The latest newsletter update which hints at a big upcoming announcement coming this summer was released yesterday for action adventure game, Prey for the Gods.

Developed by San Francisco-based No Matter Studios, Prey for the Gods is an action adventure game in which players control a hero sent to vanquish the Gods, presumably in order to find a way to save a dying world from an eternal winter. Set on a desolate and frozen island, our heroine is all alone in the fight against the Gods, a quest that must be won to restore the natural balance. Check out the original reveal trailer released back in October at the bottom of the article.

The new May newsletter update on the game says one thing mainly: the Vertical Slice build is nearly done. Critiques of the Vertical Slice have been mostly positive, and feedback has been extensively used to polish and improve it further. Aside from confusion about what buttons are for what controls, the most common misunderstanding was Stamina. The original scheme was the screen growing darker and darker as it gets reduced while player breathing gets heavier until the screen blacks out completely. For the build, however, a full-on stamina bar was added for clarity, and only appears when using it. All status types (hunger, exhaustion, warmth, health) also got icons that only appear when idle and disappear while running, climbing, or in combat.

On a related note, experiments with non-obtrusive UI led to an contextually-activated feature that instructs players how to initiate a climb up a wall. However, this and the above features are all being considered as completely-optional in-game to minimize UI distractions. This comes into play when considering the absence of a targeting reticle when aiming and firing a bow, the mastery of which would be highly satisfying and immersive. Finally in terms of UI and controls, climbing has been simplified into a single action button, rather than the original separate buttons to climb on, get up, and let go.

Other updates include camera tweaks to make it more cinematic and natural, mouse/keyboard and gamepad support, arrows can be pulled out of objects like corpses and reused but can still break eventually, more “flappy” cloth physics, new boss and campfire animations, level layout updates, boss arena updates, weather tweaks, enemy improvements, bow and arrow aiming improvements, a new set of sounds, new combat music, prototyping of the second boss, tools that speed up boss development, and more that went unmentioned.

It’s worth mentioning that the 5 seconds of combat with sound published on the game’s Facebook and Twitter accounts (which you can view at the bottom of this post) is only a small appetizer for the big announcement that the developers are working on for summer, after which much more work can be shown.

Lastly, the second boss prototype news mentioned above also came with more info on what it is and how it will play. This boss and the third will be non-bipedal, meaning they won’t use two legs for walking. Welcome news, or ominous foreshadowing? You decide.

So what do you think of this development update? Are you as interested in this game as we are? Sound off in the comments below!

Prey for the Gods currently has no estimated release date other than a vague “when we feel it’s complete,” which I’m in total support of to get the best final product possible.

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