Viscerafest News

Happy New Year, Everyone!!!
We hope you've had a wonderful holiday season! 
You may have noticed there has been a gross dearth of updates from us as of recently.
That is because whilst we have indeed been working this whole time, there's not really been much to show or update you on...

The last few months have been spent working on the game's finale and polishing up its third chapter.
These are time-consuming tasks that involve either heavy spoilers, or stuff that's just not really interesting to showcase until the work is actually done...

As it stands currently, we are still knee-deep in the midst of both these tasks. Thing is now we actually have something to show for them. There have also been a number of other important changes and tweaks that we can talk about along the way.
So without any further ado...





The opening level of Viscerafest's third chapter is almost completely done! There's some sound work it needs yet, its OST and several small bug fixes. But otherwise, the level is playable front to back! So let's talk about it a lil' bit.


In the wake of Viscerafest Chapter 2's ending Caroline once again steps through an archegate into the Great Divide, the primary difference now being the route this takes her through has a formerly well-established U.S.C. presence.


Various U.S.C. Checkpoints bridge the gap from this entrance into the Great Divide through to its exit into Rhanak Zethir, which resides in the realm of the Elder World. This will be Caroline's final goodbye to the U.S.C. before she steps into territory they have lost.

Unknown forces have removed the conglomerate's presence from Rhanak Zethir, and this will mean that soon Caroline will be fighting more than mere flesh and blood.


C3L1 in a similar vein to C1L6 and C2L5 is one of Chapter 3's more story-heavy maps. But unlike the prior Great Divide levels, it is also more elaborate, and combat-heavy. Honestly... as of writing this, it's easily one of my favorite levels, and I can't wait for you guys to play it!




On a much less significant note, I've effectively completely reworked the physics and behavior of the Grenadiers'... well... grenades.


In my humble opinion, they were a bit too chaotic in the midst of combat, often flying around and ricocheting off the environment at borderline untrackable speeds, thus I felt the need to reel them in a bit. They no longer fall as quickly and generally have a slightly slower, more floaty presence to make their movements easier to visually track and deal with. It's a relatively minor change all things considered but one that I feel makes this enemy a bit nicer to go up against.





Viscerafest's first flying enemy has just received some rather notable changes and updates.
The Nomad Priest was one of Viscerafest's final enemies that needed a sprite update, so I
gave the kind lad a pretty new paint job.

In addition to this though I felt like amongst the Chapter 3 enemy roster his old set of attacks
meant he didn't have as firm a footing in that part of the game. Other enemies did his job
better and were more interesting, thus I felt the need to spice him up a bit in order to set him
apart from the crowd.

I won't say what these changes are, I'll let you find out with time, but I feel he has a stronger place on the roster now as it stands.





This isn't necessarily entirely new but slowly more and more work has been being
done to refine the look of our menus further. Not anything too exciting, but ya know...
it's stuff we've been working on... So I thought I would mention it.






As I mentioned in the intro my big focus of late has been polishing up Viscerafest's third chapter,
and a big part of this is refining the look of all these maps. You may have noticed I've been... stingy...
about showcasing Viscerafest's third chapter until now, and there's a good reason for that.


The levels for a long while now have been in a... "Rough Draft" stage, and as a consequence,
they're quite ugly and rough around the edges. Not only were/are there missing props and gameplay
elements that have yet to be added, but the lighting is... *oof* and the texture work is especially rough
and sloppy.

This "Rough Draft" stage is something we've done with all of Viscerafest's levels in the past. Prior to release, most of Viscerafest's levels were pretty rough, but the rough drafted-ness of chapter 3 has been particularly egregious until now, and that's why I've been very picky and hesitant to show ya'll any of it. If I was going to show you guys a glimpse of the chapter, I wanted it to leave at least a somewhat positive impression upon you all, and I just knew that most of the third chapter was not ready for primetime.

Being able to finally go through and "clean house" so to speak, is immensely satisfying, and I can't wait to show you all more and more as the rest of these maps hit their final stages!





