THE BACKSTAGE: murdered sleep BETA 

IS FINALLY LIVE!

This is the Beta version of the game available during the Early Access period for just $9.99! It is planned to release on Steam by June 20th.  The final version (1.0) is planned for release on July 14th, and will be priced at the game's final full price point of $19.99. A proper updated demo is also planned for release by June 20th. New build updates will probably release between now and the final build depending on how beta testing proceeds now that we're finally in beta. If you are an interested publisher, streamer, or journalist/content creator interested in streaming or covering the game, please leave a comment or contact me for a free download key to the beta!

Change Log (from 7/14/2022's Alpha v0.12)

FEATURES

• Map feature added!! There is now a map option from the main menu that will show you where you are on the map of the area you're in if you've found and collected that map. Note that not every area has a map. Final release may include one more map of the Lighthouse point area. Final release may update map over the course of play to show which doors you've discovered are jammed or locked, a la Silent Hill/Resident Evil.
• Easy Mode added! Difficulty is selected after the Prologue, during the "Sleep Trial Paperwork" sequence at the start of Act I. In Easy Mode, Base Health of Anna and Marlowe are tripled, healing from Medical Kits is doubled, and Anna receives a "Bottomless Shiv", essentially a 'Sharp Object' that never runs out. Other item and resource placement, monster numbers, monster stats, and monster aggression are all unchanged from Normal Mode.
• Additional 'Sanity Effects' added to make the game that much more, well, unnerving, when experiencing a Panic Attack or when your Nerve is very low. New Sanity Effects to plague you are unlocked as the game proceeds, as well as factors that influence your chances of experiencing them (such as carrying a particular cursed item, or making certain story choices). 
• Pop-up scare screens added to intensify various jump scares that were already present in the previous version.
• New 'death vignettes' added for Anna and Marlowe getting caught in traps. 

ENDINGS

• The "Bad Ending", Pull The Trigger And The Nightmare Stops, has been added and implemented . This ending is triggered by promising to help Dan in Act II and then not doing so. While most players might want to avoid the "Bad Ending" in most games, this one is AWESOME and I suggest you reserve a save slot to check it out on your next playthrough. Besides being just really really cool, every ending in Backstage: murdered sleep, even the "bad ones", reveals some information on the bigger picture of what's happening that other endings don't. 
• Both versions of the No Promises ending (Release and Revenge) have been rewritten to be less happy and sunshiny. I'm not sure if the final final final version of Backstage: murdered sleep has a good ending, but this definitely isn't meant to be it.
• "Resting Comfortably" (what happens if you make the wrong choice at the end of Act I) has been deprecated from a bad ending to another nonstandard game over (like what happens when Marlowe gets caught). I didn't think it made sense as ending that was gettable from Act I.
• WARNING: "All Saints" Ending is still unimplemented. If you reach the end of the game in Act II (after finding the Blade Key -- renamed to the "Key of Rapturous Rupture") with the conditions for this ending met (promising Dan and then actually helping him), you will instead be prompted to load a saved game. 

BALANCE

• Firearm damage is largely unchanged, but is now better reflected on the equip screen (the damage gap between the shown 'Ranged Attack' stat and the base damage really done by certain guns has been significantly shrunk). 
• The player is invulnerable during newly added Sanity Effects and scare screens that block your view of the screen, so you can't get killed while unable to see where you are.  
• The Protean Angel end boss has been slightly reworked. Its 8x8 Eyes attack is ever so slightly less devastating and fires off only three times during that attack pattern instead of five so it's less of a "well, guess I'm dead" if the boss repeats that attack pattern or corners you. The boss now triggers a sanity effect that shakes and obscures the screen whenever it cycles between attack patterns, so all in all the fight isn't easier OR harder, just different.   

VISUALS

• Title screen and Game Over screen have been improved and replaced. Non-standard game over screen for Marlowe getting caught has been added.  
• Placeholder art for Mask has been replaced with the final render of that character.
• Marlowe's face portrait has been replaced with a new and improved one.
• Placeholder art for Anna's childhood drawing has been replaced with final images.
• End-credits visuals greatly improved with a wide selection of concept art.

KNOWN ISSUES

• There are still some tile passability issues in spots, where you can step onto a tile you shouldn't be able to, or aren't able to empty what should be a passable tile. I probably can't track down all of them on my own, so this is what beta testing is for!
• Sometimes the Ghost Tape No. 9 video freezes when you go to play it towards the end of Act II. This issue seems to be endemic to RPG Maker MV, unfortunately, and it's hard to predict as sometimes it freezes and sometimes it plays fine with no rhyme or reason to it. I've added an option on the event to bypass playing the video file just in case players encounter this issue. There may be an RPG Maker MV plugin I can look into to fix this in the next build.