Of Lies and Rain news & patch notes

Hi everyone,

This is a very important moment for our small company.

Our second game, Of Lies and Rain, is now out of early access and ready for the public.

A Little Backstory: Castello Inc was founded in March 2021. None of us came from the video game industry. I was creating 3D renderings for advertising and architecture, our coder worked at an industrial refrigeration company while programming PLCs, our sound designer was part of a folk band, and our 3D modeler and narrative designer were both employed in a warehouse.

Given this background, you can understand why we struggled to find a publisher or investor who believed in our team when we pitched ou second game "Of Lies and Rain". We were told things like: "Too big for your studio, try something smaller" "It ticks all our risk categories" "You need more people and a huge budget" "You don’t have any experience in story-driven games" and "You’ll need to hire someone to write the story"

Two and a half years later, here we are. Of Lies and Rain is a reality.

It came at a cost though... We’ve been working without compensation for the past two years. For the game to be successful, it needs to cover our two years of development costs and generate enough revenue to give us time to create another game, a very difficult task. If it doesn't the company will not survive. During the entire early access period, the game sold just over 3,000 copies, not nearly enough to cover even a few months of development. The publishers and investors might have been right after all.

But none of that matters now. During the brief seven week early access period, we rolled out one update per week. We addressed every major issue with the game, fixed bugs, and added features requested by our community of players.

Of Lies and Rain is now in great shape, still at a 90% positive score on Steam and a 4.5 rating on Meta, with the PSVR2 version out now.

Being game developers for the past five years has been the time of our lives. We’re five friends working together every day on something we love, and it’s been incredible. We’re proud of the game we’ve created against all odds, we couldn’t have made a better game than this.

If this journey ends here, these memories will stay with us forever and will be amazing to remember "that time when we made games" as we grow older.

We want to thank everyone who helped us during development: our playtesters who spent countless hours testing the game, the content creators who helped spread the word, and everyone who purchased the early access version. Truly, thank you to everyone who played our game!

Of Lies and Rain is out now. We hope you enjoy playing it as much as we loved making it!

Best,

Castello Inc Team

Hi everyone!

Sixth week, sixth update.

We're almost there, the game will release in full the 4th of Novemeber on all platforms and we're superexcited to see what you all think of all the updates, the game is definitely in better shape now and ready for final release.

• Dataworlds redesign

Redesigned a part of the last mandatory dataworld, it should be more doable now, Shen long (the big worm) has really been a pain in the arse for many players, hopefully this will help a bit.

• Bossfight fixes

Some people found the bossfight too easy, it was because some of the projectiles were't hitting the player, it's now fixed. and a part of the bossfight was just bad game design really, we made the last block more evident so people won't miss jump away, hopefully.

• Better Weight on many objects

Many objects just felt like made of cardborad without any weight to them, we fixed most of the game objects, please let us know if something else feels weird, we'll fix it.

• Better hand interactions on objects

We also added some more hand poses on object to avoid some junckiness when the procedural grabbing kicks in, this won;t be perfect to make it perfect we would need to rethink and modify the whole system, maybe for the next game, if there will ever be one. :)

• Environment fixes

There were some spots in the game where you could see the world outside the level that breaks immersions a lot and shouldn't happen, we fixed those spots. The Exploding oxigen canister fading away out side of the toolshed is now fixed.

• Holographic locks

Better puzzle design with better color coding, as someone pointed out there were some puzzle with some really bad design, players struggle to understand how they work end were just bruteforcing them. should be better now. Please let us know.

The game will be exiting early access the 4th of November, if there are any content creators out there who would like to feature Of Lies and Rain on your channels please let us know, we'll be happy to send you a key.

As always thanks a lot to everyone who bought the game in early access! It kept the studio alive, the support we received has been overwhelming, again thanks a lot for everything you're doing for our little company!

Best,

Castello Inc Team.

Hi everyone, We're thrilled to annouce that the final version of "Of Lies and Rain" will be released

Novemeber 4th 9AM PT on Steam, Meta and PSVR2

In the beginning we thought that it would take more time to fix all the bugs and that the we would have had more problems with early access. It turns out early access was already pretty polished with virtually no blocking bugs and just a few thing to correct before the final release.

Some of you who played the game in early access and gave us feedback told us that the game could have been released in full already as "Of Lies and Rain" is in pretty good shape already.

They criticized us for not releasing in full the 10th of September because this way we were gonna hurt sales. First of all as a dev it's amazing to see players concearned that you are not gonna sell enough copies! This makes us feel part of a community more than a customer-developer relationship it seems like we're all on the same side, to grow the VR in it's whole.

So while we agree that the early access might have hurt sales we are still convinced it was the right thing to do, we got the chance to have some more player feedback so we took a couple of months to add features and polish the game even more.