For those of you not aware toward the beginning of this year we lost our Composer Michael Markie. In the wake of life's craziness, he was effectively forced to step away from the project as he no longer had the time to work with us.

Into his place stepped Geoffplaysguitar who you may know did the OST for Viscerafest's second chapter. But whilst I am eternally grateful for Geoff, Markie did far more than make the game's music.
Markie was our sound designer, he mixed audio, polished up VA recordings, made the entire game's audioscape, did the music and sound for the cutscenes, and then some. This was by far the more damning aspect of losing him, which is why I am happy to say that HE IS BACK BOIS!!!

In the wake of recent events, Markie has been able to hop back on board the project to help us finish up the game's audioscape. As you may have surmised I am overwhelmingly overjoyed regarding this fact, and I'm very excited to finally be able to start making progress on that side of things once again.




With Chapter 3 in its cleanup stage, it's safe to say that you'll be seeing much more of it here in the coming months. With that, we may even start showing some gameplay soon here to give you a taste of what the chapter will be like. It's also worth noting in addition to the above a whole host of balancing changes, optimization tweaks, and other more minor stuff has indeed been accomplished as well, but it's all stuff not really worth explaining here.


But that is all for now. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to catch up with us! It's always a pleasure. As always we hope you have a wonderful day and a very happy new year!

Shalom one and all! It has been about a month since Realms Deep and thus as promised
we are back with yet another Development Update! First things first though, we dropped
a new trailer at Realms Deep! Which you've probably already seen, but in the case you've
been living under a rock you can check it out right here!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

In addition to the new trailer we also showcased the updated opening cutscene we mentioned
in our "Birthday Cruisin" Devlog. That of course you can check out right here!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

And as if that were not enough I've also started doing a series of YouTube shorts in which I'll be breaking down some of the game's mechanics, enemies, weapons, etc... and you can find those in this playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJg0WI2Gczzm-UAa_AhETu7BVErHGkT0l


But let's not waste any more time, and jump right into what we have been working on these last few months!!!



[h3]The Warhound[/h3]
A few updates ago we made mention of a whole suite of changes and tweaks being made to Viscerafest's arsenal and the accompanying reasons as to why said weapons were getting a facelift. But there was one more weapon I wanted to make changes/adjustments to, and that would of course be the game's grenade launcher, The Warhound.

The Warhound was a weapon that originally took a great deal of inspiration from one of my favorite weapons of all time, the Grenade Launcher from 1997's original Shadow Warrior. It was an absolute beast of an explosive weapon, with splash damage so stupid you were just as likely to kill yourself with it as you were your foes. And our little spin on it with The Warhound was... underwhelming.

Admittedly... I personally feel that in both function and presentation, our rendition of the beast was rather forgettable and often fell to the wayside in the wake of more immediately useful weapons. Because of this, I knew the gun needed an update, but what that update would be was something I hadn't solidified yet.

During the process of Chapter 3's development, I also stumbled across another little problem that I had
with our arsenal. Viscerafest has 9 weapons, and whilst functionally they all contribute and play an important role within the game's combat suite, juggling 8 different ammo types in the game's last 3rd honestly felt like slightly too much, I really felt as if we needed to cull one of our ammo types in the name of streamlining the resource management a bit.

Thus the first major change I decided The Warhound would need is that it would share ammo with The Pung Cannon, and accompanying that would be a design change to both reflect the new ammo type and to hopefully make for something more visually memorable.


But accompanying this change, I had a truly wonderful and stupid idea... What if I made the Warhound's Clusterbombs functionally behave more closely to sequenced explosions of Rise of the Triads Firebomb?


So functionally the Warhound is now one of Viscerafest's most powerful weapons, firing a bundle of 3 pung canisters that detonate into a massive cross-shaped sequence of explosions. It's also been bumped up from the 7th to the 8th weapon slot, meaning you'll be getting it after the BBQ Belter in the main campaign now.


