Vapourware Asylum (from creator of Scratches) - coming March 6th

[Boleskine]

 

[Blackthorne]

I stand corrected. The word scam was inappropriate, fiasco is more like it.

Hahah, yeah, I could get onboard with fiasco, sure. I guess I just see people lob the word "scam" around and I really feel it has different connotations than what happened here, and with other projects.

 

[Boleskine]

Remember Asylum?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/agustincordes/asylum-kickstart-the-horror/posts/3206839

As you can see, there’s quite a few important developments. As the team is increasing and more members are joining Senscape, I find myself spending more time with management than production. Boo... But no worries, we’re still indie and all that, except that I was becoming a bottleneck in many aspects of production, and thankfully I’m now able to delegate tasks to a team I deeply trust. I am monitoring every aspect of development and playtesting. Crucially, this has allowed me to focus on my biggest responsibility in the project, which is writing and ensuring the story is rich and consistent throughout the entire experience ✍

Still writing? While he later mentions the addition of "side stories" which presumably don't alter the main plot or progression, I would have expected the writing (aside from smaller changes to dialogue or descriptions from tester feedback) to have been finished a long time ago.

The update also says, "the framework of the game is effectively frozen at this stage."

which brings me to another point VIPs among you have been wondering about: yes, a first beta is coming along your way. We’re giving this section (roughly 1/3 of the game) a couple more passes, taking special care that all story points are present and consistent. Yeah, it’s not just solving puzzles, as there’s a lot happening story-wise as soon as you enter the Tunnel of the Damned! We’re planning to deliver you three beta milestones, each amounting to one third of the game after we perform our internal playthroughs. This is very similar to how we tested Scratches and it works great, because the sooner we get critical feedback, the better. Certainly, we’ll keep every backer appraised of our progress and any findings during this phase.

 

[Blackthorne]

I will say... I played a version of this long ago. It was pretty cool. It is definitely taking a long time, and yeah, adding more team members and writing more... after, like, almost a decade seems weird. But hey, stranger things have happened. I do wonder what this thing is gonna be like when it finally comes out.

 

[fuzz]

It's been interesting and sad to revisit this thread after all these years - the game surely must've gotten a release since my last posting in 2013, right? Right?
Seeing no new posts for 2022, curiously I've checked the Asylum's steampage:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/230210/view/3175608192440673955

Come see the ASYLUM shiver with antici... PATION!

(...)

The lowdown
The haunting, twisted, and monolithic asylum you all have been expecting to play has seen advancements all across the board. Now that the game is fully playable, there's a lot of balancing and adjusting that we're doing. The main game logic (or critical path) is being finalized, we added a wealth of documents, notes, clues to flesh out the story, and also the implementation of achievements is underway. This decaying and utterly foul place is being brought to life with a gazillion things to see and do: there's something to discover around every corner, from a curious item that harkens back to past life in the asylum, to historically accurate documentation about early and sinister health practices, to an unexpected flashback as you're playing that brings chills down your spine. Even completing the achievements might feel like playing a separate game! As you may recall, these were designed with context in mind, and discovering them will reveal more of your profile as a patient. Me, I especially like the Scavenger and Melancholic ones

Why, look at that! We're now using Confluence to organize our work. My, are we fancy.

Another big consequence of this balancing act was the polishing and regrading of most environments in the game. The so-called beauty pass, which is resulting in gorgeous new 4K captures that we'll be using to update our store pages soon, some of which you are already seeing all over this update. ASYLUM has never looking this gorgeous — and I'm saying this in a truly deviant way.

(btw, there's an Easter egg for fans of Scratches in that image — can you find it?)

Something else we're doing right now —and I hate not being able to tell you more about this— is beginning to implement the last moments of the game. It's both exhilarating and scary to finally be at this stage after all this time. Playing through the entirety of ASYLUM, and experiencing what was designed ages ago, has provided us with a new perspective on what the game was always meant to be. I mean, of course we knew what we were trying to accomplish all this time, but let's say that we are now... connecting the few remaining dots somehow. Every detail in the game has a purpose, and even seemingly random details that we included during early stages of the project have now gained a revelatory new meaning

