Estranged: The Departure News

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

There have been reports of users impersonating me on Steam and Discord, which sometimes involves a phishing attack (a fake Steam support thread directing users to contact "Alan Edwardes Official" on Discord).

This is not me - here's some tips for spotting a scammer:

• I will not communicate with you via Direct Messages on any platform
• I am alanedwardes (previously Alan Edwardes#3608) on Discord, and only communicate via discord.gg/estranged and the Steam forums for the Estranged games
  
• If you are added by a Discord profile with my name, it is an impersonator, and the account should be reported to Discord Trust and Safety via https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
• If you are added by a Steam profile with my name, it is an impersonator, and the account should be reported to Steam Support via https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4D07-D139-587C-2080
• I do not work for Valve (Steam), and will never ask for account passwords, or money (I will not send a direct message to you in the first place)
  

Here's a short message from Alan Edwardes (Liam Jones ???), explaining the situation:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Stay safe!

Alan

An update with cheats and translation updates is now available for Windows, macOS and Linux!

A player screenshot from Discord user Badbadalex1#5096

New Cheats

The following new cheats (requested on the forums) are available to spawn Arque guards with, equipped with various weapons:

• spawn guard - Pistol
  
• spawn guard rifle - Assault rifle
  
• spawn guard shotgun - Shotgun (AI don't use this, just one scripted scene)
  
• spawn guard rat - Rat Tracing technology
  
• spawn guard laser - Assault rifle with high-powered laser

Language Updates

The following languages have also received updates from the translation community:

• Czech
  
• German
  
• Persian
  
• Finnish
  
• Portuguese
  
• Slovak
  
• Turkish
  
• Vietnamese

I'm always around on the forums, or on discord.gg/estranged if you'd like to report bugs, or provide feedback.

Thank you for playing Estranged!

Alan

I'm going to pretend it's already June as I released a late may update - an update is now live on Steam for Windows, macOS and Linux, including an improved intro sequence and fixes!

New Wake Sequence



I recently published a blog post about creating motion-captured camera sequences using my phone, and I have now used this technique with the "wake" sequence in the Prelude (at the very start of Chapter 1).

This technique isn't perfect, but allows you to simulate more subtle and "human" movements and I'll be using it with future camera animations of this kind.

Weapon Firing Fix



I want to thank everyone that helped report this bug and provided me with the information to track it down - especially on the forums.

Previously, when picking up a new weapon, if you went back to your old weapon and tried to use it again, you'd see the effects of it firing without it actually firing. This bug only affected a small percentage of players since swapping back to your previous weapon is quite a rare thing to do (because typically your next weapon is an upgrade).

I apologise for not catching and fixing this bug sooner - since I'm wearing multiple hats (including QA) it's easy for me to get tunnel vision with regards to what I'm testing.

The bug is fixed, and we can now rest easy knowing we can defend ourselves against Sokol-Glockner's skilled marksmen.

👀

As ever, I'm around on discord.gg/estranged, and post more frequent development updates there if you want to keep up with Estranged (check out the #dev-screenshots channel).

Thanks for playing Estranged!
Alan

There's a new Steam beta branch called gi-tech-demo, which is a version of Estranged: The Departure with only some of the levels included to showcase dynamic global illumination in Unreal Engine 5.



The Prelude level (Chapter 1 from the menu) has been adapted to allow you to control the position of the sun in the sky with the keyboard, and allow you to toggle it on and off.



All lighting in this beta is calculated in real-time, while the live version of Estranged: The Departure uses pre-computed lighting.



The live version of Estranged: The Departure won't change to use this technique, this is purely a tech demo to showcase the latest global illumination technology in Unreal Engine 5, which released into Early Access on May 26th.



To check out the tech demo, pick the gi-tech-demo branch from the "Betas" tab on the "Properties" menu for Estranged: The Departure. You need Windows, and a graphics card which supports DirectX 11 and above. This branch will not be kept updated, and does not focus on stability/performance.



To get updates like these and screenshots from development, join Discord: https://discord.gg/estranged

Thank you for playing Estranged!
Alan