Darkwood v3.0

Title: Darkwood
Genre: Action, Adventure, Indie, RPG, Early Access
Developer: Acid Wizard Studio
Publisher: Acid Wizard Studio
Release Date: 24 Jul, 2014

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Major Changes

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Consequences of death
From now on, dying means: dropping your inventory at the place you have been killed, and waking up somewhere in the biome where your current hideout is. This may sound easy, but in the later biomes returning to the place where you have died is sometimes very tricky.

Extracting essence
Mushrooms in the woods are more plentiful, but only certain rare kinds can be cooked for essence. This allows for bigger "trap" areas with a reward for successfully navigating them.

Things that can be cooked will rot after a certain amount of time after they have been picked up. Where do you find essence, you ask? Well...

The night


During the night, you will not only see creatures, but also mutated plants. You will need to be on the lookout for them if you want to harvest their essence!

Light now plays a bigger role, as staying in the shadows for too long will be a bad idea, so better fill up your generator before it gets dark!

Sound
You will need to pay much more attention to the sound you generate from now on. This means interacting with doors, moving objects, barricading etc. will bring attention to your location. This will be very important during the night, as you do not want to alert anyone to your presence.

AI changes
Stealth is harder and easier at the same time. If you are reckless, you will easily get spotted. But if you keep a low profile, you will be able to sneak through areas. Enemies will also be more forgiving in letting you know if they are alerted to your presence.

Minor:
New stuff:
- Added a popup notifying you about entering a biome.
- [Experimental] If you are inside a location, you will be able to see it marked on the map.
- You can pick up dropped items from the ground if you are inside your inventory.
- When quitting the game, you will get notified about the time of the last save.

Changes:
- Player will no longer receive damage when waking up.
- Changed balance of gasoline for generators.
- The mushrooms you get after drinking from the well depend on what hideout you are currenly in.
- Health / stamina potions have been removed (in favour of skills). This is temporary, as we need to find other ways to upgrade these stats.

Fixes:
- Loot no longer respawns after time in some locations.
- Electronic game is now properly added to journal.
- Inventory icons no longer disappear.
- Fixed having multiple items selected on hotbar after death.
- Fixed desynchronizing aim indicator.
- It's no longer possible to appear outside of a underground location when travelling to it.
- Fixed bug causing the pathfinding grid to get corrupted after loading.
- Fixed issues with reloading the game after dying in a underground location.
- Fixed several issues with mimics.
- Fixed weird behaviour with Wolf when traveling to Doctor's house again.
- Fixed ambient music sometimes cutting off.
- Fixed map and poison overlays intersecting each other.
- Fixed the fog in a few locations.
- Fixed disappearing enemies in front of the player.
- Added missing sounds to some furniture.
- Fixed not getting reward after dream if your inventory was full.
- Fixed rabbits being blind sometimes.
- Fixed generator not emitting light if it was previously drained from fuel.
- Fixed a gap in the trees at the Doctor's house, enabling the player to leave the location's bounds into the void.
- Fixed being able to drink from the well even though it was day.
- Fixed some issues with loading underground locations.
- Optimized loading meshes.
- Fixed information popup appearing in main menu.

We're very happy with this update, as it fixes some major issues with how leveling / dying worked before, and lays a foundation for really cool nights. It also introduces some new issues in the long run (like gasoline being a limited resource), but nothing that can't be mended with future updates.

This will probably be one of the last updates containing major changes to gameplay mechanics. After we fix a few more big things that we're unhappy with, we can finally move on to adding more content and polishing existing mechanics, yay!

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About This Game

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PLEASE READ BEFORE BUYING:
Darkwood is in Early Access right now. This means the game will have bugs (ranging from minor annoyances to not being able to run the game at all) and will change during development. Your savegames will be wiped on each update, which will happen about once a month. However it may happen that if we are in the middle of implementing a new chapter, or making a transition to a newer version of our game engine, these updates may be slower. If these things bother you and you'd rather just play the finished game, simply wait until the final release.
PLEASE READ THE KNOWN ISSUES THREAD BEFORE BUYING

Darkwood is a unforgiving, story-driven survival horror with a procedurally generated, open world. If you crave for a deep and rewarding experience with dense atmosphere, memorable characters, satisfying exploration, crafting and challenging combat, Darkwood will suck you in for days.

The fear of unknown is powerful. Your senses will be deceived by Darkwood's surreal terrors. No answer will be given to you for free, yet somewhere in the woods lies the truth, an explanation to what has happened in this godforsaken place.

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Key Features

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Randomly generated, open world.
The first chapter of the game.
Several skills and perks to choose from when leveling your character.
Several types of enemies, each having a different set of behaviours.
Choices and consequences. These will be much more visible in the later chapters.
Crafting, barricades and traps.
Mysteries, secrets, and surprises!
A couple of melee and (rare) ranged weapons.
A few NPCs to talk, trade with, complete tasks for, or kill.

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System Requirements

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Minimum:
OS: Windows Vista or later
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8Ghz or equivalent
Memory: 3 GB RAM
Graphics: Geforce 8800GT / ATI Radeon HD 4850
Hard Drive: 2 GB available space
Additional Notes: Requirements may change during development. Minimum resolution: 1280x768

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