Hi friends!

At long last, Vidar is available on Steam Early Access! Buy it, review it, love it, mourn the death of several NPCs. You know, a usual Tuesday.

This has been a period of a great deal of reflection for me. Macro forces in the geopolitical world feel like they're punching me in the gut (for those who may be reading this and may not know, my dad and his family all immigrated from Iran, and many are still there) and I'm trying to smile and celebrate this milestone in a 3-year project of mine. What started out as a hobby as become a full time career...and hopefully today will sustain that for at least a little longer! I've met some amazing people through this journey that I now can call friends, and have been treated as a peer and equal in an industry for which I've had zero preparation, zero training, and zero education. 

I hope that the world is enthusiastic about what I have made here during this time. And that the game gives some people some amount of enjoyment, reflection, or whatever it is they came to Vidar for.

This upcoming week my attention will be on bug reports, primarily assessing priorities and quickly addressing any game-crashing or game-breaking bugs. After that, attention will turn back to the next content patch, "Blinded Me With Science," which is designed to 1) further round out the Dark Cave and 2) add additional puzzles in those places where there is only one slotted. I hope to also add a few little features that will make the game smoother as we go, and by that time, I think we'll have the Steam Overlay (finally) for the Windows Version.

We've had a few patches since the last post and I'd be remiss not to include notes here! See you in Vidar, friends!
​- Dean

• Puzzle 18, Option 3 has been edited to add additional breaking ice (to prevent getting stuck in a loop)
• "Failed Quests" are now "Uncompletable Quests"; the journal font is now gray instead of red
• Fixed some reset issues regarding bases in the Ice Cave
• Your current location is now identified on the teleport menu
• The entrance to the wolf cave has been blocked until you have a specific quest to enter; exit is prevented if Etel or Groa are with you
• Key bindings now correctly work on in-game movement
• Fixed a Z-layering issues with a tree in Vidar West
• Fixed some resets in Ice Cave 4b
• Eating mushrooms no longer crashes the game on Steam
• The entrance to the Dark Cave is now less likely to spawn in a super weird place
• Giving away the pocketwatch will now properly hide the timer display
• Fixed some of Rebeka's dialogue

A Little Something

• This quest now properly fails if Borbalo dies

Bring Him Home

• Failing this quest will properly hide Groa and move Cail
• Tamas will no longer get stuck on this quest

Bury the Hatchet

• Fixed some typos
• Fixed Arpad's movement a bit after the cutscene
• The axe is properly removed from inventory now
• Added a graphic to update when the axe is placed

Hair of the Dog

• Borbalo's scotch no longer spawns if this quest is inaccessible

Love Letter

• Removed a spawn point for the mural in the Dark Cave which was blocked by an oil barrel

The Second Son

• The cave with Erik will now always close after day 3, regardless of the quest's status

Wake

• Fixed Dorottya's dialogue during this event
• Fixed the Problem of Two Tomis

War Never Changes

• Arpad will not crash the game on reminder
• Barnabas now talks to you
• Barnabas will now wait less time to open his door
• Fixed various cutscene typos
• Fixed Arpad's direction in the final cutscene
• Various journal fixes
• Various pathing fixes in Barnabas's house

Charity
Giving a key item to Csaba for charity will now fail the following quests appropriately, and will not freeze the relevant NPCs in a dialogue loop:

• A Brighter Tomorrow
• A Little Something
• Artifacts in Ice
• Bury the Hatchet
• Dr. Spore
• Faith in the Dead
• Hair of the Dog
• Light in the Dark
• Not a Thief
• Residue
• Sketched Out
• Threnody
• To Feed a Village
• To House a Village
• War Never Changes
• Wake
• What's Yours is Mine
• Words of Wisdom

Mac/Linux

• Screen flash support added
• Font updates
• Fixed a memory leak related to scene changes
• Fixed some issues with water depth transparency and fish

Hi friends!

Sorry for the late blog post this week, I think the holiday threw me off. That, and my usual weekly planning has been replaced with daily planning, since I feel like this game and all that it entails is just changing too quickly.

Since last week's post, I've deployed three patches, mostly in anticipation of the wonderful Anna Geek's stream of Vidar. Watching her play, compared to Hyper RPG's stream, was a lot of fun. For starters, Anna was focused much more on strategy and puzzle solving. And romancing the blacksmith, which as it turns out, is not an option in the game. Seeing some of the different puzzles, and the different quests that Anna chose to pursue, was also helpful (particularly since both channels share a great deal of the same community).

Several more preview articles came out this past week, including some favorites from:

• Stack Up, a gaming charity supporting our military and veterans
• GameCritics
• Bit Cultures

​
Not everything is sunshine and rainbows, and I'd be remiss to not talk about it here - this is a dev blog, right? This past week, I had a triple-whammy of rejections from Indie MEGABOOTH, IGF, and SXSW. That, and the fact that there's been no super-major press interest in Vidar since the store page launched, has been rough for morale. It's ok, though - we all push through!

Just a scant two weeks  until Early Access launch. I hope you're ready - I hope I'm ready!

​- Dean

Hi friends!

On this past Wednesday, I launched the Steam store page for Vidar, along with the trailer video. In connection with all of that, there was a huge press blitz that involved a few hundred emails. If you're curious about the nitty gritty of all of the press outreach, you can read my post on Gamedev.net. Since Wednesday, we've had a few fun mentions across the interwebs:

• Indie Hangover
• Entertainment Buddha
• Gaming Conviction

And we've also got some people doing LetsPlays on Youtube and streaming the game on Twitch. The biggest so far was HyperRPG yesterday with their show "MalikaVision." We had a steady 300 people in chat, and it was great to see someone play the game for so long! Vidar's randomness becomes more apparent the more people die off - the first day or two is kind of always the same. Five hours into the game in HyperRPG yesterday, you could really feel it.

I've been trying to keep up with all of these people playing the game now, and so we actually had two patches go out this past week with some bug fixes and quality of life improvements. That will likely be the cadence for next week as well.

Stay tuned for more coverage!

Hi friends! 

This upcoming month will be characterized by "aggressive polishing" of Vidar in anticipation of Early Access. However, tomorrow we launch the Steam Store Page and a huge press blitz, so not a ton of development happened this week. A few little clean up items here and there, though, so I thought it merited a patch.

We've also finalized the Linux downloader - Kickstarter backers who game on Linux and don't use Steam will finally be able to play the game. That brings us down to only those backers who were looking for something on itch or some other platform. We'll have updates for them shortly. 

Check back tomorrow for the trailer video as well!

- Dean