My thoughts after 2.5 years on board

[Haspen]

A brief note: I am very active member of Discord community, and a modder, and a wiki editor, and has been with this game since it hit Steam, and I avoided Steam discussions except in few instances... but now I feel like I have to say something.

I bought the game in Feb 2020, it was fresh and hot. You can't say that the art isn't just nice, it hits that pixel aesthetic that tickles many. Turn-based combat and RPG stats? Anime look and feel? Horror and mystery? Point-and-click adventure elements, too? For 15$ or regional equivalent? Come on, who could say no to that!

Then in March/April same year we had Moriko, the Botanist mystery, and modding kickstarted with custom events. Discord went crazy, we had great artists, great writers, great stuff all around. I modded the game extensively myself, and has been, since then. You probably saw my username if you looked for mods. Or if you are a Twitch streamer, I probably accosted you under name Haskitty, shilling custom content to you and your viewers (I still do that by the way!)

Then the hiccup with Never-Ending Summer. Well, it lasted 3 months, give or take a few days, but the update was massive (relatively speaking), with a new mystery (Bulletin), a new character (Yashiro), new items, new options... all was good. "If we get this much in 3 months silence, we really shouldnt complain." T'was the general consensus, besides naysayers and those who already gave up.

In fact, Autumn 2020 was the best; a month after N-ES came the Halloween update with Timeline B and even MORE new content. Modders got custom enemies capability to play with, so even those not satisfied by vanilla game could hop on Discord and browse for themselves all those hunderds of files people so passionately made. Glorious. Wonderful. What else could we ask for? Oh look, dev on Twitter is posting in-progress teasers and explains new features and stuff, the game lives! Hurrah!!

And then came December... and panstasz goes *poof*. "He did it before" I say to myself, and other fans say to themselves, "its probably normal to him, kinda weird behavior, but okay, lets just wait". So I waited. Everyone waited. We waited patiently, we waited a month, two, three, in the meantime the community was quite lively and heck, the modding section on Discord continued to flourish, maybe at slower pace, but it did, boosting the game's replayability to sky-high levels. Some good people left, and never came back, because not everyone has patience of a rock to keep waiting. Understandable, if a bit disheartening.

By that time came Summer 2021, and there was still silence. This riled up quite a few people, and I am not gonna disparage them at all, because they had the right. I myself realized that something wrong was going on here, and second-hand info came that the dev is just swamped with all kinds of bad stuff, which I won't relate in detail. I did my thing, modding a bit, chatting a bit, playing other games to pass the time. But as the time went, I was getting very disheartened, until...

Mid-October came around with the resumed activity on panstasz' Twitter, and boy, what joy it was. It was mixed with feelings of sourness, because, hey, who in their sane mind leaves their community for 10 months of silence? But those nasty and sad voices became muffled by all the echoing screams of joy of thousands of people - mine included - about all the new content, and the promise of custom characters and custom mysteries finally being possible.

Last week of November and here it comes. The big one. The juicy one. 0.9.84e/f update (if you were lucky to have these, because as it turned out, panstasz didnt' compile it for all distribution platforms/operating systems he did before!). 2 new characters. 2 new mysteries. Oh dang, Challenge mode!? New old god!? Custom characters and mysteries! Panstasz promises hotfix, even posts changelog. Few days pass, people find bugs in the modded content, and everyone is 'hey panstasz, what's up with this?'

...and *poof* goes panstasz again. Some people got salty, some people got mad, some people went 'hey, it happened again, lets just wait!'. I was one of those people, I am quite possibly the biggest of the rabid of fans out there for this game. I am still a modder and I dished out lots of stuff for people (I hope they enjoy it, hard to gauge reaction from couple emojis on Discord, lol), and other modders did plenty of work. So it went as usual... only for a short while.

The hype died out much quicker than before. People didn't get drunk on new stuff as much as they did in the past, for obvious reasons. The only REASON-boosting occurences where the April con (I think it was PAX?) and then Tokyo Game Show where new content was shown, but this was second-hand info only from those con-goers who kindly shared it with us.

