The End of the Sun News

Hello folks

It's been quite a long time since our last update so today we have a lot of news for you! We divided it into sections so you could easily find the information that you are looking for.



[h2]What is the development progress?[/h2]

The progress of development is huge, we are after the first inside-game tests and as developers, we are very happy. Maybe it sounds weird but after 6 years of development it's really hard to have fun playing your own game, however testing it ourselves has been an absolute thrill, and we can't wait for you to play it. Now we are sure the game will be something big, especially in the adventure/mystery games category!

But let's make a short general list that better describes development progress:

[h3]What we accomplished in the last months:[/h3]

1. We are after our inside dev game tests. That means we went through the whole game and pointed out elements of the puzzle, story, texts etc. that need to be improved. We are now working on it(improvements). In most cases, these are like 10-minute fixes but it’s still a job to do before main game tests. Overall these “inside dev tests” were mainly to improve the game difficulty level and to write proper “tip texts”. Those are texts of the main protagonist and investigation texts that lead the player through the game. After your remarks about the demo, we decided to put focus on that. Those texts are almost impossible to write before playing the game in the advanced stage, this is why we waited so long to create them.
   
   
   
2. We finished writing all the narrator and interactive game texts. We could start translations of the game and narrator voice-over recordings now.
   
   
   
3. We improved a lot of game elements that weren’t intuitive. We want to provide you with as smooth an experience as possible. When we watched some lets plays from the demo we noticed that some puzzles were hard not because of their difficulty level but because it was not intuitive enough for modern players. We improved all puzzles in the game to keep some standards. Our game prioritizes exploration and story, so puzzles are intentionally easier. We emphasize the riddle's quality and its connection to the narrative over difficulty.
   
   
   
4. We visited the bee farm museum called “Sądecki Bartnik” in Stróże. We scanned there amazing old-fashioned beehives, but there will be a whole update about that soon. HERE you could read our Behind the scenes blog where we write more about the photogrammetry method that we use to scan objects.
   
   
   
5. All cutscenes are ready, as well as all facial animations and emotions. Also, we finally finished and improved all mocap animations. Of course, all these elements are part of cutscenes, but it's important to mention how many elements stand behind it.
   
6. We spend a lot of time on improving our Steam page, but it's related more to the release date, so I will write more about it in the next sections.
   
7. There were so many small elements from our “to-do list” completed in the last months that it's hard to write about every single one so I’ll point out just a few of them like:
   
   • Improving some elements of design to create a more unique atmosphere of a Slavic fantasy world.
     
   • Fixing a big bug of volume light. It was really a miracle that we were able to so fast fix some crucial bugs that were strongly dependent on how the engine is working but now you’ll be able to enjoy beautiful volume light without any flickering. I'm pointing this out as this kind of bugs very often happens in gamedev and you just can't predict what problems you’ll encounter during the game tests.
     
   • Aging the buildings and some items. At an early stage of development that wasn't in plans at all, but the quality of the game is now so high that we decided we have to do this. So now the influence of time will be also visible on buildings.

[h3]What job left to do before the game full release:[/h3]

• Fixing small bugs and problems that appeared after inside test
  
• Translating game to all languages(That will be done by external translators but still English translations needs little bit of our attention)
  
• Recording main protagonist voice overs(again something external but needs our small engagement)
  
• Creating the last kickstarter easter egg and we must say it’ll be a really interesting one. (another one is already in game and its big too! )
  
• Making an additional part of the story? One of the in-game missions is ready to play but we have a fantastic idea how to make it much better. There is a question mark here, as it’ll depend on our available time and pressure related to the game release date.
  
• Preparing Steam achievements, cloud saves and trading cards.
  
• Making final tests of the game(Win, Mac, Linux) .
  
