Hello, investigators!

We've been hard at work getting Tea Party of the Damned ready for Early Access. Thank you to the 12,000 or so of you who have added it to your wishlist! In case you don't know, we're a team of just two developers (plus one musician), so making this ambitious project has been something of an undertaking.

Still, we're getting closer to that all exciting release date announcement. Thank you for bearing with us!

Investigators battle giant flies and Eldritch life-forms in the sewers.

We recently launched the fourth patch for our closed playtest. In the interests of transparency, we're posting it here on the game's page as well, so you can see what we've been working on. If you'd like the see the same patch notes, only on the Steam page for the playtest, you can do so here.

We're excited to announce that Playtest #5 will be available to more of our Kickstarter backers than ever before (another 500 testers will be invited), and we're looking forward to hearing more thoughts and feedback before we launch in Early Access.

Here's a rough idea of what to expect from us over the next few months.

• Phase 1: Patch #4 Hotfix. Hopefully sometime in the next 10 days we'll be launching a hotfix for Patch 4. The main issue we're hoping to address is cutscene stability.

• Phase 2: Closed Test, Patch #5. The next test will be available to everyone who backed a Gold Key tier on our Kickstarter, which is approximately 500 more testers!

• Phase 3: Trailer 1.5 and Release Date Estimate: We'll be using the new test builds to create an Early Access trailer 1.5. Ideally, we'll have a rough estimate of the Early Access release date on there, too.

• Phase 4: Closed Test, Patch #6. The final phase of the closed playtest, this will be available to all backers who supported us on Kickstarter.

• Phase 5: Early Access.

Changes marked with 🔎 were inspired by tester/community feedback.

Highlights:

• Moose Tweaks: He can slap enemies with his new passive, 'Clout'.

• Items and Loot: Now far more stable and optimised, with new sounds and a polished UI. Next up: adding more exciting items!

• Enemies: The denizens of the underworld have been made more interesting, with new abilities, stat scaling and item use.

• Stability: Optimised several major systems, plugged some memory leaks, 9+ crashes fixed.

• Weapons: One new ranged weapon added to this test: the revolver (currently locked to the Bard). The Trapper (or any investigator who learns Locks & Traps) has some new snare traps. Shotguns now look, sound and feel better! Improved the visuals on aiming cones and bullets.

• Magic: Spells can backfire again! Magical abilities can now be evaded, which is something we’d like to gather feedback on. Let us know if it makes spellcasting too frustrating.

Investigators:

• The Moose's 'Constitution' trait has been replaced with 'Clout'. Attacks have a 20% chance to trigger a 'clout' attack, knocking enemies back slightly ("It also makes a satisfying 'Slap!' sound." - Lou).

• The Moose's passive trait 'Tough as nails' has been implemented and tweaked slightly. It now gives him +6% max health (calculated after gear/passives/buffs, etc) and +2 AC.

• Investigators have been given a short 'kneel' animation, used for actions like placing traps.

Inventory and Looting:

• Players can no longer loot/move two items at once by clicking between them.

• Added a variety of item management sounds (loot, equip, pick-up, place).

• Added an 'active' glow to the current active item (guns, thrown weapons, etc) to match the glow on the hotbar.

• You can now split stacks of items by picking up an item stack and right clicking on a free inventory space.

• Equipment now flashes when equipped and plays a sound effect.

• Items which fail to equip or activate (due to requirements) perform an error flash and sound effect.

• Item cooldowns are now displayed inside the backpack.

• The Bard now starts with a basic revolver weapon.

• 1x secret location has been populated with loot.

Items:

• New item: Snare.

• The Trapper starts with 10 Snare items. More can be found in various trash heaps around the beach.

• Added 5 Snares to the starter chest.

• New ranged weapon: Revolver.

• Added new sound effects for activating firearm weapons.

Levels:

• Reduced the trigger radius of the game's first combat encounter.

• Expanded the parallax background system and created some dev tools for easier setup and alignment.

• Improved the cutscene timing and sound design of the sewers special encounter.