[h3]Player Movement[/h3]
Movement is something that I kind of obsess over when it comes to Viscerafest. It's something I'm always trying to improve and fine-tune. This is because, in First Person Shooters, the one thing you do more than shoot is move. Thus if your movement is bad/mediocre, I would personally consider that to be a really big problem.

Lots of little tweaks and refinements have been made to things like player speed, the ease-in/ease-out of the player's motion, the player's friction against the ground, and basically just... all of the important stuff to take note of when finessing your player's movement. But in making these changes there was one major complaint I was also taking aim to address, and that my friends, is the platforming. Personally, I've always considered platforming in Viscerafest to be rather easy, but a lot of folks do not share this sentiment, and there are a number of factors that I think contribute to this.

1. - The Jump Arch -
   The Arch of a jump is effectively the curve the action follows as you leave and eventually head back toward the ground. It's dictated by a number of factors, the force with which you leave the ground, movement speed, the force of gravity, player mass, air friction, etc...
   
   Viscerafest's jump arch didn't quite get the level of attention that I think it necessarily needed in order to be fine-tuned for platforming. Thus more time has been spent trying to find the right balance of all the above.
   
   
2. - Bunnyhopping -
   In Viscerafest repetitive jumps made in sequence whilst moving in a given direction cause you to build up speed very quickly, a little too quickly in some cases. As a consequence of this, if you were a little too trigger-happy with your bunnyhopping you could very easily see yourself gaining enough speed to grossly overshoot a given jump. And whilst you have the air control necessary to correct a mistake like this, most players aren't particularly movement literate when it comes to fps games, thus they lack the muscle memory to do so consistently.
   
   This is an issue somewhat exasperated by how the platforming sections in Viscerafest are designed.
   Platforms are often small surfaces tightly bunched together in clusters, and because of this, it's very easy to jump straight from one to another in an effortless chain. This effectively causes players to inadvertently bunnyhop and subsequently gain enough speed that a single jump overshoots the platform they were aiming for.
   
   
3. - No Forgiveness -
   Many games that prominently feature platforming as a core part of their loop typically have mechanics set in place that act as buffers should the player make a mistake. Air control is a great example of this, being able to make minor adjustments to, if not completely change your trajectory mid-jump greatly relieves the burden of faulty decision-making beforehand, and it's one of the reasons why Viscerafest has always had it. But there's one mechanic most games with platforming have that I've only recently been made aware of, and I think it may have helped ease the platforming burden a bit had I both known about and seen it implemented sooner. That mechanic, of course, is coyote time.
   
   Coyote time effectively gives a brief window of forgiveness. If say you fall or slip off an edge whether
   because of negligence or attempting to jump too late, rather than being doomed to your fall you can still jump if you attempt to do so soon enough.
   

All of the above are factors we've put under consideration when attempting to address and refine the game's movement. Thus all of the above have been tweaked in order to find that sweet je ne sais quoi between movement for combat and movement for platforming. And with all these changes I think it's an issue we can confidently say has been addressed.



[h3]Hud Faces[/h3]
Throughout the course of Viscerafest's second and third chapters, various narrative events take place
that somewhat alter Caroline's demeanor, as a result, though Caroline's signature grin is always a welcome sight, new expressions have been drawn up to allow Caroline to more adequately express what she's feeling when these moments roll around.


[h3]Blood Updates[/h3]
So for starters, I recently discovered that the sprites we were using for our blood effects were scaled incorrectly. They were way too small, and thus I had to go in across the board and tweak the arts scaling. This realization and its accompanying tweaks also allowed me to cut back on the amount of effects needed to adequately convey a big bloodsplosion when gibbing enemies without having to cut back on the overall feeling of its volume, so that's cool.


But more importantly, there were a few enemies in chapter 3 whose blood effects created visibility problems and this called for the creation of a new smaller blood sprite set along with adjustments to the blood visuals in general.

There are also new sounds for blood, little sploshing sounds as the blood trails and puddles hit the ground, along with some improved effects and visuals for when that happens.


