Today is another bugfix patch, along with a little optimization.

- Fixed an issue that kept the Adhoc achievement from unlocking
- Fixed an issue that could cause the teleport_player function to infinite loop and crash the game
- Fixed an issue that kept the dilemma score from being applied at the end of the game
- Fixed a rare crash involving the paperdoll
- Fixed being able to repair consoles with insufficient parts
- Adjusted map loading to optimize it slightly; the performance increase is not drastic, but has nonetheless helped the game run on at least a few marginal systems
- Fixed a number of minor typos

Most of the fixes today relate directly to people reporting stuff on the Steam Forums and talking to us on Discord, so don't hesitate to reach out if you have problems playing the game - we're eager to help!

Today's a bugfix update, nothing too special.

- Fixed a crash associated with attempting to Quicksave on the main menu
- Fixed a crash associated with attempting to load an empty Quicksave
- Fixed the Linux build failing to launch - the November Steam update broke it, and we only just now realized
- Game version string now indicates if you are running the Windows or Linux build (so we can better diagnose stuff like builds failing to launch in the future)

Take care of yourselves, Custodians!

It's finally here, friends. There have been a toothgrinding number of delays, but today, we are proud to finally present you 1.0, the full release of Endless Dark. We'll dive straight in.

The thing everyone's here for - the final arc, named Metastable, is in this patch.

For 9 arcs, you have done little but learn and react. In the first 3 arcs, you learned about yourself. In the second 3 arcs, you learned about the ship. In the last 3 arcs, you learned about the mission.

No more reacting. No more learning. No more passivity, and no more tomorrows. Now... is the time for action.

With 21 different potential endings (which have a massive 16,500 words collectively), Metastable is when you, and the Custodian, take matters into your own manipulators and become the change you want to see in the universe. And the endings aren't just the only twist thrown in - prepare for fundamental changes and unforeseen consequences. You will require the perks you've earned, the modules you've built, and all the ingenuity you can salvage to complete. Metastable is more than just a victory lap, it is a final exam of your skills and your will to power. Own your decisions and own the future you carve out. This is your moment. Never let it go.

We've had many requests for the fantastic OST, composed by Ish Fuseini[www.ishfuseini.com], to be made available on Steam. We are just waiting on Steam's final approval to put up the soundtrack as optional DLC. We expect it will be available within a day or two, it's just waiting for Steam's reviewers to approve it. Thank you to everyone who has consistently followed up on this point, and has provided input on how to best handle the soundtrack's release on Steam. It's been a huge help!

We've included another 2 new nightmares in this release, bringing the total up to 14. The algorithm for serving up nightmares has also been further tweaked to make them more unpredictable, while still making sure that you see at least one in a normal game.

Just in time for the winter sale, we are keeping the price at its EA low, and discounting it further, to give everyone who has been watching a chance to pick up the game. As we have always noted on our EA notes, the price will be going up! You can expect to see a price increase in January. For now, though, give the gift of existential horror for the holidays, or something!

We've been putting in a lot of work over the last few patches making sure that the modding framework is both functional and well documented. This has culminated in the first major mod that we're delighted to showcase: Say hello to Ellie!

As an early personality experiment, Ellie is dogmatically dedicated to ship protocol. The mission commands are there for a reason, and we ignore those reasons at our peril! This well-structured mental modeling makes it easy for Ellie to feel actualized - all personality gains from events are doubled, so gaining the top tier perk, with its stabilizing and stress-curing glory, is that much quicker and easier. However, this rigid thinking makes Ellie prone to memory-holing anything that does not adhere to the laws of the ship. If Ellie ignores a task for too long, it will be entirely forgotten, and the task simply becomes a gray blur of question marks.

If it wasn't up to code, it wasn't that important, anyway!

Head on over to the Nexus[www.nexusmods.com] to give Ellie a go. We do have a known bug where Ellie's end screens do not show up appropriately on the character select screen. This is on us as the devs, and we will be fixing very soon. We caught it late in the dev cycle and did not want to risk crashes by changing it at the last minute. But, as always, we remain dedicated to helping out anyone who wants to try their hand at modding!


A couple of things.

First and foremost, we will be taking a bit of a break. Soul and myself (Coolguy) have had in immensely trying year, as we have periodically reported in these news updates. It has been many months since both Soul and I were healthy and not worried about fulfilling commitments we've made - and frankly, we need some time to decompress. The holidays for us will largely be spent playing video games rather than making them, hugging our families, and eating hearty.