Searching:

• Searching has been improved and rebalanced.

• Added a 'searching' group status effect.

• New visuals and message log reports for searching and finding hidden items.

Surprised!

• New status effect: Surprised! Represents being ambushed. Certain attacks and abilities may also trigger the effect.

• When surprised, characters will have a greatly reduced evade/block/parry chance.

• Entering combat in Search mode (hotkey: F) results in party members being surprised.

Story:

• Added some bonus Shelby dialogue which can be accessed inside the mini-dungeon.

• Shelby's directions on the whale map are now more accurate.

Enemies:

• Improved the flow of the cutscene which introduces the first combat encounter. Also added a dramatic zoom and an even more dramatic stinger!

• Enemies can now level up. They can also unlock abilities, attributes, talents and skills upon reaching certain levels

• Enemies may now use talents.

• Hermit Crabs flash when they're about to cast Reckless Charge, and the minimum range of charging has been reduced by 20%.

• Crab enemies now have a stunned animation.

• Fixed an animation error which was affecting crab enemies.

• Enemies now correctly equip and bind items they're given.

• Enemies can now equip and use firearms.

• Enemies may now carry (and use) healing potions.

• The lone Forgotten Whaler (beach) now carries a healing potion which he will drink at low health.

• Additional enemies have been seeded with a chance to carry/use potions.

Combat:

• Casting a targeted offensive spell without a target will no longer cause the spell to fail. Instead, characters will auto-target the nearest enemy and begin casting. A similar change has also been made for healing and support spells.

• AI will now use health potions at 35% current health (was previously set to 50%).

• Improved the visuals of the ranged weapon cone.

• Bullets from firearms now travel slightly further but visually fade out when they reach max range. We’ve also added some damage falloff for this effect.

• Improved muzzle-flash visuals of heavy firearms.

Balance:

• Magical projectiles can now be evaded using your passive evade chance.

• Fixed the critical strike damage of Shadow Missiles and Namshub: Shadow (was set too high).

• Reduced the cooldown of Namshub: Frost by 1 second.

• Increased the starting health of caged skeleton enemies.

• Mor’Baz is now immune to snares and slows.

• Increased the level of Sea Urchins in the jail room by 1.

• Increased the level of Fly Spawners on the beach by 1.

• Increased the healing power of all health/rejuvenation potions.

• Reduced the HP of Beach Flies by 8, increased the HP of Beach Fly Spawners and Urchins by 20.

• Temporary stat gains from status effects no longer count towards item unlock requirements.

• Reduced the explosion resistance of Beach Fly enemies.

• Trench Shotgun damage increased by 15%. Accuracy increased by 5%.

• With regards to the newly added damage falloff of firearms: shotguns have the greatest amount of damage falloff, followed by pistols, followed by rifles.

Abilities:

• The Trapper's Leap ability now launches her upwards slightly.

• Shuffle, Leap, and Strafe have new icon art.

• The Scribe's evasion ability 'Shuffle' is now correctly evading attacks.

• Players are now immune to hostile status effects for 2 seconds after using Leap, Shuffle, Strafe or Dash.

• Namshub: Shadow, Namshub: Frost, and Shadow Missiles can now backfire.

• Offensive magic spells now have a difficulty rating. For each point placed in the attunement type of that spell (fire, shadow, water, etc) at a value higher than that spell's difficulty rating, its chance to backfire will be reduced by 1% (to a minimum of 1% chance to backfire).

Traps:

• Traps now record being triggered when you change maps.

• Traps are now tied to the save/load system.

• Trap sounds now play at the correct volume and location.

UI:

• Added mini health-bar functionality for friendly characters.

• Mini health-bar visuals have received some polish.

• Item tooltips have received some polish.

• Improved the mouseover information for spells and abilities which are bound to the hotbar.

• Enemy status effects are now visible and can be found on the target bar (top of screen).

Optimization, bugfixes and crashes:

• Optimized the trap system.

• Resolved an issue which allowed the player to stall the cutscene camera using R-Mouse.

