Look Outside News

[h2]Hello everyone, here is a new round of fixes and updates![/h2]

There is a new public beta branch available! Untested builds will go there before going live. I may put balance tweaks, fixes and content additions there early for testing, but be careful, the beta will be less stable!
A larger update will come in about a month, and I will be using the beta branch for early testing during that time. If you find a bug, always mention your build number on the title screen in your report!
For instructions on opting in to the beta branch, scroll to the bottom of these patch notes.

Additions:

• Added a popular controller/key configuration plugin to help with control setups.
  
• Fixed the weird name input screen not having an obvious/easily accessible Delete button
  
• Added Hungry Steve.
  

Balance Tweaks:

Dan:

• Restored Dan's scan ability, now it is working as intended, and gives more information about monsters. The information given depends on the number of viewers Dan has, and the relative level of the target vs the group level.
• Boosted Dan's aggressive abilities.

Joel:

• Slightly reduced the damage and increased the cost of Roundsaw Jaw.
• Slightly reduced the damage and increased the cost of Teeth Cannon.

Hellen:

• Increased the STM cost of Massacre.
• Fallow Will's effects on Hellen were simplified and reduced. It now only prevents the use of Massacre, reduces attack and critical hit rate, it no longer affects your ability to heal her or increase her defences.
• Salt The Earth now halves Hellen's health instead of reducing it to 10%.

Enemies:

• Boosted Stargazer to be a bit more dangerous, and more resilient.
  
• Reduced the frequency of Pompom's freezing attacks and slightly reduced damage, but increased its health.
  

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed that many attacks erroneously ignored status effect resistances!
  
• Fixed issues with damage regeneration being "resisted"
  
• Fixed issue with ammo depletion when using multi-hit attacks.
  
• Fixed steam overlay artefacts that appear outside the play area.
  
• Fixed Joel's teddy bear item icon.
  
• Fixed issue with fungus infection lingering after beating the spore queen.
  
• Fixed issue where you could farm Leigh's encounter for infinite XP
  
• Fixed that many enemies' extra attacks were not affected by being stunned/etc.
  
• Disabled the use of duct tape in combat. It caused weird issues! And it's also not very useful since it can't repair equipped items anyway.
  
• Fixed issue with some two-handed ranged weapons being equipable
  
• Fixed exploit where cursed ring would revive dead characters.
  
• Fixed issue where you didn't get the full Philippe denial sequence if you had him betray you during the spore queen fight and you kept on believing in him.

• Several people pointed out an inconsistency with shutterbugs' feet on the battle sprite, so I made an adjustment.
  

Opting in to the beta branch:

1. Find Look Outside in your steam game list
   
2. Right click on it and select properties
   
3. In the properties window select the "Betas" tab
   
4. Select from the drop down menu "public_beta_branch - Public beta branch for balance testing, hotfixes"
   

[h2]Hello everyone, here is a big one for you horror lovers![/h2]

This update comes with many adjustments, balancing and new features to various party members.
The goal here is to balance them out - weaken the really overpowered stuff and strengthen the weaker characters, make them more interesting wherever we can. We want to have the roommates on a more even footing before we tweak the game to be overall harder in its second half. There are also some preliminary balance changes on some late game enemies, but nothing too complicated yet.


Warning, there are spoilers for secrets in the update notes!

New Content:

• Ernest now has a little friend with him. (this is in preparation for the next, bigger Ernest-related update.
• Added a new friend next door. I didnt realize until now that I forgot to put this guy in. whooooops.
• The funny fungus man makes it out alive now. You need to meet him before you kill the spore queen.
• New monster shows up in the taxidermy apartments' depths. Another guy who existed before but I forgot I didn't put in anywhere!

Balance Changes/Tweaks:

• Expanded the system that makes weapons less likely to break early: some weapons (especially rare or unique weapons, treasures from beating some bosses etc) now have a number of "safe hits" that make them very unlikely to break. (divides break chance by 10)
  
• Durability roll is now skipped entirely if break chance is too low. The threshold for this depends on difficulty level.
  
• Reduced the amount of money you need to spend at Eugenes' for him to expand his inventory.
  
• Increased the starting level of roomates Ernest, Morton, Hellen and Roaches
• Changed slingshots to be one-handed missile weapons.
  