Then we have a curious situation, I believe it was 24th? 25th? October on panstasz instagram. Out of nowhere, he posts a photo of a lamp and labels it 'uzumaki' like some sort of creepypasta advertisting. Someone goes and asks him right there and then, 'hey panst, when WoH update for Mac' and instantly panstasz replies 'this week!'.

Like, hello, what, huh, where, how?? Are you for real? "yo, this is fake" "yo we getting an update" "yo, what the f?" and yesterday (29th) the 0.9.9b Blood Moon update hits - or Blood Mood if you are perceptive enough to notice the typo. And you know what happened on Discord? There was approximately few hours of happiness (new mystery, new character), before the hype died. If you thought Steam Discussions was heated, boy, maybe don't go to Discord right now.

The bugs within the new content became evident very quickly. The brokedness of custom content was caught on moments later. And the greatest of mistakes panstasz made was creating new content... without bugfixes. There are dozens of bugs lingering since 0.9.84, and some even from 0.9.17, still untouched. And finally, I myself got pissed to the point of taking up a voice.

Thanks for coming to my Haspen Talk.
If you were/are a naysayer, come point fingers at me.
If you're fellow fan, come grumble with me.
If you're a potential new player... maybe you should really, really keep your wallet closed and wait for version 1.0 - after all, the rumors place it somewhere in 2023.
Just ignore the 'coming soon in 2020' on the store page to keep your sanity in the green.

[AuraoftheWest]

X game fans when a person has a life outside your little bubble.

[Haspen]

I will now mention stuff I didn't mention before, because it kinda skids along that uncomfortable grey line of game development 'what should be said and what should not'.

I know panstasz has a life. He's a dentist, a single dev, living in Poland - people who looked a bit deeper into his twitter can see all that - which is not exactly best place to live right now. I could visit his hometown quite possibly this evening if I hopped on a bus (edit: okay, maybe a train, buses here are quite slow), because just like the dev, I live in Poland, few cities over. But enough real-life stuff.

In response to your comment: there are errors in this game that are nothing but a singular line, string, or even number, wrongly attached or pointed to wrong part of the game. These errors do not take 2 years to sit and simmer, these errors take 'grab a coffee and go through the list to fix the most obvious and easiest ones' sort of playtesting session.

I would also like to point out that all this new content required new pieces of code specifically written for it. Now I would like to offer you a counter-position: "if he has a life, troubles, difficulties, stuff to do, is swamped with all these kinds of things - why do we get all this new, time-consuming content before we get bug fixing measures that in some instances take few minutes."

You may say "what do you know, you're no game dev."

Because the game executable has been disassembled. Not by me, but there are people who did it, already few times over, and I've talked with them extensively on this topic. Even better, a Korean player who I've been told (thanks Rigor Mortis!), doesn't even use GMS2, has compiled the English game executable (the 0.9.84f version) with the errors fixed and posted it to Discord, pointing it out to all how little work it took.

And I won't even go into the details that there are Korean and Russian (and I think Chinese?) versions of the game, fully translated and with errors fixed, floating about their respective parts of internet. If you're observant, you can catch some of the Twitch streamers from these countries playing those modified and translated versions.

You read that correctly; fans took the game, gutted it open, and fixed it for themselves.

Oh, and that fixed English 0.9.84f version? It was nuked from Discord along with the Korean user because, well, it did what it shouldn't: mess directly with game code, which is a no-no according to panstasz' wishes - there's lots of unused, unscripted, or simply placeholder stuff in the game code, which should remain hidden for now.

Thank you for coming over to Haspen Talk, Bing Bing Wahoo, your input allowed me to contribute even more on this topic, which as you can see, is very, very complicated, delicate, and extensive to write about.

[ORSiENE]

Originally posted by Bing Bing Wahoo:

X game fans when a person has a life outside your little bubble.

why are you so people so quick to defend a dev that doesn't give a ♥♥♥♥ lmao

[Argonisgema]

I can't exactly remember when i first bought the game but i did learn of it from a youtube video and found that the game was on gog. It was definitely not this year but i only just bought it here on steam and i can see that the full game is not finished.