• Game release :)

If you would like to read more about certain changes implemented in the full version of the game, there is our earlier update:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/912840/view/3655289207381292254

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[h2]When will the game be released? [/h2]

That's probably the most common question asked to any game developer. As you can read in the earlier section there is an enormous number of elements during game development you can't predict. (and not even mentioned there things related to everyday office work)

The game will be for sure ready for June, but the release probably will be moved to Q3 2024 and this is why:

• We analyzed our Steam wishlist situation. At this moment the game has about 15500 wishlists. That's great for an indie game. Unfortunately as mentioned above we have been developing The End of the Sun for over 6 years so we need more sales than a typical Indie studio to be able to stay in business. Also, it seems Steam isn’t the best place for adventure/mystery/walking sim games. Some genres like city builders or RTS get much more organic traffic from Steam without making any special marketing. This is because the Steam audience is more hardcore and that's ok, the problem is somewhere else. Even if there is a huge niche for adventure games and story rich games, the Steam algorithm isn't optimized to give traffic to niche instead it gives traffic to genres that are popular even if some players like only Indie games. This is why niche genres creators have a harder life on Steam. For example, even if you like and play only adventure games Steam still will recommend you huge triple A RPGs even if there is only one similar tag with the adventure game you played. We can't do anything about that. Providing outside Steam traffic is only one way to be noticed by the Steam algorithm and that needs a lot of marketing work, and this just slows down smaller teams' development process. You can notice huge wishlist spikes on the chart below. These are moments when we spend all our time on marketing (Kickstarter, New Trailers, Updates, Steam Next Fest).
  
  
  
• For the last few weeks, we got some better organic traffic because we improved our Steam store. We prepared a new capsule (more about it in the next section), re-montage trailer, improved tags etc. But still, it's quite small visibility if you compare it to other genres, like horror, survival or strategy games. It is what it is so let's go to the next point.
  
  
  
• We are considering cooperation with a publisher, not only to be able to get better marketing but also to be able to add more languages to the game. As our game is story driven this is a very important thing. So we are now between self-release and a publisher's help. We have to make some decisions.
  
• All of it forces us to make a big marketing campaign before the game's release. We would like to fully finish the game development at first and then start marketing. So when we finish game development in June we need at least 2 months to make proper marketing. We are aiming to have a minimum 20 000 wishlist 2 weeks before the game release.
  
  Follow Us On TikTok. Seems like it's nowadays the best marketing tool for video games.
  
  
  
• All these circumstances lead to the conclusion that the game release probably will take place during the Summer Holiday. Soon you'll see Q3 2024 in the store page. We will for sure announce the date together with a new awesome trailer soon!

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[h2]New game promo banner! [/h2]

As you probably noticed The End of the Sun main promotion banner and Steam capsule has changed. Capsule on Steam is shown to thousands of players every day. That image has to say as much about the game as possible. Our earlier graphic was just a screenshot from the game and after asking players about it, their first thought was that our game is a crafting or exploration genre but for sure not a fantasy or story rich.

The new capsule is higher quality and contains fantasy elements and some characters which shows that this is a people-related mysterious story, not just an exploration game without gameplay. The new capsule brings more attention from players who like fantasy mystery adventures. It works and it gives us a much bigger click-through rate than ever before.



Hope you like the new banner as even creating such a simple element as a capsule took us over 3 days of long work. Thanks to all of you for your remarks about it!

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[h2]Polish Constitution Days Steam Festival![/h2]



We are proud to announce that “The End of the Sun” will be part of the Polish Constitution Days Steam Festival. It’ll be featured on the main Steam store page. We hope that it’ll bring additional attention to our game and many awesome games created in Poland that you probably never heard about before.
The Festival starts on May the 3rd.
The End of the Sun is a perfect fit for the festival as it is also based on old Polish legends and myths. Don't forget to visit our store that day to give our game some additional traffic! Let’s celebrate together!

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[h2]3 steps to do in 1 minute to help us in marketing: [/h2]

• Click THUMB UP under this update. With more thumbs, more players will see it.
  
• FOLLOW and WISHLIST our game.
  
• [color]Follow us on TikTok HERE[/color][color].[/color] This is really important for us.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/912840/The_End_of_the_Sun/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2201430/The_End_of_the_Sun/

Thanks a lot!
This is just a few clicks for you and a huge help for us.

The End of the Sun Team

Hello folks!

We're excited to announce that we've finished the development of the last mission in our game. This is a major milestone for us, and we're proud of our team's work.

Now we're moving on to polishing the game's elements.

