Hello!

The game has received another patch, so please take a look at all the changes.
We will be continuing to work on things throughout the month!


-Fixed an issue where you could collect a second Shrinkshroom in Ludwig's Lab
-Fixed an issue where viewing the secret ending would mute voice SFX temporarily
-Fixed an issue where the incorrect requirements were listed for the Quest "To Be Stronger"
-Fixed an issue where the Slimy Salesman will appear endlessly in Act 3 (You may need to buy another Thing from him to make him go away permanently in existing saves)
-Made the game credits less taxing on the game's memory
-Fixed a horrible typo in Dracula Manor
-Fixed an issue where character portraits were misasligned in an Act 3 segment
-Fixed an issue where the Quest "Friends Like These" could be started before it's supposed to be unlocked and mess with the Diary



-Spirit and Willpower rings have had their effectiveness lowered
-Nerfed Phantasmic Wind Slash
-Nerfed Million Candy
-Lowered the effectiveness of "Calming Cavort" from 40% of DP to 30%



-Lowered the amount of turns required to progress in the scripted fight at the end of "Slimy Business"
-Jackie and Mask Guy will now translate Pumplin dialogue for you
-Added more dialogue for Mr. Y via the Walkie Talkie, including one in act 4
-Painkiller will now sell Bean & Leaf drinks in Layla's Lane



-Changing the SFX Slider completely ignores character voices
-Using Jackie's ultimate will knock the BGM volume back to 100 regardless of where you set it
-Extended play periods can cause the game to crash during the ending sequence due to a memory leak. Until this is fixed, simply taking breaks and closing the game and re-opening it will refresh the cache and avoid the issue



-Additional Optional Party Member Dialogue during main story events
-Optional Dialogue for specific Party Members during fights in the Optional Dungeon
-Transformation aspect for Transmog Tongue and Gumball Gun



-Some way to keep track of what States do
-Enemy Bestiary
-Dream Colosseum allowing you to refight bosses with endgame stats







Now, we also wanted to take this opportunity to talk a little bit about The Future as well, since people are starting to make progress through the game with many actually beating it as well.
So let's go over some of the things we have lined up next, many of which are happening thanks to us reaching various Wishlist goals prior to launch!


Originally, we wanted to get this comic together and out BEFORE the game's launch to help hype it up, but unfortunately there was a lot more polishing necessary for launch, so it got put on the backburner. We still want to put it together, and I would even expect it before the end of the year, but don't expect a huge amount of "New Lore", this was just to hype up the game after all.


Another Wishlist Goal we reached was a Digital Artbook! It will take some time to put this together, so I would expect it to come out AFTER the Prequel Comic, but BEFORE the next thing we're going to talk about. We're excited to share all of our little doodles and concept art that resulted in the game you can play today. Most of them are not very good. I am sorry.

Now for the big thing everyone is probably wondering around.


First of all, what IS Act M?
Act M is going to be a short side story featuring none other than THE Mothman. We keep calling it DLC, but it's more like a small standalone game.
It will detail the story of HorrorVale from Mothman's perspective, not just the present but also before the events of HorrorVale AND directly after.
You'll be able to recruit a small gang of Cryptids to join you on your Mothy journey as Mothman is forced to face moral issues as well as his own demons.
This is a much shorter game with a much smaller scope than HorrorVale. At max, you can expect an 8 hour playthrough if you do everything. (Current Estimate)

As you can see from the patch notes, we're still currently working on polishing up HorrorVale, but once that's done, Development on Act M can begin. It's impossible to truly determine a time frame right now, because one factor affecting this is how "HorrorVale" itself does. Obviously, if I could work on Game Development full time, Act M will come out sooner rather than later. Sales for HorrorVale are somewhat promising currently, but we'll have to see how it's done at the end of the Year to really get a good scope of the game's performance. If things can pick up, perhaps Act M can come out mid next year! (That would be really cool.)


Oh yeah, about Launch...


We also wanted to talk a little bit about Launch, because it was very crazy!
We didn't entirely know what to expect given this was our first game, but launch was overwhelming to say the least. I was reading comments and Discord messages for what felt like a week straight.

One thing I certainly did not expect were the amount of Bugs and Issues found in Launch Week. I expected some for sure, but not to the extent there was, and not of the outright soft locking variety.
I deeply apologize for this, and the patience that people had was extremely re-assuring. I was working to get patches out as soon as I possible could. These issues were especially frustrating because many of them were the direct result of things I added or fixed about the game the WEEK right before launch.
I just want to clarify that our Team of Testers is a handful of dedicated Volunteers, who have helped us out on this long journey for no reason other than the goodness of their heart and passion for the project. Because their work was entirely volunteer work, I specifically never set deadlines or strong instructions on how to test, what to test, etc. I told them to just play the game whenever they want and report stuff they find. I'm just explaining this because I don't want anyone to think these launch issues were the result of poor testing on their part.

