Cursed Companions News

Hey everyone,

We're still pinching ourselves - we've officially reached 100,000 wishlists! When we started working on this game, we never dreamed of hitting a milestone like this! We all were fretting over the low wishlists growth in late May and then in June and July, things really picked up! (Thanks to several Tiktok clips that went viral) It's a huge vote of confidence, and it means the world to our small team. 💖

[h2]The Demo[/h2]
Over 200,000 players have tried our demo so far, with a median playtime of 62 minutes. That's nearly an hour of adventuring, spell-casting, and chaos per player - and it shows us that people aren't just curious, they're really diving in.

Seeing so many of you leave feedback, suggestions, and encouragement has been both humbling and motivating - we read every single one. During this period, we put up several Demo updates to resolve some of the feedback given.


[h2]Twitch and Youtube[/h2]
On Twitch, things went absolutely wild. We reached an all-time peak of 12.5K live viewers, and since June, viewers have logged over 220,000 hours watched. That's almost 25 years of playtime - broadcast live! The energy from chat has been incredible.

And of course, we were thrilled to see several prominent streamers pick up our game and share it with their communities. We'll be linking some of our favorite clips below - they made us laugh, cheer, and even squirm when things went really wrong in-game. It was great receiving feedback from the Chat and even from the streamers themselves!

[h3]Watch on Twitch: Ironmouse plays Cursed Companions [/h3]


[h3]YouTube[/h3]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGAuC6-SHs4&t=1533s&ab_channel=RDCLive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGpoM7jQha4&ab_channel=KYRSP33DY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVijuDI00qE&ab_channel=ChilledChaos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jghY6CccwoM&ab_channel=chibidoki
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6s1F_UMRKw&ab_channel=RayNarvaezJr

[h2]Up next...[/h2]
All of this wouldn't have been possible without you. The wishlists, the streams, the reviews, the Discord discussions - you've all carried this project further than we could've imagined. We're incredibly grateful and excited for what's ahead.

This milestone, feedback from the community, watching the streamers has cleared some of the questions we've been asking ourselves and now the path ahead is much clearer. We'll have a post on what's coming up in the full version of the game in the next few days.

👉 We're hard at work polishing, fixing, and adding more content. And yes, the big question - our launch date - is coming soon. Stay tuned. 😉

[h3]Please join our Discord to take part in contests and win skins and game keys![/h3]

[h3]
Thank you again for being on this journey with us. The best is yet to come! And as always - WISHLIST US![/h3]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3265230/Cursed_Companions/

We made some minor updates to the demo. One of the bigger changes we made to the mechanics was to add a Rebirth Egg. Many asked for ways to revive dead companions. The Rebirth Egg is one idea we've had but didn't really want to implement as it may make things easier for players. But we shall see. we're looking forward to seeing how players make use of this in the game. If it is popular, more respawn mechanics will be implemented.

[h2]Key Updates: [/h2]
Update for 0.9.9 For Public Demo, Build ID: 19679335

Rebirth Egg: Respawns dead players when you say the magic spell. It will randomly choose a dead player to revive. Respawned players respawn at low health. Can be purchased in the Shop and in Gregory. Not available in Traitor Mode (for obvious reasons)


Proximity Chat QOL Updates: Proximity chat improved its re-connection detection to minimize dropouts when talking to friends.

Speech Recognition QOL Updates: The game will reinitialize the speech recognition functionality if it detects audio hardware changes on Windows or further errors thrown up by the system. This should minimize issues where the game cannot detect the words players are saying.

New Voice Calibration: To help players 'train' their speech, a short calibration page at the start let's players change their microphone setups and try the speech recognition before they start playing the game.


High Latency Warning: If your ping is high, the game will show a tiny warning message for a short while. We're working on optimizing the game so network issues like de-syncing are reduced.



[h2]Known Bugs[/h2]

• Traitor Mode: If you revive a late joiner via the Dark Shrine, player has no role assigned in the game
  
• Late joiners - if they join a game midway - they are unable to hear other dead players (in spectate mode)
  
• Players can sometimes move when the portal open / close scene plays
  

[h2]Coming up...[/h2]
We have big news coming up concerning the road ahead. We've been spending this time reading your feedback and watching your streams and furiously working on adding the content for the Early Access launch. Stay tuned.


In the meantime, we've got a SPEEDRUN competition going on in our Discord - https://discord.gg/cursedcompanions - do drop by! We have plans to grow the community, and reward them with contests, free skins and best of all - game keys!

And as always WISHLIST!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3265230/Cursed_Companions/

Our Cursed Companions community has grown significantly since our last update, and we've got so much feedback and love and encouragement from them all. From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you.❤️ We're trying our best and working tirelessly to make improvements.

After hearing from you and watching streamer feeds, we found some of the pain points, fixed some bugs, made some improvements and tweaks to the game.

