Hey everyone, VS | Renee here – and you’re in for a treat with a collaborative blog this week! A huge thank you to VS | Dave for helping out with a quick recap on a big week for Stray Souls!
STRAY SOULS
2023 Steam Next Fest Recap
After the conclusion of Steam Next Fest, we want to express our heartfelt gratitude and take a moment to catch our breath. We sincerely thank you for your participation!
Steam Next Fest was designed exclusively for you to explore the exciting world of upcoming indie games. We are thrilled that tens of thousands of you downloaded our demo, watched our livestreams, and generously shared your valuable feedback with us. Your time and support mean the world to the Stray Souls team, and we cannot emphasize enough how grateful we are to have such a passionate community.
The highlight of Steam Next Fest for us was the opportunity to finally place our game in your hands, allowing you to try it out and provide us with your valuable feedback. Whether you enjoyed the demo or not, we genuinely appreciate your honest opinions. Rest assured, we carefully review all of your feedback, including the constructive criticism, as we seek areas of improvement and strive to polish our game further.
One common feedback we received was that the demo’s duration fell short, and we completely understand. On one hand, we take it as a positive sign that you were having a great time and didn’t want it to end. On the other hand, we acknowledge that there is still so much more we have yet to showcase.
Many of you also expressed nostalgia for our original alpha demo from a couple of years ago, and you wished that our new demo resembled it more. Well, we have fantastic news for you! That particular level still exists in the game but has undergone significant enhancements to deliver an even better visual and gameplay experience. Would you like a sneak peek?
And guess what? You won’t have to deal with pushing shopping carts around to solve puzzles anymore! 😂
Creating a demo for a narrative-driven game like Stray Souls presents its challenges, especially when considering the intricate twists and turns of the story. We had to carefully select a portion of the game that wouldn’t spoil the overall narrative. Despite the police station level being quite deep into the game, we chose it to showcase combat and introduce players to the controls through a miniboss encounter with the Glutton.
While we’re thrilled with the game’s progress, it’s important to keep in mind that the demo was extracted from a game that is still in development – it doesn’t fully represent the final product. When you revisit that particular section of the game in the future, you can expect a significantly different experience!
We still have a lot of work ahead of us, and we are eagerly looking forward to sharing more with you in the upcoming weeks!
Oh, and there’s a delightful surprise we’ve been holding onto, which we can’t wait to reveal. So, make sure to stay tuned!
After all, we wouldn’t want to disappoint Grandma, would we?
That’s all for today! Thanks for joining us for our Next Fest demo recap!
As always, if you have any content to share or questions for the team, please feel free to reach out. You can stay in touch with me and the rest of the Versus Evil team by joining our Discord and following us on our various social media channels.
~ VS | Renee
Stray Souls Community Manager