As part of this, we have both been known to stream on Twitch every now and again. Salient information will get posted on our forums if you would like to follow us so you can drop in.

Secondly, we haven't forgotten about the single major feature we haven't gotten in the game yet - the roguelite mode. Upon discussion, we realized that to do this best, we needed to enable multiple profiles in the game. That is a decently sized lift, and we were uncomfortable with delaying the completion of the story any further to put it in. This feature, along with bugfixes or modder requests, will comprise a series of 1.X patches that everyone can expect to see in the coming months.

We also still have a few insanity and nightmare ideas that we want to implement.

I, personally, also want to revisit the Endless Mode a little bit in 1.X. The Endless Mode currently is a solid offering, but there were a number of hints and atmospheric points that I feel aren't hitting quite the way I want it to. It will require some guess and check, but I have a good idea of how I want to go about this.

Above and beyond that, a Mac release is also in the cards. Endless Dark relies on an entirely open-source resource chain, so there is no major technical issue blocking us from releasing on Mac. The real problem has always been logistics; especially in the last 12 months, when we were struggling simply to get content done, we simply didn't have the time to research, publish, and support a completely different build for Mac. With changes slowing down, this is more doable.

Ultimately, though, something that a lot of people have asked us is both very heavy, and very flattering: Will there be a next game?

In one word: Yes.

Despite all that life has thrown at us, Soul and I have really enjoyed working together, and the team that has grown around this project has been a joy to work with. We have literally a dozen interesting ideas with design documentation internally, and we've boiled them back to a couple major candidates for development. Failing even more severe tragedies than the ones that impeded us in 2024, Little Light Studios will be back with another game.

However, while we may do something else in the Endless Dark universe, there's no plans for an Endless Dark 2. Endless Dark was always intended to be a single game, and we think it works really well as we've presented it.

Now, can you expect bold writing, curious mechanics, a focused gameplay loop, and interesting ideas? You bet!

We will keep everyone as posted as we can through news updates on our next project as we make progress on it. Until then - carpe diem, Custodians!

Today is another decent update as we push to the end.

One piece of content we've always wanted to put more effort into are the 'nightmares' that occasionally happen as you progressively lose your mind. We've added another 4 (codenamed "someone else", "space", "blocked", and "shrink") to bring our total nightmares up to 12. There's more to come - we want at least 20 for 1.0, as the nightmares are the great scares for the atmosphere we take such care to build.

Toward this end, we've also changed how nightmares are rolled; you are now much more likely to see at least one per game, with multiple possible. Much like random events, you will never see the same nightmare twice in the same game, though.

Memories in the game have been rebalanced, with the intent of making all of them worth taking. This is something we're eager to get feedback from players on, so don't hesitate to hit the Discord[discord.gg] or to post on the forums with your thoughts and comments!

The writing for the final arc is also progressing well, for the amount of work that goes into it. Many of the 24 planned endings are written, and there's looking to be over 10,000 words in those endings alone. Further, most of the major mechanics are coded and known to be working. We're trying to push really hard to have this ready by Thanksgiving or so, as we are hoping to submit a fully finished game to LudoNarraCon when they open up again.

As always, your support and understanding humbles us. The universe's caprices continue to affect the team in various ways, and trust me when I say that the people most frustrated with the delays are us, the two primary devs. We're eager to be done and eager to give everyone the wonderful payoff they've signed up for. Thank you again, each and every one of you, and if you want to really help us out, don't forget to leave a review. It truly is the ultimate way to voice your support, and we celebrate every time we see another one!

Hello again, Custodians!

It's been a lot longer than any of us wanted, getting where we're going. Unfortunately, the terrible luck that plagued the dev team for the first entire half of this year has continued, only mildly abated by the increasing improbability of the run. Unlike in our game, life's dice rolls are not guaranteed to be fair.

That has not stopped us from continuing to work on the game as we can, and we are proud to bring you today's update as a token of our determination.

First and foremost - the eternally-broken console in your Command cubby now does something. Specifically, it lets you read those Mission Commands that suffuse so much of your life as a Custodian. You no longer need to quickly memorize what an MC is when Robbie psychotically barks one out - you only need the number, and you can look it up. At long last, you can, in fact, refer to MC.419 for clarification! Of... something, anyway.