I really love how the game unfolds, and how everything converges at the end. I think you will too! There are no more questions left — everything works as expected. But, as I said in the opening paragraph, it's time to let new people play the game and give us fresh feedback. And our first test subjects (now that is appropriate!) will be the lovely Mod team of our Discord community. They don't know what's coming to them, hehe. Poor souls. Bwhahaha! They shall experience THE MADNESS in all its gory glory!! Hehehehe... eh... but I don't want to lose my Mod team

Anyways, that's the lowdown on the status. There's been many other developments, such as the logic behind Lenny (who essentially behaves like a character in Interactive Fiction games, featuring an internal "schedule"), many explorable items were added, and so, so much more. I wish I could show you what a hugely complex game this is, but alas, that would mean spoiling the whole thing for you. Just take our word for it: there is no other game like ASYLUM in the industry. It's going to be very special

Happenings at Senscape
In other related news, it's been a rollercoaster of a year for us, and especially for me. Actually, mere months, which felt like a lifetime! Not too long ago, Senscape was only four people, a cozy little team that only needed a single Discord channel to organize their job. Yet since the beginning of the pandemic we have tripled our size. Yes, we're now a dozen folks at the company, with likely more coming! Reason for this growth of course was boosting the development pace of ASYLUM on one hand, and then forming a second team for a number of exciting opportunities that came our way. As you can imagine, I had to adapt to a whole new scenario at the company, at last needing to conceive something resembling an organizational structure. So we're slightly less scrappy than before, but still a cozy family who is super motivated to make great things together

There's basically two branches at Senscape now: Video Games and Virtual Production. The game team is solely focused on ASYLUM and consists of 7 people (besides me). We never had so many folks working on the project at the same time! I've always been doing way too much myself: design, writing, programming, even sound compositing, and this larger team is relieving me of many of those responsibilities. I can focus on direction, management, and steering things forward, without becoming a bottleneck as before.

The Virtual Production gang have been tackling a number of exciting projects that I'll share with you in the future. For instance, we've been involved in the production of a film creating virtual backgrounds in Unreal Engine for LED volumes (the so-called "Mandalorian style"). We made an actual movie, folks! And with cutting-edge technology, which is pretty nuts. We learned a huge deal too, and the team is looking forward to bring some of this filmmaking experience back to games. Do we have fans of FMV adventures in here?

Another big upside of this growth is that the company is enjoying good financial stability. So fear not about the development of ASYLUM: it's all in solid shape.

(...)

What's next?
Well, this was quite the read — there's much going on. We had another period of uneasy silence, but remember that we're always
here. I keep hearing words of comfort and encouragement, you know, insisting that the game will never be released, that is vaporware, or that we are complete failures. Guess we must be very stubborn people because we're still working very hard to get this project done. To all of you that are sticking around, believing in us, and taking the time to say something nice, THANK YOU! The Senscape team is creating the horror game of your dreams... ahem, nightmares, intricately designed and painstakingly produced. And now that everything is coming together, we are extra sure you will love every moment!

Remember that we have a highly active Discord community in which Manuel has been posting weekly
updates. It's the best place to remain in touch and be up to speed with the latest developments.

I'll see you next time, likely with decisive news and impressions after new crew members have played ASYLUM!

Have a disgustingly beautiful weekend,
—Agustín

 

[R@tmaster]

OH, look, guys! Asylum is back! It will come this year! I promise!!

Salutations from malodorous, fungus-laden crevices of the abhorrent Hanwell Mental Institute. I have combined these assorted words to convey some degree of meaning and bring you a report of recent occurrences. There's been an influx of anxious inquiries since we announced that beta-testing of
ASYLUM
had commenced with fresh new eyeballs and bodily appendages. And yes, there be news. Here's the quick lowdown:

• People are truly liking it so far! They highlighted its atmosphere, what it feels like to explore the vast and intricate design of the decaying building, and the compelling story.
• No major issues were reported, other than technical annoyances to be expected during this period. The build we distributed is more stable than anticipated, and most feedback we received pertained to quality of life improvements, which the team is tackling en masse.
• There are design quirks we still need to sort out, notably characters being underused in latter stages of the experience. As in, they have little intervention in plot points and too few dialogue lines. I agree with this balancing issue, and it's wonderful to hear folks cared enough about our asylum denizens that they wanted
  more
  from them.
• Before you ask, no, we're not ready to disclose a release date.
  Yet
  . So please don't expect one in this update. When we announce it, rest assured you'll know. All I'm going to say right now is that we're very seriously gauging a launch window.