Personally, finding out about these issues was deeply upsetting for me.
I care very deeply about the experience of playing HorrorVale...
That is to say, I don't really mind if someone has a bad experience because they don't like the combat or the puzzles or the story, but what DOES bother me is if somebody has a bad experience because the game doesn't work as it should. So once again I am deeply grateful for everybody's patience that first week. I'm very happy to see that for the most part everybody had a great time anyway!

Truthfully, there were more things I wanted to include at Launch, and I would've liked it if I had time to play the game more myself, but it wasn't to be, and it felt very silly to delay the launch over things I could easily add launch week.
...Little did I know.

We will continue working on getting all the issues in the game fixed (including the big ones mentioned earlier!). We want to more or less be finished with patches by the end of October or early November (Outside of future smaller patches if more bugs are found) so we can move onto other things (Such as Act M...).

We hope everybody is enjoying their time in HorrorVale, and stay tuned for more!


-Dustin
Batworks Software

Hello!

The game has received another patch, so please take a look at all the changes.
We will be continuing to work on things throughout the month!

Bugs

-Fixed an issue where Pumplin Farm would give no rewards
-Fixed an issue where generator noises would persist after destroying one
-Fixed an issue where the wrong background was used in a rare enemy encounter at Dracula Manor
-Fixed an issue where Femur Breaker lack their voices in a certain area late game
-Fixed an issue where cutscene versions of Webs, Bolt, and Beatrice weren't getting disposed of properly
-Fixed an issue where you could become trapped in a room upon revisitng a location in "Tale of Two Birds"
-Fixed an issue where the Ring of Resolve and Ring of Fate used the wrong percentage
-Fixed an issue where the Farmers of Greenur Pasturs could clone themselves
-Fixed an issue where Raven wouldn't be levelled properly if you start her quest with the Mushroom already in your inventory
-Fixed an issue where later bosses couldn't do anything when Enraged
-Fixed an issue where a certain Secret Boss minions wouldn't re-appear properly
-Fixed an issue where the Battle song wouldn't reset after fighting two optional bosses
-Fixed an issue where the Act 2 Secret Boss would mute battle music entirely after it
-Fixed an issue where the player's sprite wouldn't properly reset after the boat minigame
-Fixed an issue where you could get stuck on a table when running from The Killer
-Fixed an issue where the Dance Off could be re-done by talking to a Receptionist in "Dance Till You Die"
-Fixed an issue where Kris' moves are out of order when transformed
-Fixed an issue where the third encounter with the Slime Salesman could be permanently killed
-Took some steps to hopefully mitigate memory issues explained later



-Slightly nerfed the Nethergrizz
-Slightly nerfed the Nethermound
-Reduced the damage of "Cursed Stance" and the chance of inducing Rage
-Nerfed "Pumplin Pirouette" slightly
-Nerfed "Missile Volley"
-Increased the damage of "Burning Comet"
-Nerfed the Plush Backpack
-Also Nerfed the Ring of Resolve and Fate
-Nerfed "Sucrose Meltdown"
-Made the Annoying Clowns more Annoying
-Buffed "Hookshot"
-Buffed "Rifle Beam"



-Reduced the respawn timer for Rotten
-Moved the Orange coffin in the Underside to a better location
-Reworded a hint in DracCorp Blood Bank
-Added a "hint" to Dollops last request
-Marty will now tell you which locker is his to avoid confusion
-Marty will now appear in the Breaker Room if you interact with the Breaker Box at least
once to offer to solve the puzzle for you in exchange for 100 Candy
-Made the moveable blocks in Derelict Dungeon very slightly lighter than the rest
-Made farming for Candy via Hard Sell a lot more obnoxious and boring
-Made it more obvious how to start "Cat's Out of The Bog"
-Changed the solution for the puzzle in "The Dark Side" to something more reasonable
-Added a reward for finding all Scaries
-Changed some misleading dialogue from Edna



-Changing the SFX Slider completely ignores character voices
-Using Jackie's ultimate will knock the BGM volume back to 100 regardless of where you set it
-Extended play periods can cause the game to crash during the ending sequence due to a memory leak. Until this is fixed, simply taking breaks and closing the game and re-opening it will refresh the cache and avoid the issue