Hi friends!

This week I took a break from bug fixes to work on some new content for Vidar, because it's always nice to have more game to play. This week, we're ready to preview how "Make it Work" will, well, work.

This quest is designed to do a few things: 

1. Move along Arpad's "leadership" plot. In case you've missed it, there's a window for Arpad to get a message from a long-dead friend about needing to step up and be the hero of Vidar. Currently, after you deliver that message, Arpad's plot kind of stalls; he won't give you anymore quests, he'll rarely participate in others, and he won't even give you a reward for "Bury the Hatchet." So rude!
2. Give you one more opportunity to reach the Wolf Cave. The further along we get in the cave, the less likely any given quest will be available to you. With it currently taking an average of 5 days to reach the Dark Cave, and with very few people doing the prerequisite quests by then to reach the Wolf Cave (either "Scared of Shadows," or both "Bring Him Home" and "Man's Best Friend") I wanted an easier-to-complete but rarer-to-obtain prereq path to reach this cave.
3. Provide earlier access to the Sprint Shoes. Currently, Piri is the only way to get this much-coveted tool, and you have a narrow window to get them from her in the Water Cave. It felt a little penalizing. Moreover, they're at their most useful in the Dark Cave, when you're racing to light torches. Placing them as a possibility earlier in the game made sense.

And so, if you happen to be pushing Arpad along his leadership plot, you'll have the opportunity to get "Make it Work" in two different ways. First, if you happen to have "Den of Darkness" but Etel doesn't join you in entering the Wolf Cave, Arpad will step up to join you instead. Trade a coward for an indecisive hero? I'm not sure it's any better, but it's something. Second, if you can't get either "Scared of Shadows" or "Hunting Party" (the two current paths into the Wolf Cave), then Arpad will offer the quest to you as well. 

Arpad has some extra tools up his sleeve in the Wolf Cave, and can be used in ways to make the puzzle a little bit easier. People trying to avoid Etel's....lack of usefulness...might angle to try to get the quest this way instead.

"Make it Work" is one of 4 new quests we're adding in the upcoming patch, hopefully you'll find it rounds out our game a little bit more!

In addition to new quests, we've got some new mechanics cropping up in the Water Cave. Generally speaking it's been a good idea to try to "drain" each map to move forward, in order to reach levers etc. That's not a safe assumption anymore:

​We'll have more previews ready for you next week!

​- Dean

Hi friends!

We've had two weeks now to work on some additional tweaking of Vidar, and version 0.8.0.2 was launched this past Friday to address some additional bugs that were cropping up.

A personal favorite bug was that people were reporting they couldn't switch tools in the Dark Cave between the shovel and the lantern. Which, yes, that's what it seemed like. But the real bug was that they had managed to make it to the Dark Cave without ever picking up the lantern. The "can you switch tools?" enabler was off - because you only had one tool in inventory - but it would still seem like you had two. This has been solved! You can't go to the Dark Cave without first physically picking up the lantern. People who have already experienced the bug have had the lantern auto-added to their inventory.

Additionally, I took the opportunity to remove the last room of the Dark Cave. I saw a lot of people on streams struggling with it, and so far in my metrics have seen very few people make it out of that room (and even fewer make it out in a reasonable time). I'll be redesigning it and bringing it back as a possible variant. For now, I want to make sure people are getting to the Water Cave without getting too frustrated to keep playing. Otherwise, I'll never collect data on the second half of the game. 

Finally, a lot of dialogue was written for the upcoming content patch. All of the conversations for "Make it Work", "Vigil," and "Music to My Ears" was added behind a version control system, so while it's there, it won't unlock until we reach the actual content patch.

On the docket next week is to continue progress on the content patch, as well as fixing a few additional non-progress blocking bugs. I'm also hoping to start working on improving the menus!

- Dean

Hi friends!

What a whirlwind week it's been. As I posted last week, Vidar went into Early Access on Steam this past Tuesday. Since then, there have been a lot of reviews, streams on Twitch, Youtube series, etc. and keeping track has been a bit exhausting. But in a good way!

We've also gotten plenty of bug fixes, and pushed out the first major bug fix patch this past weekend. Right now I'm trying to group as many things as I can into a hotfix, and also any changes need to now be retroactive, which is taking some time. I'll try to get out a patch this weekend of next.

Also, I've reevaluated the plan for monthly content patches. I think rather than deploying two-three quests and a few new puzzles, it would be more valuable for both the player and for me if I do less frequent, bigger content updates. This would allow me to do more thorough testing, and use those moments as a big marketing announcement. It would allow players who have set aside Vidar during Early Access (having played through it once already) to come back sink their teeth into something meaty. 

So two planned patches - Blinded Me With Science and Caught In Your Web - have been combined into one. That will be releasing, along with additional features, at the beginning of April. It's a lot, so I've already started to break some ground. We'll have more on that patch in the coming weeks.

That's all for this week!
- Dean