[h3]Sprite Updates[/h3]
As with literally every development update, I have to inform you that more improvements have been made to old sprites, textures, and assets to further improve and refine the look of the game. 

I don't know how to categorize the rest of this stuff so... :P

[h3]Voice Acting[/h3]
With the Script finalized I've been making the rounds with our voice actors, directing and recording
the bulk of the remaining dialogue we'll need to round out the game's story. We're not quite finished as of yet, there are a few remaining things we have yet to record, but the end is very much nigh...



[h3]Cinematic 6 - Relent[/h3]
In the wake of us rounding up the VA stuff Viscerafest's 6th Cinematic has finally been fully animated, it still needs a big sound pass (something we are not able to accomplish at the moment) but progress is progress dagnabit, and seeing what in my opinion is both one of the most important and exciting cutscenes of the game finally come to life is a real treat.


[h3]C1l4 - Remake[/h3]
Currently, I spend the bulk of my weekdays working on the game's ending and Finale, but I've decided to allocate my weekends to more unimportant side tasks. Because of this, I've been able to pick up progress on the remake of Viscerafest's first chapter once again. Thus I thought I might share some screenshots of the old version of C1L4 compared to its WIP update. The newer shots are not in engine yet, so they do not feature any fun colorful lighting, but I do feel the improvement to the geometry and texture work speak for themselves.

Old - 1

New -1


Old -2

New - 2

[h3]The Finale[/h3]
Well, this has been a pain...
As with prior updates very little I can actually say about this one.
But the bulk of my time on this front has been consumed by mapping.
Currently, as of writing this, I'm working on the final boss arena, and as with the rest of the map it's been a bit of a time sink. Whilst the game's ending level is not particularly elaborate in layout it definitely has some of the largest setpiece areas in the game, and as a consequence yeah... It's been a bit of work...

But in other news, progress has also been made on the game's final boss, again not something
I can say too much about... other than I think you all will like it. :>


That however is all from me for now!!!
There have been other things I've been working on as well but it's either stuff I can't talk about or stuff not worth bringing up here. For example, I don't think you guys need to read 30 paragraphs of me explaining why I lowered the Blitzer's health pool from 800 to 750, or buffed the shredders' damage from 20 to 22. I'm sure just mentioning those changes makes you feel as if you are being robbed of some truly riveting reading, but trust me it's not worth your time.

Once again though if you read all the way through, or just stopped by to check out the funny pictures I appreciate it! And as always we thank God and you for the wonderful support and encouragement ya'll have lent us throughout the course of the game's development. As much as we enjoy it, development has been a real grind at times, but seeing all the fanart, playthroughs, streams, and kind comments you all have lent us throughout the game's life cycle never ceases to make us smile.

As always we hope you have a wonderful day, and as of writing this, I hope you have had a very spooky Halloween!!!

Greetings, cultists,

The time has finally come, madness is taking over and Forgive Me Father 2 is available in Early Access! Ten levels await you and the first installment's main character, the Priest, in this lovecraftian comic-like retro-FPS, more will come in Early Access Content Updates!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Throughout the Early Access period, regular updates are planned to greatly increase the amount of levels, weapons and content, alongside bug fixes and updates from community-based feedback, while the full game will launch in late 2024.

If you buy the game during the first week since launch, you will get a special 15% launch discount! And if you want to save even more money, Forgive Me Father 2 is a part of the Franchise Bundle along with its older brother. Whether you own the first game and just want to complete your set with an extra discount, or get both games at the same time - this is the way!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/35903/

Hello everyone,

Realms Deep 2023 Steam event has arrived and that means a lot is happening! You, fans of Viscerafest, will want to know that the game is now discounted by 20%! So if you have not done so already, now is the perfect time to get yourself a copy! If you're not ready yet to help Caroline pursue her one true love, we understand. We're not judging you. But if you are considering doing it in the future, don't forget to wishlist the game so you don't miss any new info and updates!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1406780/Viscerafest/

Speaking of news, Viscerafest will be a part of the Realms Deep 2023 streaming show with a new trailer, as is tradition! So tune in to the 3D Realms Twitch Channel this Saturday, September 30, at 11am PT / 8pm CEST - the livestream will have plenty of interesting content for fans of the genre!

