Estranged: The Departure News

[p]Update 1.5.51 is now available for Estranged: The Departure, which provides support for the "Auto HDR" feature of Windows 11, and other minor fixes.[/p][p][/p][h3]Auto HDR Update[/h3][p]Here's a preview using YouTube's HDR support (you will need a browser and display with HDR support to see the expanded color range and brightness).[/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]HDR could be supported natively in the future, but for now this approach does provide good HDR results without the need to re-work assets, levels and post-processing.[/p][p][/p][h3]Enabling Auto HDR[/h3][p]If you have an HDR display, auto HDR can be enabled in the Windows 11 "Graphics settings" menu:[/p][p][/p][p]Windows 11 requires that the game is in exclusive fullscreen mode to enable Auto HDR. Enable exclusive fullscreen via the in-game Options -> Screen menu:[/p][p][/p][p]The HDR intensity can be controlled via game bar, with the Windows key + G, then heading to "Settings", "More settings", and "Gaming features" menu:[/p][p][/p][p]For the technical details as to why this feature didn't work before: Estranged: The Departure was previously using an HDR back-buffer, but only rendering into the SDR color range.[/p][p]This wasn't a problem for the GPU, but it did make Windows 11 believe The Departure was already rendering in HDR. Estranged: The Departure now runs with an SDR back-buffer, which enables Windows to detect that it can use Auto HDR.[/p][p][/p][h3]Other Changes[/h3][p]Other changes in this update:[/p]

1. [p]Added the flyspeed cheat, which controls the noclip speed (used in conjunction with a gamepad to capture the video at the top of this post)[/p]
2. [p]Improvements to the soundscape in Wentworth, including adding a soundscape to cover the gate control area (a bug caused the existing outdoor soundscape to end without looping - something you notice if you spend a while there capturing video 👀)[/p]
3. [p]Steam branding has been tweaked the better reflect the title of the game, since while the older cave branding was quite visually striking, it didn't really reflect what the game was about.[/p]

[p][/p][p]Thank you for playing Estranged![/p][p]Alan[/p]

A minor patch update is now available for Estranged: The Departure on Windows and Linux. Changes in this build:

• Tweaks to the Extras menu to link to the Official Estranged Wiki

Happy 2025, and thank you for playing Estranged!

A version update for The Departure is now live on Steam for Windows 32-bit, Windows 64-bit and Linux (version 1.5.50), including advanced graphics options, a Ukrainian translation, and quality of life fixes.

[h3]Advanced Graphics Options[/h3]

Estranged now offers the following Advanced Graphics options under Options > Graphics > Advanced:

• Enable Highest Model Detail - Turn off distance-based level of detail transitions for models
  
• Enable Highest Shadow Detail - Don't scale dynamic shadow quality with distance
  
• Enable Super Sampling - Render at 2x resolution
  

These options are designed to future-proof the game for future hardware (and as a result will not perform well on the current recommended hardware specifications).


[h3]Other Quality of Life Changes[/h3]

Several quality of life changes are now available, including:

• Supply crate tweaks so that if no resources are needed, nothing is spawned - see thread
• Save/load fixes in the prelude & epilogue sections
  
• Ukrainian translations contributed by the community
  

[h3]Official Estranged Wiki[/h3]

There is now an official Estranged wiki available at wiki.iamestranged.com which contains all lore to date sourced from in-game materials (with some bonus extra information). Some notable pages to get started with:

• Arque Corporation is a multi-national corporation responsible for Deep Sea Operations, Logistics and Chemical Research according to its website, with significant presence on the Island in the form of multiple research facilities.
• The Fisherman is the main protagonist and playable character in the Estranged game series.
• Infected are enemies in Estranged: Act I and Estranged: The Departure. They are humans, presumed to be previous inhabitants of the Island.

One of the motivations for compiling such a wiki was to help the development of Arctic Cold, since as you can tell by the size of the wiki there is now a lot to the Estranged universe to keep track of.



The original idea and inspiration for a wiki came from the existing Fandom Wiki (I based the structure of the official wiki on this one). The official wiki is not open to contribution, but if you see something that is missing or not quite right, please let me know and I'll fix it.

--

Finally, if you're interested in a peek behind the scenes of the in-game update news feed The Departure had while it was in development, I recently posted a writeup: Update News Presentation Markup for Games.

That's it for now - I hope you enjoy this update, and find the wiki interesting!
Alan

A patch version update for The Departure is now live on Steam for Windows 32-bit, Windows 64-bit and Linux (version 1.5.49), including localization updates contributed by the community for the following languages:

1. French
   
2. Latvian
   
3. Russian
   
4. Chinese (Simplified)
   

Thank you to the translators who contributed updates to the translation repository, and thank you for playing Estranged!

Alan

--

Further Updates

• Title of this news post changed to be consistent with prior news posts
  
• Follow-up update pushed live containing the updated localization caches
  
• Clarified that the update is for Windows and Linux - macOS remains on version 1.5.47 due to challenges related to Apple's notarization requirements
  

10 years ago today, Estranged: Act I was released. Since then, there have been well over a million unique players, with nearly 7k reviews and the title sits with a Steam rating of 93%.

"Natural Reserve" by Er0de from the Act I Steam Community

Thank you to everyone that supported the project by translating, submitting feedback, and of course playing the game. The biggest reward for a game developer is seeing people have fun with something you’ve built.

Humble Beginnings

For those that may not know the background, Estranged started as a map for Half-Life: 2 known as Splooshe (available on the Act I workshop), inspired by some of the early Half-Life: 2 screenshots. From there, the map and concept continued to evolve into a mod, and then into a standalone game (and got a better name!).



Untitled screenshot by siplaki from the Act I Steam Community

The Departure

After the release of Act I, Act II was born as a background project. It entered Steam Early Access in 2017 and released in 2020 as Estranged: The Departure.

"Красивое место 🧡" (en: Beautiful place) by Extragamer from the The Departure Steam Community

A year later The Departure released on Nintendo Switch (US, Europe) which introduced brand new audiences to the series. The title will celebrate its own 5-year anniversary later this year!

Next Instalment

The next instalment to follow will be Estranged: Arctic Cold, which has been in development in the background since 2020. This is a direct continuation of where The Departure ended, with enough context to also be played standalone.

Previously unseen development screenshots from Estranged: Arctic Cold

A personal note: I’m at the stage now where I’d really like to get people playing Arctic Cold to shape the future of the game. It’s nice to develop in a vacuum without the pressure of expectations, however it’s not rewarding; no-one is playing what you’re putting together. The plan is to follow with an Early Access release of Arctic Cold later this year, and continue to develop it "in the open" as with The Departure.

If you'd like to stay in touch, there is a Discord server at discord.gg/estranged

Thank you for playing and following the Estranged series!
Alan

Cross posted on the Estranged: Act I Steam Community