Arid news & patch notes

Hi Survivors! First of all, we want to thank you again for the response to the game since release! We have been reading all the comments on both our Discord and Steam Forum and we are currently struggling to keep up with all the great content that you are sharing with us! Since many from the community enjoyed the sounds of ARID and the Atacama, our composer, Flavio Cangelosi, put some extra effort to make sure that our dynamic soundtrack could be packaged as a complete auditory experience. I am pleased to announce that ARID's Official Soundtrack is now available on Steam as a FREE DLC. Both in FLAC and MP3 320 kbps formats. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1688560/Arid__Official_Soundtrack/ I'll take this occasion to also confirm that a patch is in the work. We have been reading all the feedback that you sent us, including the difficulties with finding sulphur, and we are almost ready to release it. Keep them coming! Please keep in mind that as a student project, our academic year has now ended! Everyone in the team passed with flying grades and many are now moving to internships all around the world. This means that while we will still patch the most recurring issues, only a small core team is available, slowing down the pacing of the updates. See you in the next announcement!

Hi Survivors! We are excited to announce that Arid will leave the Early Access, today! It's crazy to think how much the game evolved since the demo/prototype from 16 weeks ago! As a team of students, we would have never been able to improve the project this much during the last month without your help! We tried to implement as much feedback as possible for this update, along with some extra suggested features, but for us is never enough! So again, thank you! You have been amazing and we are really honoured of having shared this experience with all of you. If you enjoy this newest update, don't forget to let us know and leave us a review! We are always open to talk and available for any type of question. Let's move to the update that comes with this 1.0.0 Release! BE AWARE: AS WE ANNOUNCED PREVIOUSLY, OLD SAVES WILL BE INVALIDATED. IF YOU WANT TO KEEP PLAYING WITH OLDER SAVES, USE THE LEGACY BRANCH.

Update 2: Moon Valley

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39348174/b86f557c73c83955f73a6f62757e79e2597b3051.png

Moon Valley Area:

Explore a new large mining area of the Atacama, scavenge the abandoned Saltpeter Plant, discover the events behind Santa Loressa and reach the ending of this campaign. If you prefer to play in sandbox, disable the quest system and explore freely! This last map might be closer to the crash site that you might think...

Metalforging and High Quality Tools:

We added an higher tier of tools, that can be crafted only at a specific crafting bench. While their uses is numbered, the energy cost is minimal and the bonus reward in crafting is often doubled.

New threats:

Without spoiling too much, we added some threats to both day and night. We are not sure which ones are more terrifying!

Other Features

Voice Acting:

We loved collaborating with Samantha Slade for voicing our main character, so.. we added more! There are now more than 100 new voice lines added to the entire game. A good reason to forgive us for wiping clean your saves and enjoy the game with amazing voice acting!

Hardcore UI:

Far from the eyes, far from the heart... but not really! You can now hide the Sun Exposure and rely exclusively on the sounds (and the character complaints)!

UI Rework (Part 2):

Not as large as Part 1, but we managed to iterate on the UI that were still left behind, such as the saving screen, death screen and the repair interface.

Achievements:

Another reason to start a new playthrough of the game! With achievements linked to the progression, some linked to the exploration and few for completionists, there should be a little bit for everyone!

More bug fixing and balance changes!

Special Thanks to the Community!

You joked about it, we added it! You can now find a viscacha in each of the maps, along with a new shishkebab recipe! No killing allowed! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39348174/59721cf2fb90529527eab2dfca29aa2432f68460.png Chilean players might also notice some additional easter eggs in the Mining Town...

What now?

We will keep monitoring for any eventual issue that might pop up, so keep giving us feedback! You can get in contact trough the Steam Forum, our Discord or the in-game Feedback report. We might take 2-3 days off to focus on our final exams (the game is not enough to pass the year!), but we are still here nonetheless. Follow the game, more news will be shared soon!