I'll elaborate more on the tasks at hand next, but overall, things are looking fantastic!

Elaboration
So it's a pretty intense period in which decisions and approvals have that 'final, but really final' feel. The Senscape team is doing an exceptional job, and I couldn't be happier with the progress we're achieving every week. We recently onboarded new team members to apply a nice coat of polish to characters, lighting, animation and cutscenes. These are some of the same folks that worked on the hours of cinematics from
Silent Hill: Ascension
, and they're bringing plenty of experience in their respective areas. We even have a dedicated producer now who is flooding me with Jiras eeevery single day, but hey, I asked for it. I need to be kept on track too.

You could say we're entering in post-production mode. The gorgeous atmosphere, which testers enjoyed so much, is receiving profound attention in our QA, with scenes being color graded, brightness levels properly adjusted, ambient sounds everywhere, and lots of neat visual effects to boost the mood. Fans of
Scratches
will be glad to hear that we added masks to every window in the Hanwell building, so that at one point in the game we have rain and lightning outside. We almost scrapped the feature since it was a lot of work —remember,
ASYLUM
is stubbornly old-fashioned and
all
environments are pre-rendered— but it's worth it. I mean, no game can claim to be the true successor to
Scratches
without a gloomy, rainy night and suitably mysterious music, right?

Another area of focus has been animations, since quite a few of them were wonky and even the character rigs needed a bit of extra love (and don't get me started on the fingers). The cutscenes are more impactful now, and I'm happy to report we're nearly done with them. You might remember from earlier updates that I mentioned these were going to involve a good deal of work, and we're now close to wrapping them up. See, we
ARE
making progress!

Honestly, it's kind of surreal after all this time. Some of the more crucial moments in the story, the ones that were devised years ago, are reaching the place they were meant to be. I look at them with a big grin on my face and think to myself "yeah, this is good for launch".

One more note I'd like to add: testers have reported a healthy game length, averaging 10-12 hours. Some spent less, others more. That's in line with our estimations, and there's still some content missing (notably achievements and easter eggs we're keeping secret). Overall, folks reported the game length feels "just right".

It's in the details
We can't thank enough the dedication from the folks who are currently playing the game, and we did listen to their feedback, which ranged from puzzle design to interface. For instance, one area we have been improving in the beta is the diegetic game menu. We've always wanted to treat this familiar aspect in all types of games these days with our own touch of flair, but that doesn't mean it should be impractical. So we addressed save game management while keeping that sort of journal approach, and added a feature to log conversations with NPCs, among other tweaks. It does add to the overall experience since folks sometimes reported missing key information in dialogues. This is a win for customer service.

Also, I like how this addictive menu has been dubbed by one of our most dedicated fans as "flippity-flappity pages". You nailed it, yo.

Another one is a 'zoom' feature which is quite neat to use overall, but was in truth implemented with handhelds in mind. All we can confirm for now is instant Steam Deck support at launch. As a BIG fan of the device, where most of my gaming is performed these days, I'm eager to support it properly. It's currently the only way I have to gradually finish games from my Steam collection, and I'd be making tons of progress if it wasn't for
Vampire Survivors
. Of course, this also means that gamepad support is good to go as well!

As for me, in addition to leaving bucketloads of notes in the endless stream of Jira tickets that torment me every day, my next area of focus will be in-depth script revision. The big pending that I have left is to review every line of text in the game and further develop some documents you find scattered around, as well as key sections in the journal. Backers noted that a few moments in the game needed more nudging and feedback from the protagonist to avoid aimless wandering, which is another valuable note. This is my top priority, and as soon as it's settled we'll be ready to...
drum roll
...
record the voices
. Since this question was brought up in our Discord a while ago, adventure game fans will be delighted to hear that Josh Mandel is very much still attached to the project and ready to start working with us.

I'm sure a few of you are going to ask, but remember that we're currently testing with a subset of Kickstarter backers (about 300 people have access, but not everyone is playing), so we're pretty much covered with the QA and not accepting new testers at this stage.

We're reaching the end of this update, but I'm going to keep the line open with more frequent signs of life as things keep ramping up. A lot has been said about
ASYLUM
, and believe me, I understand the frustration (it's been a looong time coming). Yet everyone here is ready to wrap things up and launch a game we —along with you— will be proud to have been developing/waiting for the past few years.

