fear on Steam to be informed when the demo releases.