[#1HeartThrobber]

Joined around a slight amount of time before the Moriko up, hopily we're in the final strech

[tmb48]

I joined after the STE update, all the way back in February. I agree with all your points. That said, what has made me become a critic isn't the half-baked update, but the lengthy radio silence.
I remember when, the first time this happened, it was the Never-Ending Summer update, which lived up to expectations. But time and time again, we'd get more prolonged periods, with ever briefer dev stays (so far he hasn't even shown up) and not so much as an explanation why.
As I described in the Discord, if Panstasz just turned up and said "I didn't feel like putting much effort", that's fine by me. Underwhelming but fine. Yet we had so little info, people would start to think the developer outright died. That's no way to interact with a community at all.

[Vengyr]

I honestly wouldn't mind if author just wrapped the game, and was excited about the new update... but man, the fact that the new character simply doesn't work properly is so disappointing.

Like this game is almost good for a release, just need a little patching up, but all the time between patches and we get a buggy mess in the end...

[JediMage]

Tbh i would rather have the dev make the game at the comfortable pace. It seems like the new update was rushed to get out at spooktober, and while i understand why, i think most of us would agree that we would rather get the bug free version later )
As an avid player, i enjoyed the heck outta this game before, then moved onto something else. Maybe i will come to replay it once 1.0 kicks in. Do i regret paying my rubles for it back then i bought it? Nah, i think dev deserves them for the game it was back then, even if no updates were made afterwards. But they are getting made, so even better i guess? So idk why people get all grumpy about dem updates. Dev could just as well said that the game was 1.0 in 2020 and sell all other stuff we get right now as dlc content. We get it for free, so its great.

[Ciaran Zagami]

I really don't give a damn how long the game takes to get finished, if it even gets finished at all.

Way I see it its a one man project and some times life just happens. I bought into the game knowing full well what a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ early access games are.

Has everyone just forgotten Starsector and stuff? Early access games go dead all the time.

Only reason I bought World of Horror was to support someone's vision and their creative work. Even if this is all we get and the game gets stuck in limbo till the end of time I'm okay with that because what we got is seriously fantastic.

Would I like more updates and content, yes.
Is panstaz a jerk? Probably.

But ultimately I'd give my money to something like world of horror over another Starsector or Mighty no9 again and again a thousand times over. I'd rather see people try and FAIL to make something cool then just fail without putting in effort.

[Haspen]

Originally posted by Vengyr:

I honestly wouldn't mind if author just wrapped the game, and was excited about the new update... but man, the fact that the new character simply doesn't work properly is so disappointing.

Like this game is almost good for a release, just need a little patching up, but all the time between patches and we get a buggy mess in the end...

Originally posted by JediMage:

Tbh i would rather have the dev make the game at the comfortable pace. It seems like the new update was rushed to get out at spooktober, and while i understand why, i think most of us would agree that we would rather get the bug free version later )
As an avid player, i enjoyed the heck outta this game before, then moved onto something else. Maybe i will come to replay it once 1.0 kicks in. Do i regret paying my rubles for it back then i bought it? Nah, i think dev deserves them for the game it was back then, even if no updates were made afterwards. But they are getting made, so even better i guess? So idk why people get all grumpy about dem updates. Dev could just as well said that the game was 1.0 in 2020 and sell all other stuff we get right now as dlc content. We get it for free, so its great.

Originally posted by Ciaran Zagami:

I really don't give a damn how long the game takes to get finished, if it even gets finished at all.

Way I see it its a one man project and some times life just happens. I bought into the game knowing full well what a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ early access games are.

Has everyone just forgotten Starsector and stuff? Early access games go dead all the time.

Only reason I bought World of Horror was to support someone's vision and their creative work. Even if this is all we get and the game gets stuck in limbo till the end of time I'm okay with that because what we got is seriously fantastic.