• Increased max HP of Stretchface
  
• Increased max HP of Garbage worm
  
• Did some preliminary re-balancing to many mid to late game enemies and bosses. More to come in the next patch.
  
• Made the boiler beast much more dangerous.
  
• Enabled selling items with a few more traders.
  
• Made enemies in the taxidermy apartment much more dangerous.
  

Misc Tweaks:

• Slowed down the speed of the battle text log.
  
• Added warning to low level characters when entering the plant-infested apt
  
• Added warning when leaving behind earth disc after obtaining mars disc
  
• Toned down the bright flash when a battle encounter begins.
  

Balance Tweaks to roommates: Changes to Joel

• Teething ability no longer goes away when taking damage.
• Joel's skills have been generally improved to deal more damage, hopefully making him more useful in the late game.
• Joel's Teeth Armor skill has been changed to Biting Armor - it makes him counterattack with Bite.

Changes to Leigh

• Made her Grinning Beast ability less dangerous to use, she is now out of control for only one turn instead of several turns.
• Once she is the Grinning Beast, she has access to a few monster-only abilities. This is not new, but the monster-only abilities were made easier to find in the battle menu; they were pushed down before so many people missed them.
• Leigh had various balance changes to her monster skills.
• When she becomes the grinning beast, she now properly loses access to her normal skills and ranged weapons.
• Leigh now should properly untransform at the end of battle.

changes to Dan

• Dan no longer resets his viewers at the end of battle, instead his viewers go down every hour. Rebalanced Dans skills for this. They may require further balancing.
• Dan's streaming skills have been streamlined, there were too many.
• Reduced Dan's access to elemental damage. His angry/offensive skills now often inflict negative statuses on himself.

Changes to Hellen

• Massacre skill costs more STM, and puts her in a new state, Fallow Will, that disables Massacre for the rest of the day until resting, lowers her attack , makes it very difficult to heal her, but also lowers her damage taken.
• Can remove Fallow Will early using the skill Salt The Earth, at the cost of 90% of her remaining HP
• When in Fallow Will mode, have access to 3 new skills that use up her remaining HP to either do more damage, give her HP to an ally, or turn her HP into Stamina.
• Fixed issue with Hellen's abilities being disabled on two-handed weapons.
  
• Hellen now puts back her mask at the end of battle.

Changes to Rat baby

• Now gains the skill Copy Dad. This makes the rat copy Sam's latest action at the end of the turn, including using items or special skills Sam has learned. The rat baby can also still perform actions on the same turn as they copy Sam.
• More stuff is coming for the rat baby later.

Changes to Roaches

• Roach swarm effect is now in 3 tiers, like bleeding, and each tier drains enemy HP and heals the Roaches
• Roaches now gain some new abilities that deal more damage to targets afflicted with roach swarm
• Final Roaches ability is a group heal that is stronger the more roach swarms are in effect in the battle

Changes to Ernest

• Ernest has tamed a rat from floor 1, Colonel Squeakums, who randomly comes to assist in battle.
• Ernest can use cheese wedges to make his rat more aggressive for 4 turns.
• Ernest used to be a roadie and plays music. He has some songs he can play that give passive buffs to the party.
• More stuff is coming for Ernest in the next patch!

Asset Updates:

• Tweaked Benjamins' on-field sprite to be more obvious at a glance.
  
• Tweaked the dead sprites of Toothlings, Confusion, Stretchface
  
• Added dead sprite for Centifingers
  
• Added improved version of Centifingers monster sprite (reworked by Stephen Challener)
  

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed the masked shadow leaving behind a gift with an invalid image.
  
• Fixed multiple issues with true Frederics' item reward.
  
• Fixed issue with the flicker transition when switching between sprites.
  
• Fixed toxic fred's splitting form being skippable if you do enough damage on the first turn of battle.
  
• Fixed Joel devouring some monsters that are not meant to be devoured.
  
• Fixed the rat baby changing its sprite to some random monsters when it falls asleep.
  
• Fixed the boiler beast being repeatedly fightable on the first screen you encounter it.
  
• Fixed the flamethrower and acid sprayer not properly calculating their damage.
  
