Hello all. Lead Designer of HorrorVale, Dustin here. Since we're coming up on the release of "HorrorVale" later this year, I wanted to post a brief overview of some problems some players may face when playing HorrorVale. Unfortunately, these are all problems prevalent with the game's engine itself, so they're things we can't really work around. For the most part, many of you will be aware that the game is developed in "RPG Maker", more specifically the "VX Ace" version. At the minimum, RPG Maker games aren't exactly... Hardware intensive games. At the minimum. It could be said that in several places HorrorVale is pushing RPG Maker "to its limits". Many RPG Maker developers are probably aware that the more stuff you have going on in the game, the more events, the more pictures, etc, that lag can occur. [b]LAG[/b] On machines with 2GB or lower in RAM (which you mainly find in old laptops), you too may experience some lag in large maps. Most egregious of all however is that it can effect in-game cut-scenes. There are many cut-scenes in the game that feature hand drawn art that zooms and pans around like a little slideshow. Many of these cut-scenes also are accompanied by sound and music that's been perfectly composed to align with what's going on in the cut-scene. However, this can fall apart completely if the computer's hardware isn't up to snuff. The reason being, that timing in the game is not determined by seconds, but by frames. Which means that... If the game is dropping frames on your computer, then the cut-scenes will last longer, and will also desync with the audio. In some cases this causes the audio to loop repeatedly which can be pretty jarring. Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, this is just "how RPG Maker works", it's not something we can really get around. It's incredibly frustrating to me personally to work on a scene I think is really important and then knowing that some players won't experience that scene in the intended way. One workaround I thought of would be to create some kind of unlisted playlist on YouTube featuring all the cutscenes, so if someone wants to they can go watch the cut-scene as intended on YouTube. Not ideal... But at least people who care about it can see them. There do exist several "lag reducing" scripts for RPG Maker, but rarely do they actually help much and in a few cases we've tried ones that have actually broken the game completely. Cut-scenes can also desync on perfectly good machines as well, because if you tab out of the game or accidentally click off the window, RPG Maker stops running completely... Except for any sound or music playing. Which means that just clicking off by accident during an important scene can completely desync it. Another thing we have no control over. Very unfortunate. Having the game somehow pause when tabbing out would probably be very difficult if impossible, but at the very least I wish there was a way to have it keep running when it's not an active window so it wouldn't be an issue. [b]CRASHING[/b] Another major issue that can occur on low-end machines is that occasionally, when opening Layla's "Party Menu" to shuffle around your party, crashes can occur. I've never personally experienced this, but testers on lower end machines have. We've used various methods to attempt to mitigate this, and we're currently looking into other options now, but it is very possible it could still happen to certain players on release. It's for this reason that I recommend [b]saving before using Layla if you're playing on a computer with less than 4GB of RAM[/b]. Hopefully before release or sometime after we can find a work around for this. The running theory is that this occurs because the game is loading in all the party member icons and then unloading them all very quickly and in some cases can't keep up with it. All in all, we want to do everything in our power to mitigate issues like this, but in certain cases we might not be able to and wanted to clearly communicate those issues to players who may experience them. Thanks for giving this a read, and we can't wait for you to experience the Underworld this October!