At this time, we are not yet able to announce the precise release date for the game. Everything depends on how the game tests go. We want to make sure that the game is ready to be released and that it meets the expectations of players. You probably noticed that we changed the release date to Q2 2024. For sure the game is much better than we expected when we started development and we are sure it will meet your expectations :)

We will be publishing a more detailed update soon, in which we will inform you about the progress of work on the game and the planned release date. This update is just to let You know that we are working hard and development is going great!

We appreciate your patience!



[h3]We are pleased to announce that a few tracks from our soundtrack are now available on Spotify and Apple Music🔥[/h3]



[h3]Check out![/h3]
[h3]➡️ Spotify:[/h3] https://open.spotify.com/album/0LRCndVe5ef6vGLg5eo7kx


[h3]➡️ Apple Music:[/h3] https://music.apple.com/pl/album/the-end-of-the-sun-official-game-soundtrack-single/1725511944


Enjoy listening!




[h2]What You could do to help? :) [/h2]

We are a small indie team so we appreciate any help. Thanks!

1. Click Thumb Up under this Update (Steam will show the update to more players)

2. Add our game to Your Wishlist and Follow.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/912840/The_End_of_the_Sun/

3. Leave Comments and thumbs up on our trailers on YouTube.

4. Share Update or trailers on Your social media.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


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https://store.steampowered.com/app/2201430/
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If You like our update - Rate it up! It's just one second of Your time and a huge help to our indie team :)

Hello folks!

We haven’t written any updates for a long time, but that’s only because we’ve been working hard on the project. 🙂

Today we would like to summarize everything we’ve improved and created over the past few months. Many of these elements are improvements and features created based on your requests and will be available in the full version of the game🙂


The same Update with high-quality video + sound (instead of GIF) is available here on our Webpage.


[h2]Improvements and new features based on your remarks:[/h2]

[h3]1. Map and inventory:[/h3] We’ve added a cool world map and an inventory system, two of the most requested features. The map will gradually uncover as you explore, and it will show all fireplaces in the game, as well as their state. It will also help you orient yourself in the world but not in a direct way. The map is super unique and immersive. We worked a lot to give it some physical feeling and animations.


[h3]2. Making player experience smoother and less confusing:[/h3] We’ve implemented a bunch of new features to make the game smoother and less confusing. Here are some highlights:

- Fireplace call the player: Now after completing all tasks belonging to the fireplace, the player will see sparks and sounds calling the player to make an action.


- Cutscene attention grabber: We heard you were confused about where some cutscene characters were, so now sparks will lead you to the starting position of the cutscene, even if they’re hidden in the environment.


- Different colours for stable Faith Path sparks: We know it was confusing that the sparks of finished Faith Paths were the same red colour as the sparks of incomplete ones. Now, the sparks of stable Faith Paths will be yellow/golden and show calmer behaviour, so it’s easier to distinguish them.

- New icons and text reorganization: We added new icons for some special actions, like “Object Put Back” and “Use Magic.” We also changed some text and action names to make things more clear. For example, “Stabilize” is now the clear mouse hint name for Faith Paths instead of “Inquire.” This will make it easier for players to understand what they need to do.


- Fireplace border indicator: We know you wanted a visible border when you’re about to lose connection to a fireplace, so now there’s a video and sound effect to let you know. This will help players avoid losing connection to a fireplace by accident.


- Video effects no longer affect icons: We fixed a bug where video effects were affecting items icons, which made it difficult to see them when moving fast. This is a big improvement for players who like to move quickly through the game.


[h3]3. Better and more immersive walking animation and head bob:[/h3] We’ve improved the ashter’s (player’s) head animation a lot. It now looks much more natural and has more impact.


[h3]4. Special light for objects hidden in the dark: [/h3] Previously, when a player picked up an item hidden in the dark, it would be totally invisible. We have added a weak artificial light that emanates from the player, which will now illuminate the object, making it easier to see.


[h3]5. Game Settings new options and Improvements: [/h3]We made a lot of changes to the game settings:

- Hints: Now every advanced feature has its own hint text, so even the most advanced option should be easy to understand.