• Fixed many locations not having a proper encounter background set up, which could lead to strange glitches, like the title screen appearing as an encounter backdrop.
  
• Fixed that when roaches eat food youve left out, it makes your next cooked food rot immediately.
• Fixed monsters at the ground floor bus crash appearing into the wall before they pop out of the bus wreckage.
  
• Fixed the hand monster corpses appearing in multiple rooms when dead or when flashing after a player escape.
  
• Fixed that Mortons quick heal abilities could be used out of combat without using up items.
  
• Removed redundant background sound effect error messages.
  
• Fixed final score count at the end of the game being glitched on normal mode.
  
• Prevented player from accessing menu during endings and credits.
  
• Put back the dying exalted four boss animation to the ending scene.
  
• Fixed that the Xin-Amon ending had a white background applied to it.
  
• Fixed issue where sometimes your party members would appear during an ending
  
• Losing party members or kicking them out now retrieves their equipment before they leave.
  
• Some party members that leave permanently could be re-recruited before when that was not intended.
  
• Fixed a bug where you would attack Emmanuel if you chose to ignore him at your first encounter.
  
• Fixed an issue where you could not intentionally attack Emmanuel using the (attack!) option.
  
• Fixed an issue where you could not unlock the Mycelihumor achievement if you killed the laughing mold, and it didn't look dead after being slain.
  
• Fixed issue where dying and reviving regrew the players lost arm. (Thanks to Tim Challener!)
  
• Increased pixel sharpness and forced clean scaling ratio (Thanks to Tim Challener!)
  
• Fixed an issue where you could skip over the later phases of The Face Stealer if you did enough damage to its first form.
  
• Fixed an issue where you could skip over the later phases of Shutterbug if you did enough damage to his first form.
  
• Fixed issue where the basement guitar player would keep playing if you attack him, and would not die properly if killed.
  
• Fixed an issue where you could partially walk into the hellride before it wakes up.
  
• Moved the hellride away from the room transition if you squeezed past it and are attempting to go back without fighting it.
  
• Added door opening sounds to a few ground floor doors where it was missing.
  
• Tweaked rat baby crib collision.
  
• Fixed centifingers getting stuck in a wall if you run through the store too quickly on your first time through
  
• Fixed collisions on a cabinet in the landlords apartment.
  
• Fixed a dialogue box where Emmanuel's name is shown too early.
  
• Fixed Mutt's Fish and Chips dialogue incorrectly stating the price of special offer items go up by 50% at every purchase (the increase is 25%)
  
• Fixed some issues with certain enemies not being targetable with the mouse in combat.
  
• Fixed many monsters' death sprites being incorrect initially when they die.
  
• Fixed the stargazers' sounds continuing to play after its death.
  
• Fixed coffee distributor machine's layering on the ground floor.
  
• Fixed the stargazers' corpse moving between rooms after death.
  
• Fixed taxidermy apartment having its door open from one side and closed from the other
  
• Fixed not being able to attack Beryl
  
• Fixed Leigh's attacks being disabled if transformed into the grinning beast while having a weapon equipped that changes the attack skill (like the rat tail whip)
  
• Fixed Scared Freds' sprite is flipped after he dies.
  
• Fixed error messages appearing when background sounds overlap.
  
• Fixed the shrunken head not being removed from your inventory after being used.
  

[h2]Hello everyone who still didn't look outside! [/h2]

Please note that these patches always have some spoilers. I added spoiler tags to minimize this where I can. Tread carefully... some stones are better left unturned.

[h3]Here is a new list of all the changes and bugfixes:[/h3]

Additions/ Level Changes:

• Floor 1 now has more landmarks to help with navigation and make it easier to find some locations.
  
• Jeanne now tells the player she has been getting worse on entry if you return to her after reaching Floor 1.
  
• Spore Queen dialogue adjusted to clarify which options lead to certain outcomes.
  
• Moved a character further south in the little basement monster camp and added some mushroom items near the south door to help people notice it.
  
• Added attack animations to the perfect ritual ending final boss to improve its spectacle a bit.
  
• Removed the duplicate, early double-barrelled shotgun in room 12, replaced with more ammo and a grenade.
  
• Added descriptions to the frederic paintings in the living room.
  

Balance Tweaks:

• Reduced the damage of the old rifle, hunting shotgun and shotgun.
  