Would I like more updates and content, yes.
Is panstaz a jerk? Probably.

But ultimately I'd give my money to something like world of horror over another Starsector or Mighty no9 again and again a thousand times over. I'd rather see people try and FAIL to make something cool then just fail without putting in effort.

Doing art for World of Horror is passion project.
Writing scripts for World of Horror is passion project.
Coming up with ideas and new content for World of Horror is passion project.
All that is fine in 100% and I am also glad panstasz is steering this because he has ideas, he has passion, he has means to complete this project.

Playtesting and bugfixing the game isn't a passion project, its quality control thing that people would do for free if panstasz asked them to do it. THIS CAN BE DONE INDEPEDENTLY FROM CONTENT CREATION.

This is the whole point of argument.

Game is NOT bad. Game IS great. I am not hating the game, I love the game since I bought it in February 2020. Would a hater spend 450+ hours on this game?
But the Game is bugged and requires fixes. And those fixes, in most of instances, would take few minutes each.

All that has been proven, because people I know, who are keeping away from panstasz, YsbrydGames, and main World of Horror community have done all this several times already and fixed every recent version.
INCLUDING THIS ONE.
WITHIN FEW HOURS AFTER RELEASE. THAT'S HOW EASY IT IS TO FIX WORLD OF HORROR
AND THEY CANNOT SHARE THOSE FIXES WITH ALL OF YOU BECAUSE THE DEVELOPER SAYS 'NO, THIS BAD'.

I am not sure how I can explain this more simply.

[ORSiENE]

My personal opinion is pretty much the same - I really like this game (I have about 140+ hours in it and have made several custom characters - himbos are good actually) but it really does bother me how the game is seemingly getting more and more unstable with every update. I totally get that the dev is one guy and that game dev is a hobby for him because he has A Lot going on, but would it kill him to hire a couple extra people?

I also saw a post floating around that his regular playtesters were not consulted for the release of the newest update, so make of that what you will - definitely seems like he just wanted it out for halloween regardless of how finished it was

[Δchinlabs]

Thanks for sharing all this. Really helps shed light on things. I'd been planning a livestream of this game all month, completely unaware of a pending update. Sure enough, my excitement of checking out a coincidental update was quickly killed by game-crashing bugs that were not present while I was testing stuff out in a previous build. Completely blindsided me.

The complete absence of developer feedback - not to me, I don't post on Discord, but to *anyone* - is really disheartening and discouraging. I don't like the thick veil of secrecy separating this game from its most devoted fans. I don't want to make mods for it if it's just going to change under the hood one day at random, leaving good people like you scrambling to suss out the details and spread the word to everyone else. (Thanks for doing that btw, your modding almanac was invaluable)

Best wishes to the dev and the community. As much as I enjoy the game in its current state, there's so much room left to grow; I'd love to see its full potential realized. I really hope one day the dev realizes that they've got free help lying out in the open and accepts it with open arms, because otherwise I don't see this game growing more than an inch a year.

[Butts McGee]

I kinda wish the dev would reach out to the folks who are generating bugfixes and work with us. Nor throwing shade, there's legit hype amongst us dedicated to see this game shine.

I'd gladly volunteer to provide programming support to clean up structural issues that are tripping up current and future development. Especially if that means the dev can focus more on creating new interesting content and less on the technical struggles of making a game work.

EDIT: In case someone from the publisher or the dev himself is actually reading this: I'm dead serious. Reach out to me, I've been in software for 20 years now and would love to bring those skills to the table and help WoH be the best game it can be.

[Raging ♥♥♥♥]

I feel you man, great points. I hope dev gonna do the smart, the right thing sometime in the future.

Btw, where can I get that fan patch you been talking about?

[Butts McGee]

Available in another thread on this forum. We're currently working on getting our changes merged for a mega bugfix patch.

The mega patch will likely be posted to Nexus when it's ready to go, but we'll probably want to get some playtesters to verify we didn't break anything in the process of fixing stuff.