Besides that, Viscerafest is still a part of the THIS IS MY BOOMSTICK bundle. By getting it, you make additional savings, because there is another 15% bundle discount applied to games you don't own yet - a great opportunity to expand your collection even if you already have Dread Templar in your library!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/23337/This_Is_My_Boomstick_Bundle/

And that's not all! We have prepared six different giveaways for you, one for each day of Realms Deep, starting Thursday, September 28. You can participate in every single one of them, all you have to do is follow Fulqrum Publishing on their Twitter (known to some now as "X") and on their Discord. Each of these platforms will host its own giveaway every single day for the duration of Realms Deep, and nobody is stopping you from participating in both!


[h3]MORE NEWS FROM REALMS DEEP:[/h3]

HYPERVIOLENT Content Update #1 is out and the game is discounted by 15%
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1409200/HYPERVIOLENT/

Diluvian Ultra Chapter One is out and it's 10% off for one week!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1306970/Diluvian_Ultra/

Forgive Me Father 2 now has a playable DEMO!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2272250/Forgive_Me_Father_2/

Forgive Me Father is having a Daily Deal, meaning it's 50% off + it just launched on consoles!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1590910/Forgive_Me_Father/

Dread Templar is 50% off, that's the highest discount the game has ever had!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1334730/Dread_Templar/

Hello everyone!!!

So I actually started working on writing this update for you guys a few weeks ago, but life's been a bit crazy, more important tasks distracted me, and ultimately the work on this dev update got sidelined in the name of getting actual work done. 

But alas! I am here now! Here to update you on all the crazy shenanigans
we've been up to these last two months!!!



Last time we talked C1L3 was getting ready to hit the big time and I'm happy to report that the dandy fellow is in fact playable and done!


While still retaining its original overall layout, the map has a great deal more going on now. In addition to the aesthetic facelift, a lot of areas have been substantially fleshed out. A great example of this being the route you take to get the green key, which now features some fun new obstacles, secrets, a lil bit of platforming, and a fair bit more verticality.


But yes, this was indeed a level I wanted to give a lot of love, and a lot of love it has indeed received.



The rate at which enemies and weapons are introduced is getting tweaked a bit.
There are a variety of reasons for this which range from difficulty related, to ammo economy adjacent, but to summarize this as quickly as possible...

The changes being made on the enemy side of things are primarily done to push enemies the player would want to shoot closer to the early game, as in the current public balance, the first 3 levels of Viscerafest are filled to the brim with enemies you can easily slaughter melee only, and the levels following that are slow to pick up the slack. We want to give the player both more things to shoot, and more reasons to shoot, and the changes to pacing on this front will help with that.

In addition to this, a great deal of the early-game fights tend to be over before they even get started. The changes to pacing in terms of enemy reveals will definitely help with this, but we are also increasing the scale of fights and encounters to make them feel more substantial and meaty.


On the front of weapons, the game's arsenal has received a fair few updates that have substantially changed the utility of various guns. The Shredders for example (Assault Rifles) aren't particularly useful against enemies with low health, but they're great against tankier/more dangerous foes, as they can knock enemies into a pain state even whilst said enemy is in the middle of attacking you. However, because of this, the Shredders are actually kind of useless until C1L3, as both the Skull-Piercer and the Bunker-Buster, are better equipped to deal with the enemies you're facing before that point.
This in combination with several other factors meant it felt necessary to moderately rearrange, where and how you get certain weapons.



As stated above the Shredders have received various tweaks. The Shredders now have a momentary stunning effect upon impacting with enemies making them a lot more effective at stun-locking opponents, and because of that, they have a much more substantial role in the combat dance than they've had prior. They are still more ammo efficient than their Pistol counterpart as was mentioned in a prior update. However, they now have a slower time to kill, along with slower projectiles that see them being rather ineffective at medium to long range.