• Tweaked the hunting shotgun to work more similarly to the double-barrel shotgun, with attacks that hit all enemies and a point-blank shot that hits a single enemy. It has lower damage but more ammo capacity and a 3-shot multi attack.
  
• Reduced the amount of shotgun shells you can find on normal mode.
  
• Balanced the Furnace fight in the center of the flooded basement to be a more challenging battle.
  
• Fixed Fire Breath and Steam Hiss attacks from the Furnace doing very low damage
  
• Added a better reward for killing the Furnace.
  
• Fixed the perfect ritual final boss's ultimate attack not dealing damage properly.
  
• Increased the perfect ritual final boss's life amount, made it impossible for the final boss to die before battle fully begins.
  

Asset Updates:

• Basement tileset updated
  
• Bus Crash area background updated.
  
• Updated the assets of the landlords' attacker.
  
• Updated Jeannes' assets.
  
• Fixed that Claire did not change sprites properly on your exit out of the fungus area.
  
• Updated the portraits and images of your Landlord.
  
• Updated portraits of the characters hanging out at Mutt's Fish and Chips.
  

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed issue where HP-cost skills didn't properly deplete HP, and could still be used if did not have enough HP remaining.
  
• When a character permanently leaves your party, they now unequip all of their gear, except for cursed/locked items. (either when you kick them out or when they leave from a special event)
  
• Fixed the hockey stick not breaking properly.
  
• Made some skills unrecordable by Panopticon (because they caused crashes etc). If it could not record anything, it will use the ability White Noise instead.
  
• Fixed the Painful Stab attack obtained by playing Wizard's Hell dealing fractional damage (Thanks to Tim Challener!)
  
• Fixed background sounds carrying into encounters (Thanks to Tim Challener!)
  
• Fixed the electronic key sound in the underground parking always playing the car door opening sound even if you were too far to unlock the trunk.
  
• Fixed that enemy sprite changes were persistent between saves until the game was shut down. (Thanks to Tim Challener!)
  
• Fixed issue where fighting one of the secret spooky shadow bosses just as you move through a door sometimes caused the screen to go black.
  
• Fixed cockroaches preventing you from interacting with some objects back home.
  
• Prevented the masked shadow from blocking you in any room where it can spawn that only has one exit. It can no longer step in front of the exit door in those rooms.
  
• Fixed that if you removed the rat crown, you could still communicate with the rats. You can no longer speak to them after removing the crown, they become hostile again.
  
• Fixed issue where, if you bought cheese from the cheese hoarding rat, you didnt actually get the cheese wedges out of it.
  
• Fixed Seed Spit attack doing no damage. (used by plants in plant apt)
  
• Fixed Seed Multispit attack doing no damage. (used by plants in plant apt)
  
• Fixed Envious Glance attack doing no damage (used by the astronomers fusion final bosses, if Beryl is part of the beast.
  
• Fixed Emerald Ray attack doing no damage (used by the Exalted Four boss )
  
• Made the Green painting hint at green Fred's mechanic better.
  
• Fixed that attacking the main green Fred while you have the hat on puts you in a fight against an invincible version of the boss.
  
  
  
• Fixed T H E R A T H O L E
  
  
  

[h2]Hi everyone![/h2]

When I started this project last October, it was just a funny little side project for a game jam (shoutout to Hawkzombie for running it!), and I had no idea the original modest demo build would blow up so much. Now, six months later, with the help of many wonderful people, we have a full launch on Steam with very positive reviews! What a journey!

[h2]Thank you all for your support for this amazing launch![/h2]

That said, I am aware that some of you are experiencing certain issues with the game. I am doing my best to keep track of all your reports, and I'm grateful for all and any feedback you send my way.

Earlier this morning, I deployed the first patch to address some critical issues, and I'm currently working on another one.

I'm also aware that some of you are struggling with the difficulty in the first part of the game, while finding the later parts too easy.
Some early balance adjustments were made already. Some of the more obviously overpowered items were tweaked which should help with the too forgiving latter half of the game.
We want to be careful not to overtune things, or the early game could become too easy, and the late game could become too hard. We're looking for that nice goldilocks zone. We want to work on that and get it just right!