Until next time.

—Agustín

 

[Durq]

Only 11 years late at this point?

 

[duskvile]

This would be great release for this year holiday season.

 

[duskvile]

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Before opening this thread: "Oh, cool, I didn't know those guys made another game, I wonder why I haven't heard of it if its 12 years old by now..."
After opening this thread: "Oh, that's why."
Is this a record for longest development time?

 

[KafkaBot]

Before opening this thread: "Oh, cool, I didn't know those guys made another game, I wonder why I haven't heard of it if its 12 years old by now..."
After opening this thread: "Oh, that's why."
Is this a record for longest development time?

Nah, Duke Nukem Forever spent 15 years in development - and Beyond Good and Evil 2 was announced 16 years ago.

 

[Rean]

Maaaybe... it'll be good?

 

[fuzz]

TL;DR: March, next year.

At least by taking so long, they can claim having en vogue retro graphics now.

 

[Jaesun]

I backed this so many years ago I forgot about it, and just figured it would be another scam and lost money. No idea how this is going to turn out, but I guess we shall see in March...

 

[Jaesun]

Is this a record for longest development time?

Nah, Duke Nukem Forever spent 15 years in development - and Beyond Good and Evil 2 was announced 16 years ago.

And Cleve's Grimoire was 20+ years.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Is this a record for longest development time?

Nah, Duke Nukem Forever spent 15 years in development - and Beyond Good and Evil 2 was announced 16 years ago.

And Cleve's Grimoire was 20+ years.

22 years, IIRC.

Around the time Grimoire was about to be released, some guys did a YT-video on longest development times for a game. According to them the game that's been longest in development is Unreal World, which has been in development since 1992, or 32 years.

The thing is, Unreal World has been available to play all that time, so it doesn't really win the category everyone's thinking of - it's just been constantly updated since release. Same with Dwarf Fortress. (Both games deserve mad respect for being worked on for so long.)

So if we count games that were in development and unreleased during that time, then Grimoire takes the crown. Notable is the fact that a simple search for YT-videos of the topic shows not a single video that even mentions Grimoire.

Then there's the question of games which were developed, (mostly) completed and then not released for some reason until many years later. Star Fox 2 is such an example. Development started in 1993 and was fully finished by 1995, but was not released at the time due to the rapidly advancing 3D graphics at the time might make the sequel look outdated. Star Fox 2 was finally released in September 2017 as an exclusive title on the Super Nintendo Classic mini-console. Does it count as having been stuck in development hell all that time? I don't think so.

But if Starfox 2 is considered a contender, then Hardcore definitely counts and steals the show. Work started on this title in 1993 but was cancelled the year after and shelved, decades later it was recovered and finished by another studio, renamed Ultracore and released in 2019, making it 25 years from start of development until release.

With all this said, I'm certain there's a game out there with an even longer time period from Start of Development -> Actual Release.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Then there's the question of games which were developed, (mostly) completed and then not released for some reason until many years later. Star Fox 2 is such an example. Development started in 1993 and was fully finished by 1995, but was not released at the time due to the rapidly advancing 3D graphics at the time might make the sequel look outdated. Star Fox 2 was finally released in September 2017 as an exclusive title on the Super Nintendo Classic mini-console. Does it count as having been stuck in development hell all that time? I don't think so.

But if Starfox 2 is considered a contender, then Hardcore definitely counts and steals the show. Work started on this title in 1993 but was cancelled the year after and shelved, decades later it was recovered and finished by another studio, renamed Ultracore and released in 2019, making it 25 years from start of development until release.

With all this said, I'm certain there's a game out there with an even longer time period from Start of Development -> Actual Release.

Interestingly, I think what wins the crown in these cases are FMV games, but only because a few of them had weird issues going on.

There's Scene of the Crime, which was the predecessor to Night Trap, which might not count since it was never really intended for public playing, just as a tech demo. Judging by the writing, about 1985 to a final release in 2017, about 30 years.

Then we have American Hero, which was in development in 1995, probably started in 1994, but didn't get released until 2021 which is just about, or a bit longer than Hardcore. (the earlier release is just a leak of game files, doesn't really count)