Lake of Darkness — patch notes and updates
Stored observation / content update:
Dated developer announcements recorded from Steam. Open the source for the complete update.
| Update | Date | Excerpt / source |
|---|---|---|
| Lake of Darkness: Cide Story is here! | 2026-11-02 | Cide Story is available for purchase!The shifting release date finally finds a place to settle, coming both 2 days early and 5 days late. After about a year in development It's finally available on Steam for 2.99 USD. Sorry for the wait but I wanted Lake of Darkness Cide Story to be a more full companion piece to the original instead of a small spin off title. I'm proud of how it turned out and I hope you all enjoy it too.Casey will not survive to see tomorrow.The clock is ticking in this emotional psychological horror visual novel. The endings differ, but your fate is always the same.In this prequel to Lake of Darkness discover mind-bending |
| 1.6.2 after patch hotfix | 2026-09-30 | Bugfixes:Stalker sprite persisting through scenesBug that unlocked multiple achievements at onceVarious typos and grammatical errorsIf you'd like to join the official Steeze Games discord server to get early access to news and demos use the invite link below:https://discord.gg/jSzRm4fWJr |
| Major Update 1.6 | 2026-09-28 | Update 1.6Welcome to a new era of Lake of Darkness. This update was intended to greatly polish the look and feel of the game, with the intention to leave it in a more presentable state for the long term. Outside of minor changes and fixing any possible bugs introduced in this patch this is intended to be the final content patch. Sadly this is first update I've ever posted where content gets removed entirely instead of updated. Shamefully I couldn't get the premium "Awake" achievement to work in the newest version of Renpy despite all my testing. (I swear I'd had it working at one point.) I made the elective decision to remove the achievement |
| Lake of Darkness: Cide Story enters public playtesting! | 2026-07-11 | Play the beta now on Itch.io: https://steezey-swag.itch.io/lake-of-darkness-cide-story-playtest-demoThe full release should be coming late fall of this year as a free download on steam. I hope you enjoy and please if you have any feedback about your gameplay experience, good or bad, please let me know via the discord and Itch.io comments.The earlier mentioned 1.6 update is in the works, don't worry. Coming with new scenes, quality of life improvements, and fixes to the bugs with regards to achievements. So sorry it's taken me so long, keep an eye out for that over the next few weeks. |
| 1.54 hotfix | 2026-05-24 | Hotfix 1.54A bug was introduced yesterday in patch 1.53 that softlocked players at the start of the game into dying on the first night. This was a holdover from testing the "early bird" ending. This should now be fixed. If you are still having issues with the "awake" achievement I'm so sorry about that, it seemed to be working in engine so I'll be looking into solutions over the following weeks. Likely has something to do with how steam stores it's achievements.Besides fixing bugs and writing errors I plan on there being one final content patch closer to the release of cide story with scenes that hint at plot points from the new game. Look fo |
| Update 1.53 | 2026-05-23 | Patch 1.53Update 1.53 is designed primarily to address bugs surrounding the achievement "Awake" but also to address small inconsistencies in writing, while continuing to polish existing endings and scenes. Some of the dialogue is from very early in development when I didn't have all details of the story quite yet narrowed down. During testing and while writing scenes for cide story I've notices some minor plot holes and moments that are worded strangely, I'll continue to be on the lookout for stuff like this in future updates but I tried to tackle a number of them here. As for the "Awake" trophy, if you already have all other achievements "Aw |
| 1.51 bug hotfix | 2026-04-29 | In this hotfix I was trying to address the script error introduced in patch 1.5 with regards to the "True ending" and clean up some dialogue. Thankfully the bug only occurred at the very end blocking the "Thank you for playing" message however now you wont have to go into the game files to avoid this crash.Content:New garbage searching sound effectNew hidden dialogueMinor changes to existing dialogueBugfixes:Script error during true endingSome grammatical errors and typosI hope you enjoy the polish update and I have no news I'm willing to share regarding the development of Lake of Darkness Cide Story out of fear of spoilers just know that it' |
