Well! This is somewhat bittersweet.

So, you've likely noticed that it's been a hot minute since our last dev log, and that was no accident. We're very much in the final stretch of Viscerafest's development, and because of that, there's been progressively less exciting things going on. More time and effort has been put toward just cleaning up what exists rather than doing anything fancy or new.

Truthfully, it's stuff that's not particularly exciting to talk about, and thus, I wanted to wait until enough interesting things had accrued to make a brand new post. Well just the other day we dropped a new trailer with a big announcement in it, so surely that means we've got more than enough to warrant a new post, and with that, this will probably be our final Devlog post. That's not to say we won't be posting anything; maybe as we get closer, we might give you guys sneak peeks and whatnot or talk about some fun craziness that's happened, but the posts like this one that we've been doing for the last year or so, are indeed coming to an end.

But before we get into the dev log part of this developer log,
we should tackle some more big-picture stuff first.



As I said above, we released a brand new trailer and, in case you missed it, announced that the game would be released in April 2025 (aiming for early April).

Now, obviously, that is not the 2024 window we stated in the Realms deep trailer we dropped about a year ago, so what happened?

Well, truth be told, we were actually somewhat adjacent to on track for a 2024 release. When we dropped that Realms Deep Trailer, we assumed we would see the game released in late 2024, probably sometime in October-November. With our current rate of progress (ignoring the OST), a December release would've been tight but feasible.

But in August, our publisher approached us and asked us to change our plans, and there are a couple of reasons why.

1. Our publisher has a lot going on during the end of this year, and their marketing, QA, and Translation teams are currently and will remain busy through to the new year with the projects they have in the works. Adding another project to the fray means ours or another project would suffer as a consequence.
   
   
2. There are a host of releases stealing the limelight right now, and that's likely only going to get worse toward the end of the year. The ideal timeframe to release would have been during September, but because that was not possible, business-wise it would be smarter to wait til the new year.
   
   
3. They want to ensure the game is done by the time the release date rolls around.
   Initially, we proposed February, but for business reasons, they felt April would be a better time to drop the game, as well as give us more time to tidy things up.

Being so close to the end of development has gotten our lead programmer, Elijah, thinking about one big thing we've been neglecting up until now: console ports! We proposed such to our publisher about a month or so ago, and we can now confirm that, yes, sometime post-launch, Viscerafest will be getting console ports.

Theoretically, development-wise, a simultaneous release could've been possible. However, as we have now been made aware, there is a host of fun, time-consuming legal nonsense involved in porting our game to consoles. Currently, we're mainly focused on the Xbox and Switch, but we'll likely be looking to tackle PlayStation as the other two to pick up momentum.



So, a few days after the last major development update post went live, our lead programmer's bride gave birth to another healthy baby boy! Which is pretty cool, but pray my guy gets some sleep.



So our boy Geoffplaysguitar was initially slated to do the OST for Viscerafest chapter 3.
However, his schedule was booked until about June-July, so we were left having to wait to start working on it until he was available again. Well... in reconvening with him, unfortunately, he was still working on said projects, which were supposed to be done by now. (Funny how that works :P) Unfortunately, there's not really a solid estimate as to when said projects will be wrapped up. (Funny how that works :P)

Thus (in what will inevitably be misinterpreted as an ingenious creative decision) each of Viscerafest's chapters will now feature the works of their own standalone composers, with Viscerafest chapter 3's OST being composed by Primeval (Aka John S. Weekley) whose body of work you may be familiar with if you've played the stellar DOOM mods composing the Ashes 2063 saga! (also, hi Vosty :>)

For the last month or two, we've been working with John on nailing the sound of Viscerafest Chapter 3's OST, and I'm very comfortable saying he will be more than capable of finishing us out on a strong note.


With all that preamble out of the way, it's time to talk about what we've been working on the last few months. To kick things off...




Chapter 3 is done, or well... it's close to being done. Last we talked about chapter 3; we were working on taking the "Rough Draft" versions of the chapter 3 maps and cleaning them up to get them to a place we were more comfortable with.

That cleanup is mostly done, and the levels are in a far better place than they were when we left them. However, there's still more work to be done before they're ready for release. For example, the only playable difficulty in chapter 3 right now is Nightmare (the other difficulties don't have enemy or item spawns set up).

The chapter is missing some story dialogue along with its entire soundscape; there are several progression-blocking bugs, along with some performance issues in a couple of locations present in a few maps; the boss fights need some tweaking, some enemies have buggy behaviors, etc, etc, etc...

Mostly, a lot of minor maintenance work with a few big remaining things to tackle.
But the chapter is playable from start to finish and is in pretty good shape heading into the final polish phase.




With the bulk of chapter 3's work done, the focus has shifted to cleaning up the rest of the game, which is what we're focusing on right now. While we've done a bit of work on Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 on the side, most of the game's levels that you can now play in early access haven't been touched since our last major patch, which was over a year ago.

