We tried out the alpha version of this before the official release (see our complete impressions here), and while our reviewer praised the strong story mode, ambitious undertaking and more, he was a worried about the crafting system, saying, "I can’t wait to find out what kind of surprises the developers still have in store for us. Personally I’m most excited about the Story mode where we’ll get to play as the pilot from the intro, but there’s not much more known about it at this point. The crafting system is one feature I’m a bit skeptical about – there are lots of games out there that have managed to get this really wrong."
This new update is aimed at fixing a bunch of stuff, like updating survival mode, filling the world to make it feel less empty, improving the narrative and tightening the experience over all. Below, you'll find the dev diary that will give you all the updates on what the team has been doing, in addition to some new screenshots.
"Building Redux also showed us that the “ideal length” for a WINTERMUTE episode is about 5-7 hours. This gives us enough time to present a few interesting story threads, some compelling open-world survival gameplay, and enough narrative momentum to keep the story moving. It’s also an amount of content that feels substantial — these aren’t throw-away one or two-hour experiences — but they are compact enough that you can finish them in a weekend if you like.
In our original planning, we had considered building the episode around three major story “hubs”, each in a different region, but that episode would have ended up being larger than Episodes One and Two combined, and amount of content that just isn’t sustainable for our team size. Just the testing on an episode that big would be a hugely daunting task, nevermind populating it with enough interesting narrative and mission content to “fill the space”. The Redux knowledge has helped us focus Episode Three down to a tighter experience that takes place in a single region."
Communicating Future Release Dates
As an independent studio without a huge marketing machine behind us, we count on our relationship with our community to be positive so that you’ll help us spread the word about the work we’re doing. We know we harm this relationship when we promise to deliver things to you and then, for whatever reason, they fail to happen.
Unfortunately, project planning and game development as a whole is not an exact science, and while we are ready to work really hard to hit our goals, I’m not willing to crunch my team to do so. In order to be more fair to the community, and also more fair to the development team, I think the best approach for us is to refrain from offering any more public release dates.
So, moving forward, we won’t publish release dates around any of our content, whether that be full Episodes or Survival Mode updates. We’ll keep working towards internal deadlines, of course, but we won’t share news on when we plan to ship updates until those updates are essentially finished. That way, when you hear a release date from us, you know it will happen.
Splitting the Team
One of the things we’ve been working towards this year, with the development team, is hiring enough people with the right skills to be able to create two separate teams — one to focus on Survival, and the other to focus on Story. We’ve made some great progress towards that goal and we’re getting very close to having all the people we need to accomplish that. Once we’re there, it’ll become easier for us to make consistent progress in both areas of the game, so that we can ensure a more steady supply of free Survival updates, as well as ensuring the Episodes get the resources they need. We still have a few positions to hire for to have full redundancy across both teams, but I’m hopeful we’ll get there within the next few months. If you know any great developers with experience crafting memorable and award-winning interactive experiences, please send them to our careers page!
Survival Mode Update
Last year, we put a ton of effort into Redux and solidifying our foundation for the future Episodes, so this year we’re working to get back on track with producing more frequent Survival Mode updates. To that end, we’re working on a bunch of new features and content for the 2019 Survival releases. As per my earlier point about release dates, we won’t be sharing any tentative release windows for the next Survival release, but I will say that we’ve already done a fair bit of work on the new systems and content that will comprise the core of the next free update.
A few things we’re working on for the next Survival update include:
• Adding the Revolver to Survival Mode.
• Overhaul of the aiming mechanics for the Rifle, Bow, etc., to do a better job of integrating.
• Fatigue and the breathing cycle, and making aiming less frustrating.
• Adding a new Food item.
• Adding a new Clothing item.
• Fixing the Sprains system.