Update 2: Release Notes

Patch Notes

Gameplay

CHANGES

• Reduced amount of unrefined wood needed to craft planks from 2 to 1
• Reduced amount of time that a plank burns from 60 to 40 seconds
• Crates have a higher chance of dropping unrefined wood when disassembled
• Increased spawn chance of salt and alcohol in crates and barrels
• Insects can now be gained from dirt piles
• Added small wind gusts throughout the game
• Bed has a new visual
• Improved performance in certain places
• Narrative lines now get queued
• Reduced energy cost multiplier for using hands when disassembling from 2.2 to 2.0
• Reduced energy cost multiplier for using pickaxe when disassembling from 2.0 to 1.9
• Players can now craft tier 2 shovels
• Updated Aloe juice description to match it’s actual effect
• All metal items that require a tool to disassemble now give a minimum of 2 metal scraps when disassembling
• Dropped items no longer despawn
• Water filter, broken lantern and oil barrels are now properly being saved/loaded
• Updated recipe descriptions to match their outcome
• Players can now craft and cook a shishkebab.
• Reduced Alcohol energy gain from 300 to 200
• Reduced Charqui nourishment gain from 300 to 200
• Increased energy consumption rate on normal difficulty from 0.55 to 0.58 per second
• Increased sun exposure depletion in shade on normal difficulty from 0.5 to 0.8 per second

FIXES

• FIXED - Player able to have mild and severe sunburn at the same time after loading in a save file
• FIXED - When removing multiple items across separate item stacks, occasionally the amount of items removed wouldn’t be correctly calculated.
• FIXED - Player occasionally has enough items in inventory but fails to craft item
• FIXED - Fireplace triggering the infinite desert status effect
• FIXED - Not being able to interact with certain objects when having the setting “press to interact” enabled
• FIXED - Multiple narrative lines occasionally playing at the same time

Audio

CHANGES

• Added Circling plane sound
• Improved sound for stepping on wooden planks
• Added sound for repairing a broken bed
• Added sound for repairing a broken campfire
• Added sound for repairing a crafting table
• Added sound for repairing a metalworker
• Added sound for stepping on wooden stairs
• Added sound for interacting with crafting table
• Added sound for selecting an item in the crafting table
• Added sound for pressing back button in crafting table
• Added sound for tool breaking
• Added sound for interacting with saltpeter
• Added music specific to certain times of day and night
• Added sound for adding oil to the torch
• Added sound for stepping on cave ground
• Added sound for interacting with water barrel

FIXES

• FIXED - Inventory closing sound playing when closing a container
• FIXED - Menu music continues to play after pressing continue in menu

User Interface

CHANGES

• Status effects now show a countdown timer if they aren’t permanent
• Attributes now change in color based on their danger status
• Dropped items will now show their stack size when hovered over
• Item description in the inventory will now show how much an item will change attributes
• Updated UI for repairable objects
• Updated UI for objective system
• Added Hardcore UI difficulty setting, this setting reduces the amount of UI visible to the player
• Improved controller support for Difficulty menu

FIXES

• FIXED - Option menu increase/decrease button being unresponsive occasionally
• FIXED - Option menu cancel resolution not working
• FIXED - Lower texture quality settings will now affect actual quality for textures
• FIXED - Interaction popup sometimes not disappearing after interacting when having the setting “press to interact” enabled

Thanks for taking the time to read the patch notes! See you with the next update. You rock!

Hi survivors! We are excited to announce that we will soon release our second large content update. With this update, Arid will officially move out of the Early Access phase. In a month we have more than tripled the the playable area of the game, added narrative, reworked the UI, added community requests such as the custom difficulties and much more. This would have not been possible without all your support and feedback. Thank you! The positive response from the community has motivated the team during the remote-only development, and your feedback has been our main driving force for improving the game. As this version of Arid is a student project, it will stay FREE for ever.

Important News

Let's move to the two announcements which we want the players to be aware ahead of time. Bad news: Saves (again) Some players encountered flying items or duplicated drawers. The reason why this happen is because quite a lot of content has been added and moved since the Early Access, creating issues within the save files from older builds. This forces us to invalidate again the previous save files, to make sure that players will have a smooth experience with the new upcoming version. We are deeply sorry for that! We will upload the previous version to the Legacy Branch, and if you feel frustrated about losing your file, just shoot us a message on the forum and we might prepare a save file for you! Good news: Achievements! (Yay) As the community can probably see, the achievements are now visible on the Store Page. This does not mean that they can be unlocked, yet! They can currently only be unlocked by beta testers. Once we are sure they work, they will be fully functional with the next update! In short: If you want to start a playthrough, you might want to wait for the update! We leave you to a small teaser of what's to come with the next update, enjoy! P.S. On a personal note, as producer and project lead for Arid, has been a pleasure to interact and respond to all of you! Keep rocking! We are all honoured by the time you spent enjoying our game! Sarblade - Riccardo Di Giovanni

Hi Survivors! Just a very quick hotfix about two issues reported by the players. We felt that they needed to be solved as soon as possible. Have a great weekend!