I'll be making further balance tweaks in upcoming updates to smooth the difficulty curve. After deploying the next bug-fixing update next week, this will be my main focus.

Thank you for your patience.

I already have some ideas on how this will go, but I'd appreciate any and all input you may have.
Do you have any specific balance feedback?

Do any moments in the game feel frustratingly difficult or mindlessly trivial? Do some characters, abilities or items feel way too powerful or completely useless? Are there any game locations that feel too harsh, or some where you feel like you are mostly just mashing buttons through without having to think at all? I want to hear about them all.

To leave feedback, please respond here with smaller bits or start a new thread in the Feedback subforum for more elaborate feedback. Please mention whether you played version 1.00 or 1.01 with your feedback.

[h3]Hello everyone!

To start, thank you all for the amazing feedback and love for the game, it is really appreciated!

And here is the list of all the fixes and changes:[/h3]

Bug Fixes

• Fixed sacrificing your right hand not working properly. was always sacrificing your left.
  
• Fixed two items in eugenes' shop being incorrectly setup
  
• Sprites missing - one early game enemy, the tumorhead, didnt leave a dead monster sprite when killed, and just stood there after death.
  
• Some mid-game enemies, ticks that are stuck on the heads of some large worm-things, had nothing showing you they were there. Added the ticks visually onto the worm things to attract the players attention to examine them.
  
• One early enemy, the lokjaw, had two of its battle frames wrong, one was still a sketch and the other, the close-up frame before it opens its mouth, was the far-away frame.
  
• Fixed an issue where, when you play a video game and then take a shower, you randomly have thoughts about playing that game again to finish it - those thoughts were too frequent and never stopped, like by the end of the game you think about every game you ever played every time you shower.
  
• Fixed an issue where some giant rats that are meant to block the entrance to a their hoard of cheese are walking around at random instead of standing to block your way.
  
• Fixed Vincent, an early game encounter, whose sprite looked like it was hovering above the ground.
  
• Fixed an issue where you could get stuck into the walls during the grinning beast chase
  
• Oh and of course, Fixed issue where the steam overlay doesnt work properly and trying to take a screenshot of the game with F12 brings up the console instead.
  
• Fixed an issue where you could not bring the baby rat into your party after it's grown big enough, even though the game yells you that you can
  
• Fixed Tickle the friendly tick's dialogue to not repeat its introduction every time you speak, and fixed its glowing effect to be red when you give blood to it.
  
• Fixed an issue where you lose your video game skills if you dont have a melee weapon equipped
  
• Fixed an issue where Sybil repeats herself when you save your game, repeating hints of things youve done a while ago.
  
• Fixed an issue where a door in Edwins apartment 31 would be locked sometimes when you come out of the bathroom, when it should no longer be locked.
  
• Added a full screen toggle to the options menu
  
• Added a quit game command in the title screen
  
• Removed a lock from one of the doors of the landlords apartment, on the final payment version of the dungeon.
  
• Fixed the coffee machine not appearing properly when bought.
  
• Fixed a bad warp just before the final area of the landlord dungeon
  
• Fixed the locked door in the basement that didnt allow for using the lockpick.
  
• Added an extra warning once you enter the stairwell if you havent saved yet since the start of the game, that you will lose all progress if you havent yet saved
  
• Fixed an issue where the old rifle couldnt be reloaded if it was completely out of ammo.
  
• Fixed an issue where you could lock yourself out of being able to defeat Toxic Frederic.
  
• Fixed an issue where running away from Frederic mid-fight can glitch the encounter at your return.
  

Balance tweaks

• Lowered the critical damage bonus from 3x to 1.8x
  
• Changed the urn of grandma's ashes to be a throwable item that can make every enemy go blind
  
• Nerfed the painters' palette to reduce the chance it causes status effects.
  
• Made the player unable to wield two handed weapons if they have a missing arm.
  
• Made it so that using the Optimum equip command that auto-equips all the strongest items in your inventory never equips any cursed items
  
• Patchwork club now breaks properly.
  
• Patchwork armor set Max HP boost has been halved
  
• "Penetrate" ability of piercing weapons no longer attacks multiple times.
  

In case you don't see a bug fixed that you reported, don't worry more bug fixes and updates are coming!