---The next section might have some SPOILERS---

Things we added and fixed frtom early access realease:

• Beath volume and inhalers balance

• Footsteps (depending on the surface you're on)

• Sprinting

• better iron sight

• Projectile traces

• Fixed some hand interactions with objects

• Fixed a bug that would disable a cableway

• Datawolds redesign, just the mandatory ones.

• Fixed a bug that would disable a cableway

• Fixed Adrian Office screen texture Typo.

• Fixed a bug that made the cableway not working after loading a game.

• Fixed some more invisible walls.

• Fixed a bug that made audio disappear in some spots.

• Lower reflection on some material to lower aliasing problems

• Laser interaction menu visibility

• Hand on the opposite side when grabbin bin

• Russian translation improvements

• added ambient volume option

• added thumbstick sensitivity option (fix drift on old controllers)

• added haptics intensity option

• fix first trigger action ignored

• fix floating hand bug

• fix shotgun half-discharged magazines

• fix enhanced input buttons (use started/completed events)

• fix coupled trigger/height calibration options 

• fix nest 1st elevator going back

• fix dataworld anchor better unlock

• fix machinegun secondary grab collisions

• fix scorpion grenade throwback 

• fix elevators with preactivation pops on activation (labirynth/adecore) 

• fix Flower not starting after the labyrinth

• added screen percentage option +/-50% (skipping 100 that causes reprojection)

• added spectator window mode option (windowed/fullscreen)

• fix TAA ghosting/jittering (suggest to increase sharpness a bit for best visuals)

• fix Vulkan rendering (disabled SM6, also for DX12)

• enhanced SteamVR haptics curves

• Fixed the infinite die buga

• Accessibility menu option monoscopic

What you asked but we coudn't do:

There a few things that many players wanted us to add and we didn't, the reason is money and time, as always, trust me if we had a decent budget we would have made a better game. This is the best we could do whit what we had, 5 people and no money.

Npcs:

It takes a lot of money and time to make NPCs, we choose to have a dead world and no one around also for that reason, we agree with you that some encounters throughout the game would have been great but that is something our small studio just coudn't afford.

More cinematics:

Same reason here, not enough money and frankly we're not super experts in cinematics, we should have hired some people to do it but again, no time, and no money this time.

Better trailer:

We did ask some external to take care of the trialer but it was like 10-15k. simply too much for us. the trailer we managed to make may not be the best and according to many of you it doesn't really show how good the game is, but it's again the best we could do.

Better graphics:

Regarding to graphics this a personal matter as who is writing here is the tcchnical artist, ceo and community manager and I took care of the graphics aspect of the game. There are some places in the game that will feel a bit lower quality in terms of 3d Models and Textures, again it takes a lot of time to make everything look great, and I didn't have enough to do all that, I apologize if some part of the game are not supersharp but I hope that won't ruin the experince too much.

Less text and instead a voice over for all the memories:

Too much money and time here as well, we would have needed some more voice actors and very long recordings for a voice over of all the memories, There is also a tecnical problem here, if you had to hear them while roaming through the game they could have overlapped with some in game dialogues and would have had to truncate one or another. If you had to stay still with the memory opened you might just as well read it, but yeah not ideal, we know.

That said I wanna thank everyone who bought the early access, this saved the company for the moment, we gotta say that the numbers for the moment are really low, definitely not enough to keep the company going, we don't have funding, we don't have a publisher so this is it, if something doesn't change in the future we're screwed.

Reviews are amazing though, we still have a 93% positive review and it's still early access. Most of our players really enjoyed our game and some even suggested us for VR GOTY.

This is beyond words and if we're gonna close the studio after full release this time will stay with us for the rest of our lives, we love making games and we've done it for the last 5 years, all together as friends and with an amazing community of players that really gave us infinite hours of playtesting asking nothing in return.

We coudn't have asked for anything better!

But it's not the time to give up just yet, there's still couple of weeks to go to full release, we want to release one more update.

After full release anything can change.

Keeping our finger crossed.

Best,

Castello Inc Team.

Hi Everyone!

Fifth Week and as promised fifth Update.

so, Dataworlds...

This is at the same time the most loved and most hated part of our game.

Some find them boring, too difficult, frustrating, and at some point not fun. Some players want us to make a game just within those worlds. It's very difficult to tackle feedback like this, we don't want players to get frustrated but we don't want to denaturate the dataworlds gameplay wich is a core part of our game.

So we decided to make the few mandatory dataworlds just a bit more doable and leave the most challanging ones as they are, they were not mandatory anyway, but they are good to get some more gpus and health.