Patch Notes

FIXES

• FIXED - Objectives being reset after going from the mining town to the mine entrance.
• FIXED - Auto saves not happening (besides using the sleeping interface).

Hi Survivors! We are almost there; the third and last part of the game will soon release. While the content of Arid was planned and part of our learning experience as a student project, all the features and changes that happened within the regular updates are a result of the community. It has been a great experience to learn and improve Arid along with the players, and today's update is all thanks to your feedback!

Difficulties

Some like it long, some like it short. Some more like it hard, others prefer it smooth. Not sure what you are thinking about, but we are talking about our difficulty settings! We have just added 5 different difficulties for the game, including a custom mode! We are currently happy with the balance we have achieved during Early Access, but your feedback clearly showed different expectations and tastes about the preferred length of the day, or the amount of grinding required to survive. So, what's better than letting YOU choose? In the custom mode it will be possible to individually choose the difficulty for each attributes, sun exposure and length of the day/night. Want to desperately search for oil in a night only experience? Set the day length to "Minimal" and the night length to "Realistic"! Want to transform shades in small islands of salvation? Try out Sun is Lava settings, where shade is a necessity to survive. Do you just want to explore? Enjoy the tourist mode, with very lenient survival requirements (without missing out on features). You hate tasks and tutorials? Hide them! As students, we will not be able to always expand this version of Arid, so we want you to tune it to your own tastes as much as possible! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39348174/ad3dc62935e60569985c50043adf59d330638aeb.jpg

Sleeping Rework

Sleeping has been often a cause of discussion between the players, due to the lack of control and an unclear interface. Hopefully, that should happen no more! With the new sleeping rework, players will be able to wake up exactly when they need, at the hours they want (it will still not be possible to sleep when having full energy). Have you also played the game for 30 minutes just to die and discover you did not save? Beside sporadic checkpoints and the manual save, you can now save automatically when sleeping! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39348174/c145eee4e34ceceb6728f7c9542ca46ca989e4b4.jpg

Torch

This is just a small change, but worth mentioning. By pressing the left click while holding the torch, you can now increase the range of the visibility.

Quality of Life Changes

You will find more in the changelog, but we wanted to specify that we addressed an important point brought up by the players: - When a tool breaks, a notification will appear. We will keep improving on this with the next patches.

Patch Notes

Gameplay

CHANGES Sleeping

• Player can choose if saving when waking up.
• Sleeping now shows the correct time of the day.
• Players can wake up at any minute.

Sandstorm

• Changed duration from 2 minutes to 3 minutes.

General

• Added multiple difficulty settings.
• Added an option to turn off tutorials and objectives.
• Added more beds and water storages in the mining town.
• Dropped item lifespan changed from 1 minute to 5 minutes.
• Improved run and jump animations.
• Changed visuals of torch fire.
• Changed visuals of tutorial UI.
• Reduced amount of pickaxes available in Mining Town.
• Sunburn now goes down when sleeping.
• Added dust clouds in all maps.
• Added circling birds to all maps.
• Added a notification for when a tool breaks.
• Added panorama shots for the loading screen.
• Added ability to put the torch up to emit more light. (default button left mouse button)
• Amount of ropes required to craft the Improved hammer reduced from 4 to 1.
• All mummies are now interactable.
• Added ‘hypothermia’ effect that triggers during the night in the ‘infinite desert’. This fixes the immersion issues with the players going out of boundaries at night.
• Infinite desert does not give heatstroke during the night.