Our team is small and we're trying to cover as much ground as we can, but we have to be strategic and work on those changes that can significantly improve the gameplay experience, so do forgive us if there are still bugs and things that still irk you. If there's something that can be improved, please try to reach out to us via Discord before you leave a bad review on Steam. 🙏

Since the last demo update, we spent the month and a half cooking. There have been plenty of changes and improvements. So we've put them down here. If you're too busy to read them, just see the TLDR bit. Don't forget to scroll to the end to see our roadmap for the next update.

[h2]⭐Main Highlights (TL;DR)⭐ [/h2]
Update for 0.9.7 For Public Demo, Build ID: 19382021

• New hotkey system: (1) Dungeon Codex (2) Spell Journal (3) Spell Torch (4) Healing Wand (5) Talking Skull.
  
  
• New Emote Wheel UI: Emotes & dances relocated to [Q] key or Middle‑mouse button
  
• New Talking animation now moves head accessories - you can see who’s yapping
  
• Traitor Mode enhanced - 3 new options + Misty Forest map: In response to feedback, there are now options to lock players in place in the voting hall, change win conditions and disable curse words in the voting hall
  
• Twitch Integration: Totems spawn in dungeons - Chat votes on outcomes
  
• New Graphics settings: Lower spec devices can play our game now. (We ran on a Intel N100 and hit 25-40fps on Low settings, 960px x 540px, blurry but playable🙂)
  
• Dungeon lighting made brighter
  
• Mouse sensitivity settings added and Invert Mouse option while Spectating
  
• Preloading assets on Game startup to reduce wait times on joining game sessions
  

[h2]🧩User Experience Improvements[/h2]

• Hotkey system makes key items easier to access. You still need to scroll to get to other items or treasure
  
• You can now move while Spell Journal or Dungeon Codex is open
  
• Dungeon opening/closing now requires confirmation popup
  
• Guidebook auto-hides at start; new players see a one-time instruction page
  
• Boomer Mine → now Boomer Bomb (appearance changed, same function): Players thought it functioned like a landmine and avoided going near it. So we changed the appearance and name.
  
• Whispering Grimoire → now Loudmouth (appearance changed, same function): Players thought it was a spell book so they did not realise that the creature sounds were coming out of the object
  
• Lobby codes hidden by default
  
• Settings menu now accessible in the main lobby
  
• Curses and local notification fonts increased for readability
  
• UI visuals streamlined and other tweaks
  

[h2]⚙️Settings[/h2]

• Emotes/Dances now on [Q] key or Middle‑mouse via the Emote Wheel UI
  
• Push-to-Talk does not trigger Curses and Curse Doors anymore (no more cheating!) but still can trigger Equipment and Monsters
  
• Spectator mode now has Invert Mouse option
  
• Adjustable Mouse Sensitivity
  
• Graphics Quality via XESS upscaling - this improves performance on older machines that can support XESS.
  
• Selectable Screen Resolution and Fullscreen/Windowed mode
  
• Auto-reconnect if voice chat drops - check here if you can't hear your teammates or vice versa.
  
• Controls (Keyboard) have been updated
  

[h2]🔪Traitor Mode Updates[/h2]

• Option to Disable Death and Treasure curses in Voting Hall to stop abuse
  
• Option to freeze players during voting (blocks sabotage with Sacrificial Knife or Boomer Bomb)
  
• Option to allow Companions to win if all Traitors are eliminated (one Companion must survive)
  
• Skip-vote majority now ends meeting immediately
  
• Bug preventing players from leaving Voting Hall fixed
  

[h2]📺 Twitch Integration[/h2]

• Dungeon Totems let Twitch Chat vote on outcomes (see this post - https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3265230/view/537731883551690602)
  
• Requires linking Twitch Creator account in-game
  
• Chat votes via “!number” shown on-screen
  
• If a non-Creator triggers a Totem, results are random
  
• With multiple creators, the first activator should get chat voting authority (we hope)
  
• Note: Behavior with shared chat across creators currently unknown

[h2]⚖️ Gameplay Balance[/h2]

• Spell words now rotate every 5 minutes (was 2)
  
• Curse Remover now clears one random curse only (it used to clear all curses)
  
• Trigger range reduced for Root Golem
  
• Meatgrinder damage slightly increased
  
• Healing Wand price raised to 450 Gold
  
• Sacrificial Knife damage reduced; reworded to clarify that maximum value capped at 3
  
• Watcher now applies Poison instead of high raw damage when you enter the green gas
  
• Greedy Goblets slow-down reduced to 30 seconds
  
• Gold value of Body Parts reduced by around 50%
  
• Removed less-responsive curse phrase triggers
  
• Slightly reduced spawn rates for Black Coins and Equipment
  
• New room variations for Dungeon Entrance
  
• Removed: Steam Bath, Teleportaloo, and Dungeon Teleport Circle from Traitor Mode
  
• Dark Shrine options reduced to three: respawn, treasure, or extra time (most players didn't use the other options)
  
• Player names visible from further away when you mouse over their characters
  

[h2]🐞Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed: stuck in Traitor Hall
  
• Resolved: unkillable Chatterboxes and Red Annes (due to network sync)
  