- Auto Save toggle: You can now disable autosave, so your manual saves won’t be overwritten.

- Motion Sickness Options: We added an option to disable the head bob animation, which can help players who suffer from motion sickness.

- Rebinding Input: This is a highly requested feature. According to our survey, 65% of you think it’s very useful, and 30% of you said you wouldn’t buy the game without it. We’ve now fully implemented this feature, and you can rebind keys not only for keyboard and mouse but also for gamepads! (It was quite time-consuming to do especially as we had to prepare all custom style icons for every button of the keyboard and gamepad)


- Motion blur and Antialiasing independent from graphic presets: We’ve reorganized the video settings so that motion blur and antialiasing are no longer tied to the graphic presets. You can now change the graphic preset independently of these settings. We made this change because many players disable these features, so keeping them together with the graphic presets wasn’t the best way to go. It’s also helpful for players who suffer from motion sickness.

- Minor reorganization of video settings: We’ve made some minor reorganizations of the video settings to make them easier to understand.


- Simple Font: We’ve added an option to change the subtitles font to a simpler font that’s easier to read.

- Subtitles Size: This is an important option for players who like to play story-driven games on large TVs or sit far away from their computers and play with controllers. It is also a good option for players with vision problems. You can now increase the size of the subtitles so they’re easier to read.


- Bug Fixes: We’ve fixed a lot of bugs and made other minor changes. We can’t even remember them all! 🙂 You could also read that Steam update to see what we improved (based on Your remarks) in the earlier update.



[h2]Progress of game development and new content that we can’t share yet:[/h2]
Of course, the elements we mentioned above are just a small part of what we did last month, but they still took us quite a while to implement. It may seem strange, but some of these features forced us to reimplement some core mechanics of the game code. Either way, we spent most of our time working on the full version of the game 🙂

Keep in mind that we already have like huge amount of new content in the game. We just don’t want to make new screenshots and videos as we are keeping the best parts for final marketing. This is why we are sharing with You only 2 new screenshots now 🙂

Sorry we can’t share more screenshots with You, for now, we are keeping the best ones for the final promotional time before the game release.

The End of the Sun – a map of the world, with intentionally blurred elements. The map will be uncovered with the progress of the game


[h3]Here are the main things we’ve been working on for the past few months:[/h3]

- We finished translating all the story text and recording all the English voiceovers. You may think this is an easy task, but recording voiceovers remotely is hard work. Very often, even a single word has to be fixed or recorded differently to keep the cutscene in the right mood. 🙂 The only one last element that we have to record is the narrator’s voiceover, but this is because an ashter (narrator) gives hints to the player, so some text may need to be corrected after game testing. You may read blog post about how we recorded voiceovers here.

- We finished 75% of the cutscenes and puzzles for the game. It’s worth mentioning that we created 50% of this in the last 2.5 months. (More information below.) [ You could also read some making of about one of the game characters here ]


[h3]What we still have to do before starting game testing:[/h3]

We need to finish the last 25% of the puzzles and cutscenes. Keep in mind that this is not 25% of the whole game development, it’s just 25% of the final work of putting everything together into puzzles and cutscenes (elements prepared earlier, such as animations, voiceovers, models, etc.). Based on our calculations, it seems like we can do this in the next 2-3 months. Then the game will be ready for testing. (And then, depending on the tests, we will know if the release will be in Q4 2023 or Q1/2 2024. It all depends on the tests.) When the game testers will be working, we will send the game script for translation into other languages and record the narrator’s voiceovers.

We have been working on the game 6 days a week for the whole summer holiday, often for 10 hours or more a day. We decided to write this update now because we want to take a little break and have a 2-week holiday. 🙂

Of course, we understand that you can’t wait for the release, but we think the demo should give you some peace of mind that the game will be a high-quality piece of art. As we mentioned before, it is impossible to say the release date for such a complex project before the proper testing full version of the game. However, in the next 2-3 months, everything should become much clearer. 🙂

Hope You understand that!

We are really glad that we get so much positive and valuable feedback from You on our Steam Discussions, Discord and other social media. Thanks!



[h2]What You could do to help? :) [/h2]

We are a small indie team so appreciate any help. Thanks!

