Hi, everyone!

This is Julian from DigiTales. Today, I am very happy to announce the first major update to Between Horizons in a long time.

Version 1.2.0 features a lot of fixes to community-reported issues as well as a host of visual upgrades and convenience improvements. We know that some of these bugs were pointed out quite a while ago, and we apologize for the long wait. Like many indie studios lately, we've had an incredibly turbulent and stressful year focused on economic survival. This update is the first sign that we have emerged from the turmoil – bruised and battered, but still standing. With that, we are officially back to work on the next mainline DigiTales title. It's a long ways away, but we will start posting about it on our socials later this year. Follow us there to stay in the loop!

We are also making some changes outside of the game itself. To tell you the truth, Between Horizons has not been performing as well on the store fronts as our first game Lacuna (although still okay), which we attribute to a few different factors. Among other things, we believe that it's much harder to quickly understand the type of experience the game promises to deliver. To alleviate this, we have decided to add a subtitle ("A Sci-Fi Detective Adventure") and change the key artwork. We hope you like the new and improved version, once again created by our friend and concept artist Jon Dawo!

It's very hard to convince the store algorithm that your game deserves more visibility. If you enjoyed the game and/or just want to show your appreciation for our continued work, leaving a review would help us out a great deal. And if you've been eyeing the game for a while, let this update be your sign to finally check it out!

Before delving into the patch notes, I want to tease one more thing: We already have another major Between Horizons update planned. While 1.2.0 focusses on improving the existing experience, the next one will introduce a whole new and pretty unique feature. Sorry for being cryptic, but I think the surprise will be worth it.

Hope you enjoy today's update! Please let us know what you think.

Best,
Julian & the DigiTales Team

Fixes

Again, our apologies for keeping you waiting for some of these. In order of decreasing severity:

- Achievements now work again on GOG
- Having a virtual or physical joystick connected to the PC no longer leads to a crash on startup
- Fixed a lot of missing strings occurring when PC was set to certain system languages (e.g. Turkish)
- Speculative but promising fix for some players experiencing William disappearing in prologue sequence
- Opening the "show evidence" UI now reliably shows the correct clue name from the start
- It should no longer be possible to start floating past the end of any staircases
- Fixed a bug where the current feed message on the PDA dashboard was not saved between sessions
- Speculative fix for some players getting stuck after the case The Setup is opened
- Fixed a bug where "back" sound effect would be triggered many times at once in Cases tab
- Fixed a bug where events tied to collecting a clue would not fire reliably
- Fixed Zephyr not moving & ring being placed incorrectly in some ending shots
- Fixed interaction outlines on train station exits not appearing
- Floor in the hospital no longer covers up the stairs to the train station
- Fixed flowing water in Farm area being invisible
- Fixed a bug where the selected sprite on the display behind Stella's bed was not saved
- Fixed a very rare bug where Joseph was absent from navigation room finale, resulting in stuck game state
- Water outside flooded Residential Area bunk no longer floats in the air
- Fixed a small number of spelling mistakes across various texts (English localization)
- Fixed Stella briefly appearing to float above train station stairs
- All UI boxes are now properly 9-sliced and scaled
- Fixed network cable in the hospital appearing prematurely
- Cleaned out obsolete project files, decreasing game size and memory use

Quality of Life

We made a few improvements that should make the overall experience more enjoyable, most notably:

- The game now attempts to save much more frequently, not just after certain actions
- Considerably improved performance of save operation, eliminating lag spike
- Interaction outlines on 2D sprites no longer shine through player (or other sprites)
- Made Stella marker on map much more visible
- Added a tutorial that explicitly introduces clues filter feature (since many players missed this)
- Added a third quality level (medium) to video settings, quality levels overall now have more impact

Lighting rework

We spent a lot of time reworking the lighting in the majority of scenes from the ground up:

- Improved overall look and vibe
- Fixed lots of lightbaking errors (e.g. absent objects would still cast shadows)
- Fixed a bug where some objects would be lit incorrectly after scene transitions
- Fixed (some) Extras looking darker than other characters in the scene
- Fixed some computer screens in various scenes not glowing
- Decreased total size of lighting data by cleaning up lights & probes

Content
We ironed out a few things that irked us about the story logic:

- Clues now become un-interactable when related cases aren't ongoing (instead of disappearing)
- When characters die in the story, their clue text is now updated accordingly
- Implemented an additional way of progressing in Pain Killers case
- Added a few more unlockable text updates to existing clues
- Shortened the Psychiatric Department hallway, eliminating unused space
- Player can now interact with Chichi from the very beginning
- Sweeping improvements to scripted scenes (e.g. pacing, character placements, visuals)

Visual polish

We further improved the look of most scenes in various ways. Among other things:

- Added animated displays to Network Office and around Inner Hull corridors
- Added more armed guards around the ship
- Replaced some Extras at the funeral with known NPCs
- Filled up multiple empty spaces in Public Area
- The display in the classroom scene is now animated
- Added animated display above drumset in Activities Room
- Added static injured Extras around the ship after [major spoiler event]
- Propaganda screens now randomize animation starting points instead of playing in sync
- Implemented Leona sitting with Kimi (her pet) after hospital scene
- Updated main menu: improved color grading and logo placement