FIXES

• FIXED - Campfire causing performance issues.
• FIXED - General spelling improvements.
• FIXED - Crafting table not properly showing the bonus results when using tools.
• FIXED - Intro subtitles keep playing after skipping intro.
• FIXED - Exhausted icon not properly showing.
• FIXED - Player occasionally getting stuck in landscape caused by dismounting a rope.
• FIXED - Overlapping icons showing in credits menu.
• FIXED - Text on door always saying ‘Open’ instead of ‘Interact’.
• FIXED - Various collision issues in Mining Town.
• FIXED - Rare crash caused by saving / loading.
• FIXED - Sandstorm not appearing anymore after day 60.

AUDIO

FIXES

• FIXED - Heartbeat sound playing in menu.
• FIXED - Volume being too loud for certain player actions.

 

USER EXPERIENCE

CHANGES

• Revamped Sleep UI.
• Updated tutorial UI screens with new theme visuals.
• Added a notification for when a tool breaks.
• Changed loading screen to feature panoramic shots.
• Updated visuals of options menu.

FIXES

• FIXED - improved hammer not showing up in the disassembly UI.

Hi Survivors! Time has come! We are releasing the first planned content update! Thank you for all the feedback that you have given us trough all our communication channels, we have been addressing it as fast as possible and we have some future plans to work on some of the points mentioned in the reviews. Let's cut it short! Come visit us on the Developer Stream and check out the small teaser about the new area (except if you want to discover it directly in-game)!

What's new?

Mining Town A new whole area to explore and scavenge, with more hints on seems to have happened in the area. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39348174/83778ded16134f2c163efdfdec3f221dc249459a.png UI Rework (Part 1) While technically complete, we are at a stage in which to improve the UI we need a larger base of users and feedback. So let us know what you think about the new interface! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39348174/d0e91684f80a6560b73817d332f2d0b27c78f962.jpg

What's next?

I want to remember that the Early Access phase of Arid will not last long, as it represents for us a learning experience on how to handle live content updates and player feedback. Still, we have more content planned: - More bugfixing! - A third - and last - additional area. - Metalforging: When makeshift tools are not enough! - Sleeping mechanic rework! To smooth your day/night experience! - Voicelines and improved narrative - Player based iterations on the UI & Interface

Patch Notes

Gameplay

CHANGES Climbing

• Improved climbing system movement

Sandstorm

• Reworked cover system for sandstorm
• Camera shake now doesn’t occur if the player is inside a cave.

General

• Added coffee items near the rock at the start of the game
• Changed water filter time from 5 seconds to 3 minutes

KNOWN ISSUE - With older saves, the drawers might not be opened correctly. FIXES

• FIXED - Player getting stuck in climbing animation after exiting rope while sandstorm is active
• FIXED - Sandstorm being blue when certain settings were set to low
• FIXED - Cover not always being applied properly when player is in cover during sandstorm
• FIXED - Sandstorm not always properly loading after saving inside it
• FIXED - Player can grab torch inside sandstorm under specific circumstances
• FIXED - Leather icon not showing in crafting menu and inventory
• FIXED - Narrative pickup text not scaling properly
• FIXED - Key bind options for menu navigation not checking for rebound keys

Audio

CHANGES

• Added mine entrance broken repair sound
• Added step sound for barrels
• Added step sound for little things made out of wood
• Added step sound for bed
• Added sound for grab bone
• Added sound for grab item sack
• Added sound for nicotiana
• Added sound for broken table
• Added open/close UI sound for radial disassembly Menu
• Added step sound for metal sheet, barrel, bed, crate, tank and shelf
• Added music for mining town

FIXES

• Torch sound playing in menu
• Ambience music playing in menu

User Interface

CHANGES

• Added new art assets for the character menus
• Added new art assets for the off-game menus
• Added new backgrounds
• Changed the buttons in the pause menu and the save menu
• Save menu now takes a screenshot when saving
• Readability improvements to all fonts used in menus
• Added new art asset for the progress bars
• Changed the notifications and pick-up popups background textures
• Sleeping interface is now overhauled

About this event

The development team of Arid talks about our Atacama Desert adventures while surviving through it. The game took us some time to make and we are happy to show it to the public. We will have developers playing and hanging out in chat. Still want to talk to the developers? Join our discord here.

What is the current stage of the development?

We're about to release our first big update since entering early access. Check out the stream to get an early impression!

Will it be updated?

