Demo update: the first batch of polish before July 24

When we moved the launch to July 24, we said we'd use the extra time for optimization and polish. The first batch of that work is live in the demo now. Here's what changed, plus a quick note on the full game.

New player experience

• Your first two corridors are now guided. The first is always clean, the second always has an anomaly, and the wrong exit stays locked until you make the right call. Get both right and the game stops holding your hand: every corridor after that draws from the full anomaly pool.

• If you head for the exit on your first pass without checking the side rooms, the game now points it out.

Anomalies

• Visual pass on one of the anomalies, now with real-time physics.

• New sound effect for the flickering corridor light.

Controls, saves, accessibility

• All menus work with controller and keyboard now.

• Added a colorblind mode.

• Saves sync through Steam Cloud.

• Menus display correctly on ultra-wide monitors.

• Pausing actually pauses the game now.

Performance and graphics

• First launch picks better default graphics settings for your hardware.

• Added a Lighting Quality setting and a resolution scale slider.

• Fixed corridor lighting looking wrong on the Low setting.

• Fixed texture problems on 2 GB graphics cards (GTX 760 / R7 260X class).

• Shadow rendering optimizations for older machines.

Localization

• Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai system languages are now detected correctly.

• Menu and hint text is translated in every supported language, and longer hints no longer get cut off.

Fixes and small things

• Escape no longer re-opens the pause menu right after closing it.

• The settings menu fits on screen without scrolling on more displays.

• Added a wishlist link for the full game to the pause menu.

• Added anonymous crash detection so we can catch stability problems faster.

That's it for the demo for now. All our time is going into the main game: performance work and final polish ahead of the July 24 launch. The 30% launch discount is still on, and the supporter pack releases alongside the game.

If you find something odd in the demo that we didn't put there on purpose, tell us in the discussions. And if you haven't already, add Backrooms Anomaly to your wishlist so Steam can notify you the moment it's live.

Thanks for playing.