October 2025 Blog
Hey everyone, happy Halloween season!
October has been an incredibly busy and exciting month for the team. Between finalizing the demo, starting playtesting, and fixing many bugs, Subliminal is definitely starting to feel like the experience we’ve been looking for. With the Halloween demo right around the corner, it’s been all hands on deck to make sure everything looks and runs exactly the way we wanted it to.
Let’s take a look at what’s been going on this month!
Development Progress
Playtesting Applications:
We received over 80 playtesting applications from our wonderful Patreon supporters, which was amazing to see! We carefully sorted through each person to find the best fits for our hardware testing needs varying from very high to very low specification systems.
Bug Fixes:
Our in-engine team fixed around 200 bugs per week this month! Most of them were small but meaningful fixes in regards to optimization, texture errors, visual glitches, or general gameplay polish. A huge month for cleanup overall, and seeing smaller, more detailed bugs getting fixed is a great sign.
The Basement:
The Basement level got a ton of love this month, with optimization efforts including instanced high-geo carpet flooring, reworked lighting, and a few simplified models to improve performance. We’re definitely approaching our target framerate for this section! We also added more to explore here with some expanded rooms and hallways with a few new scenes as well.
Card-Specific Optimizations:
We added several new GPU-specific optimizations to improve how different hardware handles Subliminal’s lighting and post-processing.
Full DLSS 4, FSR 4, & XeSS Support:
We've integrated the latest versions of NVIDIA DLSS 4, AMD FSR 4, and Intel XeSS for the best upscaling and performance options available. Intel XeSS and FSR can be used on any of the three main GPU vendors. In short, whether you're team green, red, or blue – Subliminal is ready for you. Was that a bit too cheesy?
Revamped WaterWorks FX:
The WaterWorks area now features reworked water effects that look far more full and realistic. Personally, I love how this turned out, I think it adds a lot to the atmosphere!
Streaming Optimizations:
We finished up our level streaming optimization pass which minimized any remaining loading hitches or stuttering appearing in-game. We’ll continue to refine this as playtesting continues to make sure everything feels smooth.
Behind the Scenes: Optimization
While last month focused on fixing lighting errors, this month focused on optimizing lighting.
Lighting has always been one of the most important visual tools in Subliminal. We utilize it to control the mood and perspective of almost every scene in-game. But with that complexity comes challenges. Overlapping light sources can drastically affect performance and is also unnecessary in some areas. This month, our team revisited many of our lighting setups to correct overlaps and implement light culling. Light culling is an optimization technique that unloads lights out of range of the player so they don’t weigh down performance when no longer visible.
These changes have had a huge impact on stability and framerate, especially on lower-end hardware. The result? Subliminal runs better than ever now, while still looking as eerie and beautiful as it always has.
Spotlight: Demo & Playtesting
We’ve officially begun our first round of playtesting, and it’s been an amazing experience so far! Thank you to everyone who applied, and congratulations to those who were selected to playtest the Halloween Demo and Episode 1 of Subliminal.
Playtesting has given us a ton of useful information so far for optimization, as well as insights into how players will explore and experience the puzzles in-game. We’ve also gotten some great reactions from the group in terms of feedback! One of the biggest surprises? The average demo playtime was nearly double what we originally expected! That tells us that players are spending more time on puzzles, and exploring and engaging with the environment longer than we anticipated, which is incredibly rewarding to see.
With the demo releasing in just a few days, the team’s been polishing and debugging nonstop to make sure the first public “showcase” feels just right. Expect some scares, some secrets, and teasers for what’s to come in Subliminal Episode 1 later this year.
Looking Ahead
As we head into November, the team is shifting gears towards testing and marketing to prepare for Episode 1’s launch. Much of this month will be focused on finalizing the multiple ending sequences in Episode 1 to prepare for the transition into Episode 2! While it’s definitely going to be a busy month filled with many long nights, the energy within our team is higher than ever as the finish line for this first major milestone is in sight.
We cannot wait to see everyone’s reactions once the demo is live, and we’ll be monitoring feedback closely as we continue refining for the Episode 1 release.
Closing Remarks
This month has really reminded us why we love sharing these updates with you all. Seeing playtesters react to the world we’ve built, seeing performance increase while visuals continue to stun, etc. It’s been a really rewarding and validating experience seeing the culmination of three years of working together.
As always, thank you for reading, thank you for following, and thank you for being patient with us as we continue to make Subliminal the best it can be.
– The Accidental Studios Team