Speaking of the Skull-Piercer pistol, I realized quite recently that it had a much lower-resolution sprite than the game's other weapons, and thus, I thought I would update the lil guy.

The max capacities regarding the ammo pools of various weapons have been adjusted, and whilst we are still aiming to maintain Viscerafest's resource management, the increased scale of encounters, and therefore the greater likelihood of missed shots, wasted ammo, etc... means we've found it necessary to make the doling out of ammo *slightly* more forgiving.

Projectile Impact Effects have received some more love and thus shooting things is a much more flashy affair!


Speaking of effects...



You can never have enough gibs! We very recently updated our gibs system and in the time since then, I've been further touching up and refining the physics, quantity, but more importantly... the Variety of gibs!


Rib cages and wiggly intestines have joined the party!
One might even be inclined to say the game is now much
more of a Viscerafest than it ever was before!



A very small aesthetic change that we made, some pickups have little rings around them now. This was done for 2 reasons

• To help visually ground them a little bit more in the 3D space,
  
• To make them even easier to spot in the heat of combat.
  

There have been yet more updates and changes made on the enemy front.
So we should talk about that!

[h3]Spawnlings[/h3]
First... I have some bad news for all you spawn lovers...
the lil guy is being cut from the game's enemy roster...


I know I know... I can hear you all sobbing over the fact
that you will longer be able to feel the warm embrace of a lil blue slime exploding in your face, but the reason why they're being cut is quite simple. C2L5 is being altered as has been mentioned in the past, and the segment spawnlings prominently featured in will no longer contain them. Outside of a cameo in C2l1 and C2L7, they don't appear anywhere else in the game. Truth be told for narrative reasons there are not a whole lot of places in the game where they can be used, and the few places where they could make an appearance wouldn't see them adding much to the game.

With that said, if you are indeed a lover of the bouncy boys, fear not!
Because whilst the spawnlings are indeed vacating the premises,
a close friend of theirs will be stepping up to the plate...

[h3]Lore accurate Grenadiers[/h3]
So in Viscerafest, there is an enemy known as the grenadiers, and as you may be aware they wield grenade launchers, riveting stuff. But what you may not know is that the grenadier is actually host to a parasite.


That's right! That green dome isn't just for looks, it's a completely separate creature from the rest of the grenadiers body! That lil glob is known as a Ratakthul, and despite being parasites they are quite a sophisticated race.


I've really wanted to include the Ratakthuls in game for quite some time but could never really figure out how I wanted to go about doing it. My original idea was that they would function similarly to Duke Nukem's protozoid slimes, but there are several problems related to how grenadiers work that would see that not being a viable option.

But with decommissioning of the spawnlings, I saw an opportunity to repurpose their A.I. and thus Viscerafest finally features lore-accurate grenadiers! Upon killing the Scylla host body the Ratakthul parasite will detach itself and attempt to kill you on its own. They are, however, quite weak without a host, featuring a health pool low enough to allow you to pop them out of the air with a single punch. They're more of a minor nuisance type, but certainly, a nuisance to be wary of.



The Remake of C1L4 is on hold as more important tasks take center stage. But a decent amount of work has been done in starting the rework, and I have a generally solid idea of what we'll be adding/changing, so I thought I might give you all an overview of what our plans are for the Lil guy.

The level's opening is pretty much being entirely redone. The original level opened with the player in a small closet that immediately leads into a massive arena, and whilst that's... fine... it has inevitably led to a lot of newer players door-fighting the level's opening arena.


With the new ending of C1l3, the player finds themselves jumping down a massive garbage shoot, and will now spit them out into C1L4's new opening which features a trash compactor section.

Early WIP of opening Trash Compactor
After escaping the compactor the player will be led out to a balcony that hangs over the levels opening arena. Starting the level's opening fight will now see the player jumping down into the arena from above, effectively preventing the player from using the entrance to the arena itself as abusable cover.