| 1.5 Update and Future Projects | 2026-04-03 | Update 1.5 and what comes after...First of all, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has played, both players who've been around since the demos on ITCH.IO and those who are just trying the game today. I've seen so much passion from this small community it really makes this development journey feel rewarding, I've been inspired by that passion and I'd like this to be rewarding for you all too, so at the end of this announcement I'll be giving you all a sneak peak at my next game.For the 1.5 update I wanted to focus on polishing the dialogue, images, achievements, and remove some repetitions in the script. With this update I hope to leave |
| 1.4 Content Patch | 2026-01-26 | 1.4 Content PatchDespite your best efforts to understand it, the town is everchanging.For the first update of 2026 I bring you the 1.4 content update which promises to further flesh out characters and stories, but also polish the day to day experience in your mysterious hometown. This update comes with new puzzles, areas, secrets, scares, and surreal moments. I also wanted to thank you all again for all the reviews, artwork, and support I've seen in this small community. You all have made Lake of Darkness an incredibly rewarding experience to make, I hope you enjoy the new patch. Content:New section of your house is now explorableNew hidden a |
| 1.22b | 2025-11-05 | updated to latest edition of renpy minor dialogue edits |
| HUGE update 1.22 | 2025-11-05 | Halloween Patch 1.22 (major)After too long of a wait, Lake of Darkness is finally going to look more like the game I imagined when starting this project. This patch contains all the content that was supposed to release in earlier patches and more. Consider this a sort of "full release". I don't have any major updates planned after this outside of following the community and minor fixes or changes as the inspiration hits. Lake of Darkness has always been a passion project of mine first and foremost however I still want it to be a polished, unique, and engaging experience. I feel as if I have somewhat failed in that regard up until now and for |
| Missing: Patch 1.2 | 2025-11-03 | So patch 1.2 didn't work (obviously)This past month I've taken a significant break from programming on lake of darkness to celebrate my birthday, pick up more shifts at work, and dip my toes into work on a new game (news about this at some point). When I returned to the project to begin working on the Halloween update, immediately I noticed that people were still experiencing old bugs I was sure I patched and none of the new content seemed to appear. I had a friend test it on their computer to come to the realization that the patches 1.2 and 1.21 were only available to me, the developer.A failure in testing? Definitely. Consider it part of th |
| Bug hotfix 1.21 | 2025-09-26 | This hotfix is supposed to resolve a major bug players are having with steam achievements not functioning as intended. Hopefully this small bugfix will address that issue so you guys can keep track of your endings via the achievement system.BugfixesSteam Achievement hotfixNow running on Renpy 8.4.1Can no longer name your character "Mom" or "Dad"Compilation error after reading dad's note (Shoutout to FaB for finding this bug) |
| Major update: version 1.2 | 2025-09-24 | After months of coding, drawing, and testing, the third public steam version (1.2) is finally out.I can't wait to see what you all think of this patch and all the new content. Reading all of your glowing reviews and comments has renewed my passion for this project. This should be the 2nd last update outside of smaller bug patches. I have a minor Halloween patch planned for next month, but you're here to read the changelog for this patch, so let's get into it.Content:15 new unlockable Steam achievements New explorable area: the apartmentsA new ending2 Secret nightmare sequencesNew secrets and scaresNew sprites for items and work minigameBugfix |
| Lake of Darkness version 1.1 | 2025-08-05 | Lake of Darkness patch 1.1Content:2 new endingsnew randomized dream sequencenew song in soundtrack (osttree)expanded existing passive mechanicsmore varied dialoguemore randomized eventsBugfixes:missing sprites in corner storecertain hidden dialogue trees previously not appearing are now functionalNo longer able to call into work past the time work is availablecompilation error due to working twice in same day (no idea how this was missed during testing)compilation error due to incorrect time in certain scenesmultiple compilation errors due to erroneous variablesThank you so much to everyone for the amazing feedback and support since release. |