This Early Access is a full public release and will always be available to play and will receive some updates. We will listen to all the feedback for the Early Access release of the game though! If you want to let us know your opinion, feel free to do it trough our forums or Discord. The latter options guarantees faster and more engaged response. This link will take you to our Discord

Hi Survivors! I hope you are enjoying our latest patch! During the weekend we have noticed some issues with the crash site, so we decided to push a small fix that will reduce the chance of getting stuck in the first area. We added some sticks as well.

Patch Notes

Gameplay

CHANGES

• Reduced the energy cost multiplier of the hand from 2.6 to 2.2
• Reduced the amount of Dirt Piles in the crash site area.
• Added a stash of coffee and alcohol in the crash site area (they can be used for replenishing energy).
• Increased amount of spawn locations for wood sticks

FIXES

• FIXED - Player can't interact with Airampo plant to gather fruits after saving/loading
• FIXED - Black screen not going away, proper fix now (tested with save that has issue).

When sticks are not enough... {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39348174/c77c217e9fa8298de8fc6843a83dc67528ea3f5f.png

Hi Survivors! We have good and bad news. Let's start from the good ones!

Good News

We listened and answered to all your feedback during the last week, including positive and negative reviews. That has been invaluable and I want to thank everyone for being so participative! I'm happy to announce that we solved most of the issues that have been reported, including the vanishing items, duplicated assets, sandstorm damage and dozens of smaller ones. We have also adjusted the crash site area to be sure that energy consumption is less severe, and we rebalanced how Energy/Nourishment/Thirst interact with each other. Hopefully these changes will give you more time to chill in the refuge or explore without feeling punished. We also added more sounds, QoL changes and a new system for the encumbered mechanics! I want also to thank the user VadimCool for proposing a fast solution to the autosave lag spikes, props to you!

Bad News: Make New Save Files

The bad news is that the vanishing items bugs was part of the saving system, which meant all the previous save files created before version 3.426 are now invalidated and cannot be accessed. As it is an early access, we cannot always guarantee the save files will stay compatible, but we are committed to make sure that this is the only and last time we require you, the players, from creating new saves. What's next? - More balancing! We will keep looking closely how these changes will affect your experience and in the meantime move on the balance of tools. - More bugfixing! Keep them coming! - A new map to double the size of the game! - Metalforging: When makeshift tools are not enough! - Sleeping mechanic rework! To smooth your day/night experience!

Patch Notes

Gameplay

CHANGES Saving

• Auto-saves – Auto-saving locations will now have a cooldown of 3 minutes. (Note: Saves from a previous version have been invalidated. We fixed issues with certain objects not properly saving/loading and we can’t fix the old save files to work in this new patch. We recommend starting over or using save that starts after the tutorial. A legacy branch will be created, for who wants to use their old saves).

Inventory

• Ability to “spill” your canteen, allowing you to remove all charges from your canteen.
• After receiving the encumbered status effect (having over 30kg in your inventory), your character will now progressively slow down each time you increase your weight until a maximum of 60kg has been reached.
• - 30-40kg: decreases player movement speed by 30%
• - 40-50kg: decreases player movement speed by 50%
• - 50-60kg and up: decreases player movement speed by 80%

Day/Night cycle

• Length of day extended from 20 to 26 minutes.
• Length of night extended from 4 to 6 minutes.
• When sleeping whilst cooking, the fuel consumption and cooking time of the selected item will now update accordingly to time slept.
• Sleeping costs is reduced and spread trough 9 hours.
• You can only sleep a maximum of 9 hours.

Attributes Balance

• Energy will no longer drain in the tutorial area.
• Reduced hydration consumption rate from 1.4 to 0.8 per second. (It will take 20 minutes for hydration to go from fully filled to empty).
• Reduced nourishment consumption rate from 1.1 to 0.50 per second. (It will take 33 minutes for nourishment to go from fully filled to empty).
• Increased energy consumption rate from 0.3 to 0.55 per second. (It will take 30 minutes for energy to go from fully filled to empty. Be aware that sprinting will increase the consumption rate).

Crafting

• Tools of higher quality will produce more items when used in recipes.
• Added recipe for crafting sticks from planks.
• Can now double click to craft item.
• Increased cost of cloth.

General

• The time traps take to catch a critter extended from 30 seconds to a minimum of 3 minutes (with increasing chances every additional second).
• Increased the durability of certain tools.
• Climbing system animation and movement rework.
• Increased requirements for repairing bridge and mining entrance.

