Development Update #12

Hello everyone!

Welcome to the twelfth development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men.  That's right, number twelve - it's been a whole year of monthly updates!  When I released the demo last year, I had no idea what to expect.  I had never done something like this before, and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to keep it up or how much progress I'd be able to make.  A year on from then, however, it's safe to say I've achieved more than I could have hoped for - I will cover some of that in this development update, in addition to what hasn't gone well, and what is yet to come.  But before I do that, I'd just like to thank everyone who has shown their support so far - all of you who wishlisted the game, downloaded and played the demo, and left feedback for me to help me improve the game.  There are a lot of things which I don't think I could have done without this support.

Anyway, let's get started.  This update will be a bit more of a retrospective but if you stick around there will be a nice little teaser of Map 12 as a reward!

A Year in Review

So, as you'll know, last year I released v1.0.0 of the demo for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men.  It felt like the right decision at the time - the first four levels had been finished, but I had bigger plans and wanted to make sure this was a game that people would enjoy playing.  Releasing what I'd done as a demo would allow me to get feedback on how the game looked and felt to play, and people would be able to suggest things to improve the game or let me know what worked and what didn't work.  I have had a good amount of feedback so far, but some of the improvements I made came from watching others play the game (yep, there are a few gameplay videos on YouTube now if you weren't aware already).

Let's see how the game looked back then and how it does now shall we?

Let's start with the obvious differences.  First off - wow, it was really dark before.  I had a good reason for making the game look this dark though - I wanted a more horror-style atmosphere to begin with, so the game takes place at night with dark fog obscuring things.  This looked fine on my monitor but I guess my monitor brightness was high enough that I didn't realise how dark the game might look for other players.  This made some maps - especially Map 3 - quite hard to get through, and a lot of the criticism I saw was for that map in particular.  A few of the updates I made to the demo were specifically to make this map more fun to play - for example, I made the bushes stand-out more in v1.1.3, made it less green in v1.2.0, and it even influenced the new fog colour for v1.3.0 as I noticed enemies were very hard to spot from a distance when the fog was a stronger shade of green.

Second, some of the old sprites.  That Luger from v1.0.0 looked horrible!  I knew it would be the first sprite to get a rework, but crucially I decided to do this before the influx of new players from Steam Next Fest.  I think this was a good decision as it definitely made the game more appealing.

Thirdly, the new blood effects - I've talked a lot about them before but it's nice to see a comparison like this as it is clear just how much better the game looks with them.

So, that's a few of the bigger changes the game has seen, but actually that is just a fraction of what I managed to do.  If you've been following these updates from the start, you'll know a lot of the other things I managed to do, but I'll summarise them here:

• Maps 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 have been finished, with good progress made on Maps 10, 11 and 12
• Five new enemies have been added - the Machinegunner, the Cossack, the Grenadier and the Flammentruppe, as well as the first boss
• Three new weapons (grenades, the Flammenwerfer and the Shashka)
• Four major updates to the demo, which came along with:
  • New abilities for several weapons (alternate fire modes)
  • New scenery items to make the levels look more interesting
  • An engine upgrade to Godot 4 (previously the game was running on Godot 3)
  • Improvements to sprites and other visual effects
  • Completely reworked enemy AI so the enemies behave a bit more intelligently and will put more pressure on you
  • Extra difficulty options
  • A reworked minimap
  • Several new gameplay and graphics options in the options menu (including invert mouse Y-axis and the head bob strength slider, both of which were requests from players)

That's a lot of positive stuff, but I mentioned at the start "what hasn't gone well" - what did I mean by that?  I can think of one good thing to talk about next - the roadmap.  When I released the demo I set the goal of releasing the game by the end of 2023.  It felt a little bit ambitious at the time, but I thought I would be able to pull it off, especially when I posted The Long Road Ahead, which contained a breakdown of what I needed to do and the time-frames for doing them.  This started off quite well, and I stuck to it pretty much exactly until I finished Map 9.  However, I started falling behind with the upgrade to Godot 4, which I had overlooked initially.  This upgrade took roughly a month, and so this already started to push me behind schedule.

Alone, this wouldn't have been too bad, but unfortunately I completely underestimated how long Map 12 would take.  Once I'd figured out roughly what it would look like, it didn't take long to put together, but that's the problem - it took several weeks just to figure out what it should look like.  I suspect Map 13 will be similar, as this map will also look quite different.

So where does this leave things?  Well, I won't confirm this until next month's development update, but it looks like I will have to delay the release of the game for a few months.  If this is the case, I will also provide an updated roadmap alongside the new release date.  Don't worry though - I have no intention of cancelling the game or cutting content to finish it faster.  You may just have to bear with me a little bit longer.

The Next Step of the Journey

So, Map 12.  If Map 11 is the last of the "Osowiec" levels, then what could this possibly entail?  Well, you may remember this little sequence from the new trailer...

Something very sinister must be lurking down there.  Something that must be the cause of all the calamity going on at Osowiec.  The only way to find out is, well, to take a ride down and see for yourself.  That is what Map 11 is all about - in that arena, you will need to fight your way through a lot of enemies in a very tight space, while you wait for the elevator to take you down into it.  Oh, and don't think you can just call the elevator and wait in the corner for it - to summon it, you will have to shoot this switch:

Naturally, this means waking up all the enemies.  And you have to shoot it from this spot where they can all see you do it.  Nasty stuff right?

OK, so you've shot the switch, dispatched the enemies, and the elevator has arrived.  What's next?  Here's a teaser for you...

Wait, what is going on?  Where did all this come from? And how did the Russians manage to build it without anybody finding out?  But, more importantly... is that an un-skip-able cutscene?  In a boomer shooter???  How dare I????

Well, let me answer all those questions right now.  So, we are approaching the end of the game, where we will meet the final boss.  The guy needs a secret underground lair though, just for dramatic effect.  For this map, I still wanted to keep things somewhat grounded in reality, before they go more off-the-rails in Map 13.  So this place is a top-secret research facility - the place where the the Tsar, with the help of his nefarious friend (the main villain), has been conducting research and development into new weapons to turn the tide of World War One - including experiments in necromancy.  And, what better cover to hide it all than an impregnable fortress?

So that is what you will be doing here - exploring some of this facility, seeing some of the experiments, and so on.  But, to address that last question - no, it is not an un-skip-able cutscene!  I just chose to show it off in full because it is deliberately timed to the music.  In fact, if you really are that impatient (it only lasts for about twenty seconds), you can simply... jump off the elevator.  Yep, not only can you just jump off, I have carefully crafted the intro sequence to account for you doing that!  The enemies will still wake up if you shoot them, but you can get the drop on them and prepare yourself better for this opening fight as they won't be able to see very well until the lights come on.  But then again, neither will you, so you will have to be careful if you do this.

That's most of what I have to show off for now.  I have added some scenery to a few of the rooms but at the moment the rest is quite empty, so you'll have to wait for next month's update for a full-length gameplay preview.  But, before I go, here is some of the new scenery you can expect:

I planned for a while to include portraits of the Tsar in the levels, but only now have I finally done so.

That's it for this update!  As always, thanks for reading!