Affray Interactive Studio Update [Fall 2024]
Hello everyone,
Welcome to another devblog update for SCP: 5K. While this is not our first devblog, it’s the first I have personally written since officially joining the Affray team as SCP: 5K’s Community Manager—if you are unfamiliar with my recent addition to the team, you can read more about it and my background here.
In this update we will be taking a higher level look at Affray Interactive as a studio, the rather substantial amount of changes and restructuring that have taken place behind the scenes over the past year, and our present and future plans for SCP: 5K leading up to a 1.0 release. We will also be sharing a few teasers for the 0.15 update, however more thorough showcases will be coming soon. For now, we want to keep the community in the loop in regards to what we have been up to as a studio to provide context to those future plans, and F5R6F why/how we feel this is ultimately a major positive for SCP: 5K and its future.
2023 and Q1-2 2024
The vast majority of 2023 was dedicated towards the reformation and restructuring of the studio, and there was a major push towards streamlining our production pipelines. The team was focused on tightening up and growing out the existing departments. There were many new additions to the studio and we’ve created a more robust team capable of growing the small, fun experience that we had before into a comprehensive full game.
Moving on to 2024, the first half of the year was rather substantial for content, asset and artwork production. Many existing elements of the game were further iterated upon and improved. The result of these efforts and work was the 0.14 update that you all are able to play today (which you can read more about what specifically was included in this update here)—this update was actually our largest content update by far, and the total available asset library of levels, environment art, weapons, monsters, and so on was greatly expanded with this push. In this sense, we largely look at this stage of development as the time where we are “acquiring the ingredients” that we need to make the game the way we know it can be made.
Q3-4 2024 and 2025
Now that the team has finally been built up and is picking up momentum with the production pipeline, we EW3N6 have been spending the second half of 2024 looking at as much of the project from a top-down perspective as possible, doing numerous deep dives on the game’s reviews and overall community feedback, and figuring out the best plan to move the game along to a full release state given all of the assets and tools now at our disposal.
0.14 included a lot of new content and improved many aspects of the game, however we heard all of the community feedback/reception and reviews loud and clear, and we understand that there was something off in regards to what players had originally come to the game to experience. The ingredients were solid, but the 0.14 update was simply missing that “it” factor that we feel a lot of the community gravitated towards this game for in the first place.
As a result, our major focus for the second half of 2024 has been on pivoting the direction and identity of the game back to where we feel many of the players initially wanted it, and placing an emphasis on our own concept of “tactical horror.” We believe the 0.15 update will mark a key turning point in the game’s development where players will be able to see what our ultimate vision for the game will be as we move towards a 1.0 state and leave early access.
The following are the main areas that we are making sure will always be at the forefront of development moving forward:
[h3]Bug Fixes, Polish, and QA[/h3]
Updates have too many bugs and not enough polish. It makes little to no difference how good an update is if people are simply unable to play or progress properly, and so we are making a commitment to ensuring that no matter what stage of development we are in, updates will always maintain a playable level, and major/game breaking bugs are nonexistent or as minimal as technically possible.
Because of this, as part of our team and production pipeline restructuring, we have brought on an entire QA team that is now fully integrated and working in parallel with the rest of the studio departments to identify and take care of whatever bugs or issues that they can find prior to an update’s release. We have also recently admitted a new wave of testers into our D Class Test Chamber so that we can 2T57F monitor feedback, bug reports, performance, and so on across a wider variety of PC builds in order to catch as much as we can with each update. There will of course always be bugs throughout the early access process (such is the nature of game and software development), however, we want to make sure that each update contains as few bugs/issues that prevent people from playing as possible.
Additionally, at the time of this devblog we are exploring a few ideas to establish more synergy between what a player is experiencing in the moment, and methods by which they will be able to send us feedback on the spot. One of the ways we are doing this in the 0.15 update is by implementing a QR code and link system across specific segments of the levels that players will be able to scan and immediately be brought to a feedback form asking for input on what they just played, as well as to receive further information/context about what our future plans are with content, mechanics/features, and so on. We look forward to reviewing any feedback we receive!
