Well, well, it's been 4 years already. Lives Out was created during a game jam and has been a hobbyist project since then. As such, people involved in its development are not all the time committed to it. This is the main reason why this project's development has been so slow.

After the initial rush of enthusiasm past the Asylum Jam in 2015, we came up with big ideas for the future of the game, but did not deliver or even share anything at all.

Now, even though content-wise the project as made very little progress, I've still dedicated a lot of my spare time during the past few years to improving this little game on the programming front. And I think that it is quite ridiculous for an amateur project like Lives Out to hold back on releasing new stuff instead of sharing it at once with the few kind souls that have kept interest in it. My teammates agreed, so today at long last, we're releasing an update (v0.20.0), containing an extensive amount of changes (they're listed below), and starting now, we will release anything new directly, because who knows when we can make consistent progress otherwise.

Much love to any of you who are still interested in our game after all this time !

TECHNICAL CHANGES

Data-driven episodes : interactions and scripting are not hardcoded anymore like they were originally. episodes are created using a separate program written to that end only, and which can be downloaded and installed separately. Instead of starting the game directly the player needs to choose an episode in a list (which is populated with installed episode files data)

Auto-save : based on videos that people sent us, most players were annoyed by being forced to redo entire sections of the episode, when there was no real gameplay to begin with. I've implemented a basic savegame system so that the player does not have to redo all sections of the episode if the game over screen is reached. Saves are automatic. The autosaved game can be directly loaded from the title screen.

Added support of game controllers (work in progress) : the player still has to bind the device and assign button/axis mapping either using presets or manually in the options menu to replace keyboard. We could probably "smart-guess" how to assign mappings depending on the detected controller name and auto-bind it.

Complete lighting system overhaul : lights are now independent objects that can either be setup in an area or attached to a character, and the player character as well as collidable walls/grounds stay in darkness for proper feedback. There are still glitches when lights of different types overlap though.

Collisions : in the original demo, there were no collisions but just hardcoded 2D location limits. Now collidable tiles in the environment are dynamically taken into account by the character object, as it should be.

GAMEPLAY CHANGES

Status screen overhaul, with added inventory management : actual items that can be collected and combined to craft new ones (the torch for instance, has to be crafted). Icons and descriptions are shown for each item.

Light control : using a game controller, the player can control the light using the right analog stick (this does not work with the mouse at the moment though). This is meant to be a key gameplay feature for proper level design in later episode developments. For instance, items can only be collected if lit. Some interactions within an area could also be available in light only.

Also in the status screen, personal light source management (still a work in progress) - we're thinking about using a power vs duration tradeoff mechanic.

Groundwork for interacting with NPCs (those kinda red bloody things), and the role of lighting. NPCs are fairly new, so some stuff is still not implemented (basic stuff like how AI interacts with walls).

CONTENT CHANGES

Being forced to backtrack when reaching the station was a very clear annoyance for a lot of people, so using the new collectible items, it is now allowed to complete the demo without having to go back if they picked up anything useful (no plot device anymore), meaning that the episode could technically end differently based on the player's choice, and not all the episode's content can always be seen.

Visuals/animation : the demo episode has been reworked so that the ground and walls are actually collidable (no more invisible wall in the tunnel), and the NPC during the closing scene of the demo has been redesigned.