FIXES

• FIXED – Containers in first base would not get saved/loaded properly, causing them to get stashed with new items, overriding their stored items.
• FIXED – Repairable objects not properly saved/loaded.
• FIXED – Bridge near first base not being saved/loaded.
• FIXED – Animation and status effect of sandstorm occasionally not being removed after leaving the sandstorm.
• FIXED – Sandstorm slow down effect not being applied after a save and load.
• FIXED – Encumbered slow down effect not being applied after a save and load.
• FIXED – Double rope at first base.
• FIXED – Player hands sometimes disappearing when climbing.
• FIXED – Player hands, flask and torch fully lit in dark caves when there was no light.
• FIXED – Incorrect icons showing for certain recipes.
• FIXED – Shadows flickering occasionally exiting out of a cave and saving and loading.
• FIXED – Invisible enemy not hearing the player when moving while crouching or walking sideways.
• FIXED – Crafting a tool would not always giving a tool with full durability.
• FIXED – Fireplace not giving full stacks of cooked ingredients.
• FIXED – Tool durability not correctly shown in fireplace UI.
• FIXED – When creating tools of the same type, they would stack inside the inventory.
• FIXED – Sandstorms occasionally appearing inside caves.
• FIXED – Sunburn damage not being applied after using “Aloe Cream”.
• FIXED – Black screen sometimes not going away after game loaded. It will now force disappear after 5 seconds. Apparently not fixed. Press ESC if it occurs.
• FIXED – Going to sleep while holding torch would lock the animation system, preventing you from performing certain actions. (e.g. drinking, holding torch)
• FIXED – Able to be starving and hungry at the same time.
• FIXED – Able to be parched and dehydrated at the same time.

AUDIO

CHANGES

• Added sound for crouching.
• Added sound for trap when catching a Viscacha.
• Added sound for repairing the rope.
• Added sound for repairing the trap.
• Added sound for waterfall.
• Added sound for pots.
• Added sound for interacting with books and notes.
• Added sound for tools made from iron.
• Added sound for opening and closing drawers.
• Added sound for disassembling items made of metal.
• Added sound for when you are exhausted.
• Added step sound for walking on metal sheets.
• Fatigued, hungry and parched voice lines now have a 20% chance of triggering instead of triggering every time the player becomes fatigued, hungry or parched.

FIXES

• FIXED – Trap audio triggering after sleeping.
• FIXED – Heartbeat sound playing while in menu.

 

USER EXPERIENCE

CHANGES

• Fireplace now supports double click to add fuel or ingredients.
• Changing key bindings in the options menu will now showcase the rebound key inside UI.
• Added additional key bindings.
• “HOME” key will now hide HUD (can be rebound).
• Resized fonts of the crafting table to be larger and more consistent.
• Added Icons to the tutorial popup for more clarity.
• Added additional clarity for fireplace prompts.
• End credits now fade out and returns player to the main menu.

FIXES

• FIXED – Not able to reset key bindings to default.
• FIXED – Not able to reselect the default key binding after changing it.
• FIXED – Mouse sensitivity not changing in settings while holding increase or decrease button down.
• FIXED – When setting borderless mode, it would not rescale the game to your monitors resolution.
• FIXED – Using F11 would not update the selected window mode in the options menu.
• FIXED – Disabling blur in options would not remove already active blur effects.
• FIXED – Water filter prompt not updating while looking at filter.
• FIXED – Interaction prompt sometimes not hiding after repairing objects.
• FIXED – Formatted and improved readability of environment narrative pickups (books, notes).

About this event

The development team of Arid talks about our Atacama Desert adventures while surviving through it. The game took us some time to make and we are happy to show it to the public. We will have developers playing and hanging out in chat. Still want to talk to the developers? Join our discord here.

What is the current stage of the development?

For the Early Access release, we feel confident enough to share our the progress. As students, we felt as this was the best way to get some feedback and get closer with our community.

Will it be updated?