• Temporarily added an auto-save event to two locations: The Queue Room and the Portal Room.

• Optimized the inventory system (item allocation, trading items, sound, item tooltips, cooldowns).

• Fixed an error which was causing firearm misfires to always strike the first available target.

• Fixed a targeting bug linked to Taunt (AI range-finding error).

• Fixed a targeting bug linked to loot objects (GUI lock error).

• Fixed a memory leak which was causing the game to crash.

• Fixed a cutscene memory leak.

• Fixed a crash which occurred when shockwaves encountered downed players.

• Fixed a crash relating to magical projectiles (damage source error).

• Fixed yet another Shelby intro cutscene crash.

• 🔎 Fixed a crash related to searching.

• Fixed a crash related to looting (item check crash).

• Fixed a crash related to the miss chance of two ranged weapons: Dynamite and Darts.

• Fixed an animation glitch relating to ranged weapons.

• Fixed a crash which occurred when dragging weapons to the hotbar.

• 🔎 Fixed a crash which occurred when leaving a room with a downed party member.

• Fixed a rare crash which occurred when casting Shadow Missiles.

• Fixed a crash caused by Insect Clouds not belonging to any faction.

• Removed a developer debug which was accidentally shipped with Patch #3 (pressing 'G' dropped all living investigators' health to 1).

• 🔎 Fixed a bug which caused Shelby to crash the game when you turned down his offer.

• Fixed a bug which prevented magical projectiles from backfiring.

• Fixed a bug which sometimes caused Shadow Missiles to immediately hit the ground.

• Fixed a bug which was causing levers to reset on room change.

• Fixed a UI bug which displayed unwanted information over HUD Portrait 4.

• Fixed an animation error caused by dashing into bear traps.

• Evasion abilities now correctly evade magical projectiles and thrown harpoons.

• Drinking a Potion of Evasion no longer causes the game to crash.

• Cleared skeleton cages no longer appear to reset when backtracking to the jail room.

• The placeholder rest function (shortcut: R) now correctly restores stamina and mana points.

• 🔎 Players can no longer softlock the game by leaving the portal room (sewers) before clearing the portal.

• The game no longer crashes when you speak with Shelby inside the mini-dungeon.

• Players can no longer get knocked out of bounds by Mor'baz's Ground Pound attack.

• Resolved an issue with item requirement checks (this was also preventing the Scribe from equipping items).

• Saving the game now correctly records ability points spent.

• Fixed a bug where Mor'baz's attacks would knock you back even if he missed.

• Fixed a bug with the 'remove status effects' script.

• Fixed a UI bug which caused tooltips to display unwanted elements.

• The Innkeeper (AI) will no longer cast Pummel when there are no enemies nearby.

• Fixed a bug which potentially allowed all four investigators to equip and fire the same instance of a ranged weapon.

• Fixed a graphical glitch in the first combat encounter.

• Fixed the behavior of the 'mysterious rodent' NPC when encountered at the entrance to the sewers.

• Fixed some unwanted camera behavior on one of the Queue cutscenes.

Misc:

• The log report for looting no longer displays the investigator's full name.

• Inventory SFX: Added many item management/looting sounds.

• Fixed some errors on the tooltips of Namshub: Frost, Shadow Missiles, Dash, and Shuffle.

• SFX: Improved the sound effect timing of various melee attacks.

• New SFX: Potion Drink (Standard).

• New SFX: Potion Drink (Magical).

• New SFX: Spell backfire.

• New SFX: Searching.

• New SFX: Open and Close inventory.

• New SFX: Clout.

• New SFX: Ranged Weapon Activation.

• New SFX: Sewer Blockage Death.

• New SFX: Sewer Blockage Growl.

• SFX: Improved the Trench Shotgun firing sound.

• SFX: Increased the volume of firearms.

• Reduced the intensity of environmental glows.*

* Note: We'll soon be adding an option for non-HDR monitors which will bring back some of the lost intensity. Apologies if you don't have HDR and the glows look a bit weak for the time being!

Steam Cloud:

• Steam Cloud is now enabled.