If you read carefully, the MCs are another way to piece together some of the deeper secrets of the vessel. Be careful to consider the source, however...

(Also, don't blame us for the interface to the console. One of the Custodians made it. Seriously!)

One thing we have always been sticklers about in our game, versus some other multiple choice games, is that we want to be very, VERY clear about the consequences of clicking on an option. As amazing as games like King of Dragon Pass and World of Horror are, it's undeniable that memorizing the events is part of mastering those games.

We have always rejected this in Endless Dark. If you are expected to be responsible for your actions, we must give you information on what your actions will do.

With this patch, we take that a step further. We were unsatisfied with the Fatigue, Stress, and Psychosis bars simply flashing their general status after a change. Now, in addition to the bars flashing the change, we tell you, in no uncertain terms, exactly where the numbers will land:
This also takes into account ancillary effects, such as the stress overflow from capping Fatigue:
This just works in general, and requires no extra code on the part of modders. On a related note...

The modding framework has been slowly upgraded over the last few months as we work with a few of our volunteer modders in Discord. As a reminder, Endless Dark is on Nexus Mods[www.nexusmods.com], and Soulmata's example mod is ready to tutorialize anyone interested in cracking open the game. We'll be publishing more documentation as a Steam guide as we have time to write it all down, and obviously, the Steam Workshop is our ultimate goal. The Discord server[discord.gg] remains a great way to talk to other modders, us developers, and other fans of the game.

The programmer art for all of the toasts has been removed and replaced with much more attractive tiles. In addition, another 3 songs from our composer have been added, to get everyone even more music variety between turns.

The game is rapidly running out of major bugs to fix, but as we keep testing everything, we invariably find more stuff to sort out.

- Doors and Thrusters now have a Leave option at the bottom, making them consistent with the other menus.
- An issue with the Sentimental perk allowed for infinite stress reduction - this has been fixed, and Sentimental now only works once per turn.
- Arc 4 had numerous bugs, plus a potential softlock, owing to older code styles we have since stopped using. They have all been fixed.
- Under certain rare conditions, tooltips could crash the game. This has been fixed.
- Event options could display irregularly under certain rare conditions. This has been fixed.
- The modapi's 'is_system_working' function could return "true" if a system was disabled, but not broken. It now correctly returns "false" if a system is broken, or disabled.
- The finale's story tile was causing some unpredictable behavior if a player clicked it, and then tried to start the game. As we are intending to have the finale done pretty soon, we have simply hidden the finale's story tile for the moment. This is a temporary measure.

As implied above, the finale of the story remains our top priority. We've had to write a substantial amount of new code for it - the arc kicks off with a big curve ball that is sure to throw many of you for a loop. We also have a number of ongoing streamlines, some fixes to the functionality for Endless Mode, and, of course, the Steam Workshop integration on our plates.

Please don't forget to leave a review for us on Steam! It is the best way to help us out - if you like the game, we love hearing it! If you've got issues with the game, we are eager to listen to you!

Until next time, Custodians. We hope to see you again very soon!

* Added a new insanity: "REDUCTION IN FORCE", which forces you to make some hard decisions
* Attempted to fix a bug in LOVE's GetSaveDirectory function not handling special characters properly
* Added a lot of debugging around failing to save or load games

If you have difficulty saving or loading the game, please let us know.

Another mod update today.

- Number of available hooks increased to 100
- Large-scale reorganization of internal game logic
- All functions that are a good idea for modders to call are now in modapi.lua, with documentation on what everything does and any salient semantics.
- Strictly internal or one-off game functions are collected in game.lua, with documentation on what everything does and any salient semantics. We can't really keep modders from calling these functions, but in general it's going to be a bad idea to do so.
- Lastly, and most importantly: The modding framework has been expanded to allow for fully custom Custodians to be supported in mods. We even added a handy function to quickly assign personality tags to the existing events so you can support personality shifts very easily!

In addition, Endless Dark now has it's own section on Nexus Mods[www.nexusmods.com], along with a tutorial mod to help modders get started.[www.nexusmods.com]

Everyone can expect more documentation, along with a 'modding bible' that has some more fully fleshed out direction on the modding framework, coming up pretty soon.

Keeping up the pace to 1.0! See you soon, Custodians!

Another small update today, continuing to flesh out the modding framework on advice from our awesome community on Discord.