In working on chapter 3 (and some other stuff I'll talk about soon), a lot of stuff got updated, changed, improved, and optimized in such a manner that it inevitably rippled throughout the rest of the game. For example, we made changes to how explosions work and are triggered, as well as to how explosive walls work and are triggered. This resulted in several of chapter 1 and 2's levels having cracked wall secrets or progression points that no longer work because they used the old systems for these things. Thus, we have to go back through them and tidy them up.

In addition, we want to make changes to address some feedback we received during the early access period. For example, there's an elevator in C2L4 whose switch absolutely baffles and befuddles new players, some areas where players get easily turned around, and that one level in chapter 2 with lots of platforming that was remade mid-development and rushed out the door due to time constraints that has a tendency to really piss people off... You know, that kind of stuff.

But even beyond that, we had always planned to do a major balancing pass in the lead-up to the game's release. With the final chapter playable, we can establish a better throughline with the game's difficulty curve and by extension, implement the planned changes to the game's pacing to improve the overall experience.

My primary focus for the moment is stuff like this, along with making these old levels a little bit prettier.
But a bit more work has been done than just what's been mentioned with the chapter's stuff, so let's get to that.




Welcome to Heuristic Halls! Viscerafest's hub!

The hub that you guys experienced in the early access period was effectively a placeholder;
there was a bunch of stuff that we had yet to add, and the overall visual presentation of the hub effectively used Chapter 1 textures due to time constraints. We've been planning on making these additions and changes for AGES, and it is so awesome that we finally have been able to make them.

This was teased in the game's tutorial screen when you guys reached the hub after the Prelude, but Bestiary and the Lorebrary are finally accounted for. As you progress through the campaign in the Bestiary, you'll unlock little statuettes of the enemies you face. These statuettes feature placards with more details regarding the enemy's species, faction info, etc...

In the Lorebrary, you'll unlock more general info about the world's history, characters, and locations, accompanied by a little companion named VIX, an A.I. character who was actually cut from early drafts of Chapter 2.

Obviously, as implied above, the game's hub has been given a massive visual overhaul to separate it visually from the rest of the campaign, and it's even got a funny little name now. Hooray! There's even more stuff in the new hub I've not mentioned, mostly for spoiler reasons, but to close the hub stuff out...

There's also the shop! With our own little shopkeep! So you'll finally be able to spend all those Skullies you've been collecting! Speaking of which...




As mentioned in one of the prior updates, the content you can unlock in the shop includes gameplay modifiers and cheat codes. This is another big thing we've been working on for the last while.

28 of the 30 gameplay modifiers are now implemented, with most of them being finalized. The last two remaining ones that have yet to be implemented are an enemy randomizer and a pickups randomizer. Also worth noting... Some of the gameplay modifiers (the randomizer included) will feature enemies you will not see in your standard playthrough of the campaign. These are enemies we will be primarily featuring in an NG+ Mode we intend to add post-launch, but we thought we would sprinkle them in for you here.

In tandem with this, the game's save system had to be entirely rewritten to account for how a modifier playthrough deviates from a standard playthrough, and with that, improvements have been made to the game's save system in general.




So, because I hate myself, I decided to add mugshot sprites for every variation of the different combinations of powerups (Even across the OG Caroline and Dopefish skins) that you can pick up at any one time, and with that, you can now stack powerups. There are not too many times in the campaign where you will see this happen (though powerups appear much more frequently than they did in the early access version). Still, a couple of the cheat code unlockables use powerup functions as their base, invincibility, for example, and thus, with being able to mix and match those, you'll be able to see the effects reflected on the hud.


For a variety of reasons, a number of semi-significant changes have been made to the game's weapon, "The Plague Rifle." Without getting into it too much, the two big ones are that the Plague Rifle now has the second fastest player-side projectile in the game, as well as an arching path through the air.




I mentioned the Lorebrary and Bestiary above, and a big thing we've been up to lately, in addition to all that we've mentioned prior, is writing up their contents. With about 30 critters to write up Bestiary entries for and about the same amount of Lore entries, there's been a lot of writing to do.

The art for Chapter 3's final cutscene is done! And it has also now been fully animated!
The only thing left to do for it is a sound pass!




Art updates! So... So many art updates...
This obviously, in part, is due to us revisiting those old levels from chapters 1 and 2.
There were lots of old, ugly textures that needed fixing, but beyond that, there were still 1 or 2 enemies (such as the Watchers) that hadn't gotten an art update yet. Also! A good chunk of props needed a good brand-new lick of paint.


As I said, somewhere overhead? This will likely be the final developer log before release. It certainly won't be the last time you hear from us before then, especially not if you're following us on Twitter[x.com] or hanging out in our Discord Server[discord.gg]. Viscerafest's release is rapidly approaching, and I cannot tell you how excited and terrified I am to say that.

But thank you for taking time out of your day to read this!
May the Lord of Glory multiply and bless your days.
And I pray you have a wonderful morning, evening, night,
or whatever frame of time you currently dwell within.
Adios!