1. Click Thumb Up under this Update (Steam will show the update to more players)

2. Add our game to Your Wishlist and Follow.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/912840/The_End_of_the_Sun/

3. Leave Comments and thumbs up on our trailers on YouTube.

4. Share Update or trailers on Your social media.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


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https://store.steampowered.com/app/2201430/
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If You like our update - Rate it up! It's just one second of Your time and a huge help to our indie team :)

Hello players!

We should post that update 3 weeks ago we were just focused on Full Game development :)

[h2]Mac update of the Demo![/h2]
We are happy to announce that The End of The Sun demo is now fully tested on all Mac computers with Silicon processors (M1 / M2). We have in our studio a Mac mini with 16GB RAM and M2 CPU now. We were able to find and fix all problems related to that version of Mac! What's more, we prepared a special dedicated silicon processors game version so now the game isn't emulated from the intel version and should work faster and more stable!

We upgraded the game to a newer version of the Unity engine which means that the full version of the game also will have a dedicated M1/M2 Mac CPU version + Intel version. (Your Mac will choose it automatically)




[h2]Great feedback and reviews on G.ROUND![/h2]
G.Round (Game Round) is a portal where players could test demos of games and early game versions and leave feedback for developers.

The End of The Sun Demo is available on G.Round until the end of April. We are extremely happy as we are getting amazing feedback and opinions there (152 reviews for now) We are going to improve a lot of elements because of that feedback as it shows us that most of the G.Round remarks are very similar to what we get from You on the Steam discussion.

You could Check out reviews of The End of The Sun Demo on G.Round HERE




We are really glad that we get so much positive and valuable feedback from You on our Steam Discussions, Discord and other social media. We are improving the full version of the game based on Your feedback now!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

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[h3]About The Demo:[/h3]
The demo is quite long and should give You over 1 hour of fun! We did everything to make it as best as possible but keep in mind that the whole game is still in development, so We are open to remarks as we are still improving some elements.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2201430/
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[h3]Don't forget to add the full game to Your wishlist![/h3]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/912840/The_End_of_the_Sun/

If You like our update - Rate it up! It's just one second of Your time, and a huge help to our indie team :)

Hello players!

We are really glad that we get so much positive and valuable feedback from You on our Steam Discussions, Discord and other social media. We are improving the full version of the game based on Your feedback now!

[h2]Over 11000 Downloads of the Demo![/h2]
We are happy to announce that until now The End of The Sun Demo was downloaded by over 11500 users on Steam!



[h2]Refreshed Game trailer[/h2]
Last week we shared the refreshed game trailer of the game. (we improved the quality of the game a lot since we shared the trailer the first time so we decided to give it a second life)

We need Your help. Please leave the Thumb Up on Youtube so the Video will get the best codec quality (That is available only for videos with more than 1000 views)

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Demo Update based on Your Remarks![/h3]
In the last update of the demo, we improved gameplay elements according to Your remarks in our discussion section. Here You can read more about changes in the newest Demo Update:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/912840/view/3657521891380731868

[h3]Thank You![/h3]
To say "Thank You" for Your positive feedback we prepared a graphic with some of Your opinions and comments! (Yes! There is much more!) This is Awesome! You could check out more about it in our earlier update:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/912840/view/3657521891379700569

About Macintosh M1/M2 Demo problems:
We tested the demo on the earlier intel mac version before releasing the demo and it was working great. Unfortunately, there are some specific M1/M2 mac version problems. We'll soon have I-Mac with an M2 processor in our studio. :) So we'll debug all specific M1/M2 problems and we'll fix them. We hope to do that at the end of this month. At the same time, we will prepare a dedicated apple silicon build.



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[h3]About The Demo:[/h3]
The demo is quite long and should give You over 1 hour of fun! We did everything to make it as best as possible but keep in mind that the whole game is still in development, so We are open for remarks as we are still improving some elements.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2201430/
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[h3]Don't forget to add the full game to Your wishlist![/h3]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/912840/The_End_of_the_Sun/

If You like our update - Rate it up! It's just one second of Your time, and a huge help to our indie team :)