Anathema News

[p]As we pass the 11th year of development, it's time to provide yet another update. [/p][p][/p][p][/p]

• [p]The game is 99% complete and only missing some final musical and text elements as outlined below. All game elements (levels, cutscenes, menus/systems, etc.) have been merged together into a single, fully-playable build. This is a significant milestone to have a fully playable beta.[/p]
• [p]Voiceover underwent a casting call and final recordings of NPC characters to complete the roster for cutscenes. All scenes are now fully voiced in English. There are no plans at this time to have cutscenes voiced in other languages.[/p]
• [p]Final voiceover selections have been completed and are now in the core game. Across all cutscenes, there were over 6 hours of voiceover that required review and editing for final-use composites. This was a staggering undertaking from an editing perspective.[/p]
• [p]Sound effects have been added to cutscenes.[/p]
• [p]Hundreds of hours have been dedicated across in-house testing, polish, balancing, optimizing code, and addressing bugs.[/p]

[p][/p]

• [p]A handful of cutscenes are now ready for musical elements to be composed now that imagery, sound effects, systems and flow have been finalized.[/p]
• [p]Voiceover will soon undergo final mixing, mastering and effects processing such as reverb, etc. This should be a relatively simple effort and will simply overwrite current audio.[/p]
• [p]Tomes (5 hidden throughout each level) will need final writing and implementation. These further expand on the lore and world of Anathema. The system for these is already programmed and ready, and simply needs the final text to be inserted into the core game.[/p]
• [p]Journals (unlocked after completion of each level), similar to Tomes, need final writing and implementation. The system for these is already programmed and ready, and simply needs the final text to be inserted into the core game.[/p]
• [p]Once a build with all remaining audio/text elements is available, we can aggressively expand on bug-testing and further balancing efforts. There is no benefit in external testing at this phase as we want a complete build of all remaining to-be-completed elements to ensure true and complete testing notes.[/p]
• [p]A marketing strategy will need developed leading up to release. This will include an updated demo to replace the previously deactivated 2017 demo. We have no date to announce for a new demo at this time, but rest assured that will in advance of release as part of a marketing strategy.[/p]
• [p]Discuss the potential of console ports with publishers. This won't necessarily slow down the PC/Steam release and most likely will occur after initial release on PC/Steam.[/p]

[p]We are not prepared to announce a release date at this time. We've long maintained the stance we refuse to give a release date we don't feel confident we can meet and that remains true. That said, with the game 99% complete, we're closer than ever and no one wants this game finished and out in the wild more than us, but there is still more work to do.[/p][p]With life events and general day-job obligations becoming increasingly more complex and demanding in recent years, along with the expected burn out of an 11 year development cycle, development unfortunately was slowed significantly. It may be a crawl, but we're almost to the finish line.[/p][p][/p]

Hello, everyone!

We wanted to post an update here regarding the current development status and deactivation of the demo that was previously available.

For those of you that haven't followed the project, we announced Anathema in 2015 when indie games wishing to release on Steam required a community approval known as Steam Greenlight. During that time, the game was far from ready but we wanted community feedback if there was any interest in the game concept before we pushed forward into a lengthy development cycle. Now, the process of listing a game on Steam is much more straight-forward and does not require a community approval cycle to be listed on Steam.

In 2017, we released an early pre-alpha demo of the game in its state at that time, but still very far from completion and release. We continued to work on this project for years in our free time outside of family, friends and day-to-day life obligations. Admittedly, it has been a very slow development cycle when trying to find time outside of obligations to work on the game. In summer and fall 2024, two of our team members had health concerns that forced development to come to a complete halt. The good news is testing and health has now turned out to be fine and development can resume for the final stretch.

Now, in 2025 as we near the development finish line, a few things have become abundantly clear regarding the 2017 demo:

1. It is no longer remotely close to the representation of Anathema in its current state. Significant leaps in development have been made in generally every aspect of the game.
   
2. Since the 2017 demo's release, the Steam Deck has been released which the 2017 demo is incompatible with due to legacy FMV cut scene methods that cause termination of the demo. Cut scenes have been completely remade from scratch entirely in-engine to ensure 100% compatibility with Steam Deck without reliance of codecs. The FMV cut scenes also were hit or miss even on some Windows machines, so this was a high priority to fix in the long term. A demo that doesn't run on a very popular piece of hardware is not desirable.

In its current state, the game is somewhere around 90% completely, approximately. The gameplay segment itself is playable entirely front-to-back and cut scenes are the current focus on final voice over selections and musical scoring. Once the cut scenes are fully complete and some gameplay musical tracks brought up to par with more recent instrumental quality, they can be merged together for a complete experience with some final coats of polish (which has been heavily applied as development progressed the last couple years.) From there, it's off to external bug-testing, promotional campaigns and eventually (and finally) release.