The route to the green key used to escape the levels opening fight is being changed up a bit, but from here on out the levels flow and progress will be pretty similar to the originals with some key differences.


The pink key routes platforming section in the original was absolutely pathetic. Featuring such heights as the only major obstacle not working properly! And being ever so slightly too claustrophobic, a feature it shares with the storage area, which wouldn't you know it... is also in the pink key section!


This entire pink key route flows awkwardly in general and if may be honest it's one of the reasons C1L4 is my least favorite map of Chapter 1. Whilst conceptually this area will be pretty similar to its current version, I very much plan to address all the above, making the entire section a lot less clunky and sloppy. But finally... we need to talk about the ending...


C1L4's ending has always felt grossly anti-climactic to me. If you think about the map like a song, the bulk of the level has always felt like its first 2 verses, with the lava escape section feeling like a bridge that's supposed to build up to its final epic chorus... a chorus that never comes... because that's where the map stops.

I won't spoil what specifically we've got in the works for the new C1L4 finale. But I will say there are some rather fun narrative additions to its ending, and I think you guys will really like what's being added.



Viscerafest's Finale has pretty much taken up center stage when it comes to my priorities as of late. And as much as I'd love to talk about and show you guys some of what I've been working on that front, I honestly don't know if there's a corner of the map I could show you that doesn't contain spoilers for the game's ending.


But rest assured, it contains easily some of the screenshot-worthy sections in the whole game, and if all goes well it will be a suitably epic climax to Viscerafest's story...
OH YEAH, THE STORY!!!



SO!!! On top of the finale, I have been combing through the game's script this last month. Doing things like checking for potentially contradictory information, stuff that may just be generally incoherent, proofreading... you know... all the stuff you do when you're writing a story. But truth be told, when it comes to writing for Viscerafest I have grown an antagonistic relationship with my own mind where I feel I can no longer trust my judgment. Viscerafest is just so filled with lore that the game's plot is just... stories within stories within stories...


Because of this, I felt it necessary to drag in some outside feedback from our community to help make sure that the game's plot is even remotely comprehensible. Thankfully it was, meaning I may not in fact be losing my mind. But some adjustments were made in response to some of the suggestions and feedback given by these fine folks, which I am eternally grateful for.

With all that said... I thought I might give you guys a... small peek into the madness. As you may know, we plan to add a lorebrary to Viscerafest. A place where you can pour through the lush world of the game in gruesome detail... So I thought I might give you guys a small excerpt from one of the unlockable bits of lore you guys will get to see in the full game. Keep in mind this is also WIP and will likely be tightened up and further refined, but without further ado!!!

The Tome of Ra-dal The Tome of Ra-dal is a Lithelekian religious work penned in the early 500's. The book claims to have been authored by the Lithelek Ra-dal, an infamous heretic who led a weeks-long revolt against the priesthood of the Orellio Church of Nodens, in 538, before being decapitated on the step of the church
by an unseen assailant.

Preface
The book opens with an introductory preface that recounts a bizarre meeting Ra-dal had with a stranger late one evening during a personal ceremonial cleansing. The Stranger is described as "An obsidian quadrupedal invertebrate, with a fragmented and distorted torso, robed in tattered black rags, and bearing a face like that of marble or glass."

The figure confronts Ra-dal in his residence and asks if "He would like to know that which binds the cosmos and what it hides therein." Ra-dal obliges, and the Stranger demands that the Lithelek
write down everything he is told. -


Truth be told... there's probably a host of things that have slipped my mind or that I have intentionally left out for the sake of not wasting your time. But regardless! I hope you enjoyed the read! Lots of craziness going on as of late both in life and with development, but it's probably worth noting it will likely be a good few months before you hear from us in a dev log again, but don't worry! That's we'll be at Realms Deep 2023 next month with a brand-new trailer!!!



But until then! We thank you all for your support, praying all is going well for you wonderful folks, and as always... We hope you have a wonderful day! Adios!!!