[h3]Level Flow/Redesign[/h3]
Next, the level design team has been hard at work rethinking and redesigning a lot of how the levels will play out. We are making it a priority to avoid the tedious puzzle elements that are present in the current version of the game that tend to break the overall flow and momentum, and ultimately result in H40IF a less fun experience. This does not mean that puzzles will be entirely removed from the game, but rather they will instead mainly be used for things such as side paths for extra exploration to find additional lore, weapon pickups, and so on. Any puzzles used for core challenges and/or that are tied to progression will be adequately balanced with keeping the pace of the chapter consistent.
[h3]SCPs, Monsters, and Horror[/h3]
This wouldn’t be much of an SCP game without SCPs, so this one is self explanatory. While we already have a decent lineup, we also understand that players are looking for greater and more variety, and that frequently used enemies (such as the zombies) can get stale. That being said, we have a nice lineup of new SCPs planned that we are excited about, and we will release more information about these later on as we begin introducing them in future updates.
This will take time, as we want each SCP to be a unique challenge. We are developing custom models, animations, sounds, and AI behaviors to ensure our SCP enemies stand out and force players to think when they are engaging 59ZFN with them. Beyond this, we also want to focus on driving up the horror factor as well, not only with new SCPs but also for the currently existing ones.
[h3]Progression[/h3]
Another major focus moving forward is building in more progression elements. The 0.14 update technically marked one of the first steps in this direction, as we introduced a rudimentary checkpoint system that saves level progress for the same session 39P34 that players are in. That being said, 0.15 will be the first proper implementation of this as persistent checkpoints and saves across multiple game sessions will be coming with this update.
In 0.15 players will now start to notice murals and sigils on the wall to indicate these spots:
Murals will indicate hard/persistent save points that players will be able to return to across multiple gameplay sessions, while sigils will be used for soft checkpoints that apply only to that gameplay session.
The 0.15 update will also include our new tablet system:
The tablet will ultimately replace the journal, and it will act as a player’s personal database and ledger that stores all of the important information they collect along the way. This will include details/files about SCPs, contextual information that helps players understand certain experiences and segments 62KVN of the campaign, and so on.
We are planning out several other additional mechanics right now that will further aid in maintaining a sense of progression, and we will share those later as they are further along.
[h3]Narrative and Story Building[/h3]
We’re focusing on the narrative as part of 0.15. We have created a “new timeline” where all of these separate stories are structured to work together in a brand new imagining. One of the ways that we will be improving this with the next update will be the introduction of our new “report to Crow” system, which is fully voice acted:
Crow will be the player’s connection to the outside world beyond Area 12, and this will be one of several methods in which further context and information will be conveyed to players throughout their journey. Much BVVX2 of this system will also be reflected and stored in the tablet shown above so that players will be able to track and retrace all of the story/lore that they come across as they continue to explore and progress through the campaign.
We have also created a new investigation system, which should greatly aid players with exploration and getting hands on with the game world to discover lore, interactable places, and items:
[h3]Tactical Combat[/h3]
Last but not least we know many players really enjoy the gunplay and combat sequences, so we just want to reemphasize that there will be plenty more of that coming throughout our updates, and we will be sure to prioritize tactical decision making, challenges, and balancing all along the way.
High Level 2025 Plans
We hope the 0.15 update will demonstrate to you all that we have heard and listened to all of the community feedback and reviews, that we are buckling down on all of the things that we know can make SCP: 5K the great game that it has the potential to be, and that we are now steadily moving down that path with the right formula/recipe to accomplish this goal. In conjunction with all of the restructuring and streamlining of our production pipelines, and having this clear vision in place HXHN2, we are confident that 2025 will be a huge year for the game, as we now have the team, the infrastructure, and the game plan in place in order to power ahead and complete our objective.
As such, 2025 will be a major push forward on producing the remaining acts and chapters utilizing this new formula/approach, and ultimately reaching our full 1.0 release. This means new levels with this refined design/flow, new SCPs that will be created with strong horror elements in mind, many more combat sections/scenarios that emphasize tactical decision making and thinking, and a lot more focus on saturating the game world with our unique lore and story in which players can get immersed.
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Thank you for taking the time to check out our devblog, and we look forward to getting the 0.15 update into everyone’s hands and hearing what they think!
-Goomes, Community Manager
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