We will be releasing an updated trailer, screenshots and demo on the store page in the future that better represents what the final product will be as we near release to tie into our promotional campaigns, but felt it necessary to deactivate the demo that is almost 8 years old (wow). Understandably, this may disappoint some, but first impressions are very important and we want players to see Anathema in its best form possible which has evolved by leaps and bounds since our initial presentation for Greenlight approval and demo release. We hope you understand and look forward to final version as much as we look forward to getting it into your hands!

As we gather to bid farewell to 2023, this seemed like a great (and long overdue) opportunity to provide an update on Anathema's development. Overall, 2023 was subjected to multiple setbacks and delays due to somber personal life-events that took precedence and attention away from Anathema, but we managed to exit the year nonetheless with some major milestones. Please read below for further details!

• All in-game audio has been completely remastered. This allows for more headroom in the digital audio spectrum and should produce far less "clipping" audio and artifacts that was present in the 2017 demo.
  
• The cover artwork is currently being drawn by our good friend Craig Daversa (his game can be found here). We can't wait to unveil it when it's ready; the work-in-progress updates we've seen have been fantastic.
  
• The polish phase has commenced. Below are select comparison screenshots from the 2017 demo to the 2023 pre-release build. Note that these are all still very much a work-in-progress and the animated version's resolution and color count have been lowered due to the service used to make the animated images.

• All in-game cutscene artwork renders have been completed and are now functional in-engine. This doesn't include the game's ending, which will begin production in 2024 after we reconvene to plan storyboards.
  
• The number of images in cutscenes completed total to a whopping 593 panels that took approximately 100 hours just to render the imagery.
  
• There are 28 cutscenes that span a 70 page script.
  
• Voiceover lines were recorded in 2017, but will have some additional voiceover recordings for minor NPC characters.
  
• Music, sound effects and voiceover lines are next to be added to cutscenes. The voiceover lines need final selection of best takes for each character, music will need to be scored for select scenes and sound effects where applicable.
  
• Below are some screenshot examples taken from cutscenes at various points throughout the game.
  Note that all dialog text has been censored to prevent any potential spoilers of the story.

Hello!

We have received a few emails asking about the development status of Anathema and thought it would be a good time to give an update on where we are currently at.



We're very pleased to say we are extremely close to finishing the game! Since the last update from October 2020, development slowed significantly due to working around day jobs and personal lives but we've made some decent progress along the way still, albeit not at the rate we were making until May 2021. Things are ramping up heavily again now that we're in the final stretch! Here's what has been completed in that timeframe:

• Steam Deck compatibility! Early testing with the newly released Steam Deck is fantastic and runs great using Proton Experimental. Further testing is needed as the Steam Deck is still new, but so far it is working fantastically.
  
• 11 bosses have been added. All that remains in this category is the final boss!
  
• The cutscene system has been entirely revamped and is moving away from FMVs entirely. The intro and ending will maintain a similar style of direction that was utilized in the demo but will be built entirely in-game to ensure 100% compatibility across all player machines. Cutscenes between levels will be more akin to Shantae. This will help us also ensure the Steam Deck compatibility is high and avoid prior codec issues demo users sometimes receive.
  
• The Inventory screen has been completely redesigned for a better flow and user experience.
  
• Controller compatibility has been greatly extended. The game is now natively compatible with Xbox 360, One, and Series S/X controllers, and PS4 and PS5 controllers. The Nintendo Switch Pro Controller is also compatible using Steam's built-in Nintendo controller support. Players can select their preferred icon set for their preferred controller.
  
• The Level Select/Map screen is completed and fully functional.
  
• The save system is now fully functional. On this particular note, how many save slots would you suggest be available?
  
• Localization code has been created to support future localizations. Currently, we only have plans for English, but based on feedback and wishlists we may add other localizations in the future.
  
• The tutorial area has completely replaced the demo's tutorial video and is now a fully interactive segment. Brief and to the point.
  

We are currently working on a horse chase segment of the game that hopefully, players will enjoy. This segment is approximately 85% complete and just needs some further level design revisions and additions. From there, it's a matter of completing the remaining cutscenes, the final boss, tightening up enemy AI, replayability rewards and placement, and some of the remaining music for the soundtrack.

We do have plans to issue a demo update in the future leading up to the release. The majority of work necessary is completed for that but does have a few items that need to be addressed before we can push that out for play.

While we're not quite to the point to feel confident in announcing a release date just yet, know that we're much, much closer to knowing when we can confidently set a date. Once everything is together we still have to run a period of beta testing and also marketing as we move into the final stretch!

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