This Early Access is a full public release and will always be available to play and will receive some updates. We will listen to all the feedback for the Early Access release of the game though! If you want to let us know your opinion, feel free to do it trough our forums or Discord. The latter options guarantees faster and more engaged response. This link will take you to our Discord

Hi Survivors! First of all, thanks for playing our game at launch! It's the first time we released a game to the public at such scale and it has been an incredible day for everyone in the team! The journey together with our testers has been an exciting experience, but this.. there are no words that can describe the feeling! We appreciate all the reviews and the feedback that we received, positive and negative, and we want to start addressing it little by little. In this small hotfix we did some tuning of the main resource consumption, to give more exploration time and to ease the difficulty curve. We also fixed major bugs such as the clay, which was not protecting from the sun when applied. As always, if you have feedback or suggestion, we encourage you to join us on Discord or let us know in the forum. It may take some time, but you will always get an answer from us. Let us know how the changes affect your experience and if you enjoy the game, don't forget to follow and leave a review!

GAMEPLAY CHANGES

SANDSTORM

• Sandstorm will now last 5 minutes instead of 2 minutes.
• Increased damage of the sandstorm from 2 to 3 per second.

ATTRIBUTES

• Reduced hydration consumption rate from 1.7 to 1.4 per second
• Reduced nourishment consumption rate from 1.3 to 1.1 per second
• Energy cost of stamina regen reduced from 1 to 0.3

ITEMS

• Clay can now be used as a sun protection item.

OBJECTIVE SYSTEM

• Certain objectives are now more descriptive.

BUG FIXES

• FIXED - The cave lights up at night after loading a save file.
• FIXED - Cave darkness effect from outside not working after loading a save file.
• FIXED - Empty objectives when entering caves.
• FIXED - Mine entrance wooden structure disappearing after repairing and loading a save file.
• FIXED - Energy cost not correctly being calculated when using tools.
• FIXED - Not able to use "G" key for drinking anymore after certain interactions.
• FIXED - Options display section always asking for confirmation after changing a value.
• FIXED - Setting window mode to "Borderless" will no longer allow you to set resolution (as this had no effect).
• FIXED - Crafting table in first base would save the game everytime you would use it.
• FIXED - Not able to use clay for sun protection.
• FIXED - When crafting an item at the crafting bench, the list of craftable items wouldn't readjust to put the craftable items at the top of the list.

AUDIO

• FIXED - Ambience audio not working when going back to the title screen and starting a new game.
• FIXED - Main menu music will now stop when you start new game or go to the credits.
• FIXED - Pause menu music continues in options menu.

USER EXPERIENCE

• FIXED - Scaled up interaction text.
• FIXED - Scaled up size of sunburn protection text.
• FIXED - Removed "!" after "Canteen Full" text for readability.
• FIXED - Several spelling mistake fixes.
• FIXED - Feedback button is now more visible when opening pause menu.

We are pleased to announce that Arid will enter the Early Access very, very, soon. In fact, it will release later today, for free! For this new milestone we want first to thanks all the amazing community members that supported us with feedback and encouraging words, but also all the content creators that covered our Early Alpha demo. Thank you very much! As this is a student project, and our first full-fledged game, you all have been an invaluable source of feedback to improve our game! We would have not been at this stage of polish without your help.

Updated Trailer

As this is a special occasion, we have prepared a new trailer with an updated look and some of the amazing work from our composer.

New Look

The announcement does not end here. We have also completely reworked the presentation of Arid. We always wanted to emphasize the 30s setting of the game and we feel as the new logo and splash arts really pushed us in the right direction! The same process will happen on the interface, but we will share more news about our roadmap very soon. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39348174/1fd15ee8dcc340f13d0b86ebee2c205bd30c31e9.png In the meantime, don't forget to add Arid to your wishlist and share it with your friends! There will be more news about future content very soon. If you want to share with us your feedback, or if you're a content creator, or even if you just want to chat about development, you can join us on Discord. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1463730/Arid/

What is the current stage of the development?

As for "Early Alpha" we are currently releasing a Sneak Peek that we worked on in the last 7 weeks. As students, we felt as this was the best way to get some initial feedback and get closer with our community.

Will it be updated?

This Early Alpha will be available for a limited time only and will not be updated. We will listen to all the feedback for the Early Access release of the game though! If you want to let us know your opinion, feel free to do it trough our forums or Discord. The latter options guarantees faster and more engaged response. This link will take you to our Discord