• Partially Fixed (might still occur) : inconsistent dungeon generation across players (when players see a different dungeon from each other)
  
• Now possible to pick up items near dead Players
  
• Added spectate mode portal timer to display time left
  
• Late joiners (Players who join halfway when the game has started) can now spectate curse words properly
  
• Partially fixed (might still occur): falling through map in Dungeon
  
• Fixed various monster pathing/stuck issues
  
• Disabled arrow traps no longer deal damage
  
• Items from previous failed games no longer carry over
  
• Fixed: poison gas animation in Voting Hall (it wasn't visible the last time)
  
• Fixed: revived player in the Traitor mode will have the correct role (Companion or Traitor)
  
• Fixed a bug where players can play past Day 3 in the demo
  
• Fixed a bug where the arrow trap collider still kills players even though the trap is disabled
  

[h2]🧾Other Adjustments[/h2]

• Logo intro volume turned down
  
• Spike trap spikes lowered slightly
  
• Improved background image for Scroll of Praise
  
• Updated designs for Dungeon Codex and Spell Journal to improve legibility
  
• Edited tutorial text for clarity
  
• Multiple Foul Moths no longer overlap each other
  
• New prompt added when playing Traitor Mode first time
  
• Cleaned up the grammar and improved the text descriptions for the Equipment, Treasures, and notifications
  

[h2]🐞Known Bugs[/h2]

• Traitor Mode: If you revive a late joiner via the Dark Shrine, player has no role assigned in the game
  
• Late joiners - if they join a game midway - they are unable to hear other dead players (in spectate mode)
  
• Players can sometimes move when the portal open / close scene plays
  

[h2]🚗Roadmap[/h2]

• Coming Up in the next Demo: New languages - French, German, Spanish and Chinese (Simplified)
  
• Working towards Early Access
  
• Steam Achievements
  
• More Twitch integrations
  
• New maps, new monsters, new dungeons, new traps and new game modes (we're keeping this a secret)
  

Thank you for reading and getting all the way to the end, there's gotta be a special achievement for this! Our wishlists are growing and the viewership on Twitch has hit over 71,000 hours watched.

We've got a date in mind for our launch and it does depend if we can hit our goals for what we want the EA version to be. We'll update you as soon as possible. In the meantime, join our Discord (https://discord.com/invite/WpmWCmgZRz) to give feedback and as always WISHLIST US!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3265230/Cursed_Companions/

Hey everyone! Just a little update here. We've not been active much on our socials because we've been really busy with all the feedback that has been coming in due to the huge interest in our demo. Our community on Discord has grown so much and we're so happy to see the demo getting so many positive reviews! We've packed in a lot more features in the past few weeks and one of them we'd like to share is the Twitch Totem.



Building this was a big pain for reasons we shall not discuss here. :) Happily we have completed this and rolling this out in the next demo update so streamers can give it a go. We want to give a big thank you to Twitch streamer Karin Kishimei who so patiently helped us with the testing.



[h2]Let Chat Decide Your Fate[/h2]
If you're a Twitch streamer - this is a brand-new feature that lets your viewers mess with (or help!) your game in real-time.

Here's how it works:

• Streamers (partners and affliates) can now connect their Twitch account and enable audience participation in the settings.
  
• During the game, if you come across a mysterious totem in a dungeon room...
  
• Trigger the totem, and a poll will instantly appear on screen (see image below).
  
• Your viewers get to vote in the chat – the outcome could be a blessing, a curse - let them decide!
  
• Just don’t blame us if they choose a curse every time.
  

This is just one of the Twitch integrations we plan to release. We're looking at Drops and other Twitch integrations next. If you've got any suggestions, head to our Discord and let us know!

[h2]Big thank you to the community[/h2]
We've been watching tons of streams and taking notes. Thanks to everyone who's played the demo and shared their feedback - you've helped us fix bugs, spot issues, and improve the experience. ❤️We're getting more confident on our game as we go along.

We're incredibly encouraged by the support and excitement so far. The team is super motivated and working hard as we move toward launch. 💪

Keep streaming and keep the feedback coming!

And as always WISHLIST!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3265230/Cursed_Companions/

More updates soon!

Unbelievable. This is so unreal, the last week has been quite an event for our small team!

We're so happy to share that we’ve hit 10,000 wishlists! We're overjoyed to hit this wonderful milestone! Keep em coming! Don't stop! :)

We're also happy to share that our new demo reached a milestone of 20,000 downloads and 2,300 daily players! All these in the past week! We even maxed out our servers at one point (sorry to those who had trouble playing – we’ve upgraded!).

Our Discord community has grown and grown too! So much positive feedback and so many suggestions on improvements and we're furiously writing them down!

The response has been amazing and it’s given the whole team a huge energy boost. Big thanks to our community for the support - we’re hard at work fixing bugs and adding more content. Stay tuned, more updates coming soon!

And if you haven't already done so - WISHLIST!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3265230/Cursed_Companions/