Hopefully this will make everyone able to enjoy the game and not get frustrated in the mandatory ones and will leave the hardcore players space to enjoy a challange.

Update Log:

• Datawolds redesign, just the mandatory ones.

• Fixed Adrian Office screen texture Typo.

• Fixed a bug that made the cableway not working after loading a game.

• Fixed some more invisible walls.

• Fixed a bug that made audio disappear in some spots.

As always thanks a lot to anyone who brought our game in early access, your help saved the studio.

Final release is coming soon and we cannot wait to show the game in it's final form.

Best,

Castello Inc Team.

Hi Everyone, Fourth week, fourth update. Of Lies and Rain stays at a solid 94% positive review score on Steam. We've passed the 50 reviews mark and got a "very positive", for the overwhelming positive score we'll need to wait to pass the 500 reviews mark, still way to go. From the feedback we're receiving it seems like the dataworlds really split our players in 2 groups, some love them, some hate them. We did get similar feedback in our early playtests and that's why we made them optional for the most part, some of them are still mandatory, we'll address the datawrolds in the next update. Also the holographic puzzles throughout the game may be overly reliant on movement skills, so we'll redesign them to focus more on engaging players puzzle solving capabilities.

Thanks to all Early Access players for helping shape this story-driven VR adventure we couldn't do it without you!

Update Log:

• Gun Iron Sights If you can't aim properly in a shooter well that's bad. We enhanced weapon ironsights for better aiming precision

• Projectile traces Added visible projectile traces for improved aim precision.

• Fixed some hand interactions with objects Resolved issues with grabbing and manipulating various in-game objects for smoother VR interactions.

• Little fixes to environment Some invisible walls fixed, Polished environmental details and eliminated problematic invisible walls to prevent clipping and navigation glitches.

• Fixed a bug that would disable a cableway Moved the savegame a bit earlier in the tower to avoid hitboxes overlap.

A huge thank you to all of you who bought the early access!!! Your support keeps us pushing forward! See you next week, final release is getting closer. Best, Castello Inc Team.

Hi everyone!

Third week, Third update.

The game is still at a solid 94% positive reviews. Many people are waiting for final release to purchase the game and we do understand that a story driven game like this one is better experienced when finally polished and not in early access.

To everyone who’s jumped into Early Access, thank you!

People might not realize that early access, at least for small indie studio, is a way to gather feedback from a larger audience than early playtesters and steer development accordingly. Also gives us a some much needed funds to keep developing the game.

Someone even purchased the early eccess to support us but is waiting for full realease to play it, this is beyond words! Thank you!

Why no ads?

As someone pointed out on reddit we are not making any advertising for the game, the reason is simple, we don't have the money to do it. Early access will also give us some funds to buy some advertising for the final release of the game.

Update Log:

- Sprinting

After much debate we decided to add a sprinting feature. The problem here is that the pace of the game, dialogues, enemies and so on were made for a specific player velocity. It is true though that in some spots you really want to have a sprint option.

We decided to add it according to your feedback, sprinting will be limited to a 3-second burst with a 10-second cooldown. As per our tests it should allow you to move a bit faster during combat without disrupting the game’s flow.

- Fixed the infinite die bug

We resolved an issue where players respawned in toxic areas, causing repeated deaths. We moved the toxic areas away from the save games, should be good to go now.

- accessibility menu option monoscopic

This option is for people with one eye view for whom the pipe holographic lock were basically impossibile to solve, it substitutes the hologrphic pipe locks with cilindric ones.

About the holographic locks, some people find them really difficult to solve, we will redesign the more difficult ones to be more accessible in future updates.

- Corrected the skill buy widget to handle large localized texts properly.

A huge thank you everyone, especially those supporting us in Early Access, your contribution means the world!

See you next week for another update!

Best,

Castello Inc Team.

Hi Everyone, As promised, second week, second upgrade. Of Lies and Rain, is still at a solid 93% review score on steam! If you enjoyed the game, please consider leaving a review to let us know what you loved or what could be improved. To everyone who bought the early access we want to ensure you that even if we don't sell one more copy of the game from now on, we will update the game once per week, every week, untill we release the full game later this year. Afterall we have been working for free for almost 2 years, it won't be a few more weeks/months to stop us! Update Log: - added Footsteps with footstep volume option Footsteps will depend on the surface you walk on, if you find it annoying there is a dedicated volume slider in the options. - added ambient volume option

- added thumbstick sensitivity option (fix drift on old controllers)

- added haptics intensity option

- fix first trigger action ignored

- fix floating hand bug

- fix shotgun half-discharged magazines 

- fix enhanced input buttons (use started/completed events)

- fix coupled trigger/height calibration options 

- fix nest 1st elevator going back

- fix dataworld anchor better unlock

- fix machinegun secondary grab collisions

- fix scorpion grenade throwback 

- fix elevators with preactivation pops on activation (labirynth/adecore) 

- fix Flower not starting after the labyrinth

- added screen percentage option +/-50% (skipping 100 that causes reprojection)

- added spectator window mode option (windowed/fullscreen)

- fix TAA ghosting/jittering (suggest to increase sharpness a bit for best visuals)

- fix Vulkan rendering (disabled SM6, also for DX12)

- enhanced SteamVR haptics curves

As always thanks a lot to everyone who played our game and took time to leave a review!!! It helps a lot! See you in a week with the next update.

