Escape From Blackwood Manor: Developers Log 2nd November 2026
Hey everyone here's the weekly log, it's a day late because yesterday we launched the official Escape from Blackwood Manor discord so figured i would do the weekly log a day later, if you missed it the link to discord is posted
HERE
So, very busy week for me, the v0.1.2 update launched last Thursday so the majority of what I did was getting that ready, bug testing, playing through the new escape games update to make sure it worked, and then a few days after was focused on feedback and bug testing, which there have been surprisingly few of so far which I'm happy about, anyways despite that i still made some progress with quite a few things both before and after the demo release so might as well talk about them briefly
So sprite animation frames, these are always getting updated but Amy now has over 260 animation frames and Imogen has 182, basically more animations though if you've played the latest demo you've probably seen most of them (though Amy has a lot of sprites of her tied up i didn't get to show off due to how many possible combinations of restraint gag and blindfold there are)
Moving on made some improvements to the escape system, if you played escape games past level 6 you probably got to the part with the Hand restraints which prevent using items, these were coded in so they would also effect what you could do while moving around, I also added in a lot of new backgrounds though these are static and not animated yet, though it seemed a bit silly animating so many background anyways as not everything needs to be fully animated i think when it comes to background details, though it's set up so if i change my mind or get more time in the future they can be animated
Small optimization, a lot of people had issues with the coloured wires being a bit too bland so i made them more vibrant, makes the puzzle solving a bit easier, I also updated some Icon sprites, previously the key background sprites were green which when you have different coloured keys doesn't really fit, so the backgrounds are now white, makes it easier to tell what's what at a glance
One final note, I've been working on the escape system after demo launch, had some feedback with a few things so I'll be working on it a fair amount this week, one thing I've done already is increased the amount the usable items increase the restraint progress by, a lot of people playing escape games thought they were a bit underpowered so i went over and upped them a little bit, on top of that I've added in two new items, the Army knife which can be used on any kind of restraint and the Multi tool, which also can be used on any kind of restraint but instead reduces the restraint level, i hope these changes make the use item function a little better going forward
On top of that I've just been going over a lot of feedback people have given, so some tweaks, bug fixes and grammatical errors have been sorted for the next release, for example i had someone message me after release about an oversight with the blindfold system, previously it showed the restraint level in certain restraints (such as failing or succeeding a minigame) even if they weren't inspected so i went over and changed it, it now only shows restraint level if the item was inspected so it makes the inspect mechanic a little more useful
So, I'm fully rested now (was really crunching to get the Demo released before Halloween, (9-12 hour days ect) but after a nice weekend of minor bug fixing and setting up discord I'm ready to get back into the swing of things and will be working on the main route and a few new characters as well as the escape system as I mentioned earlier, anyways to get to the point will probably just get my head down and work on the game, if you want to message i'll be checking discord every now and again since I just set it up and there's a tonne of useful stuff there like a channel for bug reporting and one for suggesting features so feel free to check it out if you have time
That's all for now, peace