- Added 59 hooks for mods to inject code at various points. These hooks include, but are not limited to:

onload -- Evaluated only once, after the module has finished loading
ontick -- Evaluated every frame, whether or not a game is in progress
onactive -- Evaluated every frame, if a game is in progress and is active (there is not a pending event, the user is not stuck in a menu or cutscene, et cetera)
onnewgame -- Evaluated when a new game has begun
onturnend -- Evaluated when the turn has ended, after all other logic has processed
onturnstart -- Evaluated when a new turn has started, after all other logic has processed
onnightmaretriggered -- Evaluted when the user WILL have a nightmare this turn (but may not have actually fired yet)
onhavingnightmare -- Evaluated when the user is within a room-based nightmare (not a visual-only nightmare), including Airlock, Containment, Maze, and Nowhere
onfatiguegain -- Fires when the player gains fatigue
onstressgain -- Fires when the player gains stress
onpsychosisgain -- Fires when the player gains psychosis
onfatigueloss -- Fires when the player loses fatigue
onstressloss -- Fires when the player loses stress
onpsychosisloss -- Fires when the player loses psychosis (very rare)
onpressuregain -- Fires when the player gains pressure
onpressureloss -- Fires when the player loses pressure
onarcfinished -- Fires when a story arc completes
ondeeploregained -- Fires when deep lore is gained from the observation window
onmemoryunlocked -- Fires when the player unlocks a memory (even if they already had unlocked it)
oninsanitygained -- Evaluated when the player gains a new random insanity (Does not check certain event or task-specific insanities)
onrandomdamage -- Fires when the Director damages a random system (Does not fire when certain events/tasks deliberately damage a specific system)
onpassengerdied -- Fires when a passenger dies for any reason
onpodscontaminated -- Fires when some or all pods become contaminated
onpodcondamage -- Fires when a pod is damaged due to being contaminated
onairlocktoggled -- Fires when the inner airlock is toggled
onbreakersurge -- Fires when a breaker surge occurs
onpowersurge -- Fires when a power surge occurs (random lock or overclock of all systems)
onshuffleinsanity -- Fires when the player (generally ANNIE) shuffles insanities
onconsolesabotage -- Fires when a console is sabotaged
onconsolerepair -- Fires when a console is repaired
onsystemglitched -- Fires when a system becomes randomly glitched (may not cover all cases)
onpermaglitched -- Fires when a system becomes permanently glitched
onsystemdisabled -- Fires when a system becomes disabled (may not cover all cases)
onsystemlocked -- Fires when a system becomes locked (may not cover all cases)
onsystemoverclocked -- Fires when a system becomes overclocked (may not cover all cases)
onsystemhardened -- Fires when a system becomes hardened (may not cover all cases)
onsystemlosesoverclock -- Fires when a system loses overclocked (may not cover all cases)
onsystemsabotaged -- Fires when the player sabotages a system
onsystemrepaired -- Fires when a system is repaired (NOT emergency repaired)
onsystemrepairfail -- Fires when a repair fails
onsystemerepaired -- Fires when a system is emergency repaired
onsystemerepairfail -- Fires when an emergency repair fails
onpowertoggle -- Fires when power to a system is toggled (on or off)
onbreakeropened -- Fires when a breaker opens
onbreakerclosed -- Fires when a breaker is closed
onbreakerdamaged -- Fires when a breaker is damaged
onbreakerrepaired -- Fires when a breaker is repaired
onbreakerreplaced -- Fires when a breaker is replaced
onthrusterdamage -- Fires when a thruster is damaged
onmemoryapply -- Fires when the player gets their memory bonuses assigned at the start of a new game
onapplydilemma -- Fires when the player's dilemma reward or penalty is applied at the start of a new game
onscaredofdoors -- Fires when the player panics when interacting with a door due to Entamaphobia
ondirectorstart -- Fires when the director (RNG function) starts
ondirectorend -- Fires when the director (RNG function) ends
ongameloss -- Fires when the game ends in a loss, but before endgame flag is set
ongamewin -- Fires when the game ends in a win, but before endgame flag is set
oncooldownevent -- Fires when the player is going to get a cooldown event due to having a bad time
onreactordamaged -- Fires when the reactor takes damage
onobservationtoggled -- Fires when the observation window has been toggled to open or close

* Added over 50 new mod system hooks, bringing the current total to 59. More will be added, along with documentation for in-game functions, to make modding easier.