Best,

Castello Inc Team.

Hi everyone! Thanks a lot for the overwhelming support we received for this early access launch. Of Lies and Rain sits at 100% positive review, (for now), not too many in number to be honest but I would say good enough for now, after all we're still in early access. The support has been amazing, most of you loved the game and many said we could have release in full and skip early access, we might have been too cautious here but hey, we're not experts and a lot of games don;t come out in good shape when they release so we decided to be carefull with this. We got some feedback, there are no game breaking bugs for now, and most of the issues can be solved loading a previous savegame. We'll be fixing stuff in the coming weeks until full release, this is our first update, many more to come. Update Log:

• Added some more inhalers and masks throughout the levels Some of you found themselves stuck with heavy breathing after you got into some toxic areas, It is by design to have ot for a few minutes maybe but someone had it for one + hours. That not good so we added some masks and inhalers through out hte levels where this happened.

• Added a volume slider for the breathing On top of adding some more inhalers we also added a slider in the options to change the breathing volume, so you have more control over your gasps.

• Lower reflection on some material to lower aliasing problems Some objects like the train poles, some metallic objects, blood on the skeletons etc where too shiny and creates some aliasing artifacts on some headset and... it didn't make sense, after 20 years the abandoned stuff shoudn't look shine, let alone the blood on the skull it would have gone dry along time before the game starts.

• Laser interaction menu visibility Small bug that happened when closing the menu, the lasers point that help you go through the menu stayed up for a bit longer than expected, they don't do it anymore.

• Hand on the opposite side when grabbin bin Small fix on hand grabbing on the bin.

• Russian translation improvements

Thanks a lot to everyone who played our game, we will keep updateing the game, we're aiming at an update every week while we gather feedaback untill we get out from early access and move to final release in a few months. Best, Castello Inc Team.

Important Advice: TRY THE DEMO BEFORE BUYING THE FULL GAME

Hey everyone,

We strongly recommend NOT purchasing the full game until you've given the demo a spin.

At the very least, fire it up to check if your controllers are responding correctly and you can interact with everything smoothly. Any performance hiccups you notice in the demo they'll likely show up in the full version too.

The demo has the exact same core code as the final game, but it wraps up after the first level. So, if the demo struggles on your setup, the full game will face the same issues. On the flip side, a smooth demo experience means the full game should run just fine!

Just a quick session—maybe a few minutes of play—will tell you everything you need to know about compatibility with your hardware.

With all the variables like drivers, software layers, background apps, runtimes, and different headsets out there, it's tough to guarantee it'll work on every single config.

That's one more reason for the demo to exist: to let you dive into the first hour of gameplay and verify it runs well on your specific system.

During the early access we'll try to make the game compatible with most headsets and configuration so that we can ensure everyone can enjoy the game when the game launches in full.

Thanks for checking this out and thank you for playing our game!

Best,

Castello Inc Team.

We made it, Of Lies and Rain is finally ready for early access.

• No more pockets: Pockets were just too much in the way and worked just really bad with the gravity grab. We have now implemented a backback! It works just like the pockets but you'll be able to reach it putting your hand over your shoulders.
• Visual Feedback for Widows: Added visual effects (VFX) and small animation to widows to show hit feedback when they take damage. We're also working on a more spidey death animation. :)
• Breakable Boxes: Wooden boxes now break more easily, including when thrown to the ground. It should hurt you arm trying to break a box!
• Gun Handling Improvements: You can now grip guns with two hands (using teacup or thumbs-forward grip), and recoil adjusts based on your grip style.
• Blackboard Fix: The blackboard now functions much more reliably.
• Memory Interaction: Memories now stick to your hand for easier reading. We initially had this right, changed it during playtesting, but have reverted to the original sticky behavior.
• Performance Boost: Low-quality spectator mode is now default to improve FPS. We’ve also added DLSS support for systems that can use it, providing an additional FPS boost.
• Health syringe now work as expected.
• Gamma Adjustment: We tweaked the default lighting for better visuals and added a gamma slider to adjust camera exposure.
• New Gloves!