Reflection

7 days has passed since we released our first survival horror game FRAYED. We have all had some time to take a break, take a step back and reflect on the process up to this point. FRAYED is without a doubt the biggest game any of us has ever made, and our first attempt at a itch.io game not associated with a game jam. We had no idea what to expect regarding how visible our game would be on the site. One week after release FRAYED has become our most downloaded game and is close to being our third most viewed game. We are super proud about the result so far, and thankful to everyone who have played the game and shared their experience. So, thank you to all the players!

The Future

Looking to the future of FRAYED, we have a rough idea of where we want to take the game. Broadly speaking, we have three major updates planned: Scripted Events, Audio Improvements and Nightfall. We don’t want to give away all the details, but generally we want to improve the following things in each update:

Scripted Events Update: Many of the areas of interest in the world is barren and empty. For this update we want to give life to these areas, while also increasing the spookiness of interacting and navigating with the world outside of the corn field.

Audio Improvements Update: The audio design of the game generally was an area we couldn’t give the full attention during the production week. We managed to set up several systems that would allow for more dynamic sounds while playing, but never got around to connecting everything. That would be the focus of this update.

Nightfall Update: Finally, in the Nightfall Update, we want to add some new gameplay features and work towards finalizing the vision we have for the game. One of the core features here requires us to learn how to use dynamic skyboxes – Can you guess what that feature will be?

We have no set deadline or time plan for any of these updates, as we will be working on the game in our spare time. We hope to have one or two of the updates released before Christmas, but we don’t want to promise anything.

Optimization Patches

It was important for us to release the game on our deadline to try and avoid with an over scoped project. As such, we had to cut some corners and kill some darlings in the final production days before releasing version 1.0. Therefore, in addition to the three major updates, we are also planning to do a series of smaller optimization patches. These smaller patches will be released continuously, when we feel like a patch will be a significant improvement from the current build available.

Mac Port

When the game is at a somewhat finished state, after the three major updates, we hope to be able to also look at a Mac build, but we will have to decide whether to cross that bridge once we reach it. We spend a lot of time trying to optimize our previous game Potion Panic to be somewhat playable on Mac, so the whole endeavor of porting the game still haunts us a bit.

Thanks again

In closing, the past week since the release of FRAYED has been an incredible journey for us as hobbyist game developers. We want to thank everyone who has taken the time to play FRAYED and share their experiences. Your support and feedback are essential for our development journey. As we move forward, we're eager to bring you more exciting updates and improvements. Stay tuned for updates, and we hope you continue to enjoy the evolving world of FRAYED. Happy gaming!