1.5 Update and Future Projects

Update 1.5 and what comes after...

First of all, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has played, both players who've been around since the demos on ITCH.IO and those who are just trying the game today. I've seen so much passion from this small community it really makes this development journey feel rewarding, I've been inspired by that passion and I'd like this to be rewarding for you all too, so at the end of this announcement I'll be giving you all a sneak peak at my next game.

For the 1.5 update I wanted to focus on polishing the dialogue, images, achievements, and remove some repetitions in the script. With this update I hope to leave it polished enough to move onto other projects while addressing some concerns from the community. For those of you creating guides: this is the last time I plan on ever changing achievements or routes to endings, any update beyond this will be bugfixes and further polish.

Content:

• 1 new ending

• 2 new background sprites

• 2 updated background sprites

• 2 new achievements

• new jacket interactions

• new knife interactions

Bugfixes:

• no longer able to access day2 Jacob skatepark event at night

• Incorrect weapon used in dialogue (alley)

• background error after funnynumber scare event removed (deadendrd)

• repetition of searching mom's room removed

• "braving the cold" now resets stored jacket value

• many typos/grammatical errors removed

Discord:

I have created a Steeze Games Discord server where you can discuss Lake of Darkness and theorize over my next projects. However being a one man band doesn't leave me with much time to watch the chat so if it becomes too difficult to moderate it will be taken down. In other words; be on your best behavior or else it'll be deleted and you might not see exclusive updates I'll be posting there.

https://discord.gg/PAwPf5YkAX

Some confusion:

After 1.4 there seemed to be a lot of confusion on how to get the "true" ending, some saying it's no longer possible. It is still possible. One step just changed slightly and it wasn't listed on the changelog. Since 1.4 Branden's sweater can only spawn in the woods at night on day 3, this was always intended however the code wasn't functional for the longest time. I hope this helps.

Next project:

Many of you may remember me mentioning a "new game" I was working on back during patch 1.2, that is being developed in Gamemaker and is very broad in scope, it's going to take a while. I imagine that Gamemaker project taking me upwards of a year and you all deserve content sooner than that. I don't want to make visual novels forever however I want to use the Renpy experience I've built over the years of developing Lake of Darkness and put it into a more densely packed story. I'm also not quite done with the world of Lake of Darkness, so I want to introduce you to Lake of Darkness: Cide Story

Steam post imageSteam post imageSteam post image

Lake of Darkness: Cide Story is a prequel where you follow Casey on the night of her disappearance. Taking place over just one day instead of three you're tasked with trying to mend your broken relationships and discovering the truth all while a familiar darkness stalks you.

Keep an eye out on the Steeze Games Discord server and on the Steam discussions page for new updates. Assuming development goes well I could have a Demo out on ITCH.IO by the summer. So stay tuned, and thanks again for being a member of this awesome community.