The time has come. The full version of HN:AR is finally out and you can play it right now on Gamejolt! A lot of time and effort have been put in to make this an all-around good fan game. Therefore, I’m going to talk a little bit about it in this post.

In September, I announced that the game was ready to head into beta stage and the core concept and gameplay were ready to be tested. I never made a post about this, but I did talk about it in more detail in my trailer video. A beta version became publically available on September 9th containing a new map designed around the Alpha 1 house with new puzzles but no extra floors. Although, funnily enough, this map concept was already a year old when it was released. Back when I was developing the original version, I had fully completed an Alpha 1 map with similar puzzle design to the current map. That map never got to be released, but it did get to be the blueprint of what would then become “Act 2” in the new game after the original corrupted.

However, one thing missing in the map was the third and fourth floors to the house, a long sought-after addition to Alpha 1 fan games and mods. Some of you may be aware of the early concept designs for all the floors of the Alpha 1 house, including floor plans, puzzle ideas, etc. This spawned a craving for a fully finished Alpha 1 house like it was intended to be before it got scrapped because of the potential of it. There’s been very few fan-games who’s managed to do acomplish that. Although I wasn’t gonna do that by myself as that would be painstakingly difficult, especially for someone who’s never modeled anything in his life. Luckily, for me, I found a solution pretty quickly.

In late September, I was contacted by Owen Campos, known for his fan game “Hidden Spirits” and UE4 tutorials, to help him work on his game. His development team was me, him and another guy called The Crowinator, also known as Jacket. He was doing level designing and modeling on the game and they were trying to make revamped versions of pre-existing alphas. I saw him talking about modeling the remaining floors to the Alpha 1 house, and I was like: “could i steal some of those models for my game plsssssss???” He ended up actually finishing the entire Alpha 1 house (except the fifth floor) for me to take advantage of. After that, I, at lightning speed, reworked some of the puzzles and finished the rest of the level in less than two weeks.

At the end of October, the game was basically completed. Ignoring the fact that I spent the rest of November desperately trying to fine tune everything, the whole game was right there in front of me for the first time. After multiple years of trials and tribulations, HN:AR’s journey was coming to an end, which feels both dismal and relieving to say. I’ve learnt so much from making this game, and without you guys’ ongoing support over the years, I would’ve cancelled this game a long time ago because, honestly, it was a pain to make and I’m glad it’s over. Now it’s time to move onto better and more interesting things. Maybe Hidden Spirits will overshadow this game some day? 👀

If you want to play the full game for yourself, click this link and it’ll take you straight to the Gamejolt page. It takes no brain power to download it and it is NOT a virus despite what your anti-virus program tells you. If you also want to check out the soundtrack for this game, it’s available on the Gamejolt page and also on streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube.

Regarding future updates, there are currently no future plans on expanding content further than small hotfixes. But this can all change in the future. There might also be potential to expand on the lore on any future project I might make, but nothing’s confirmed yet. However, if there’s enough demand to do a content expansion, I might consider it.

For now, thank you so much for being on this journey with me, it’s been a wild ride. And to the newcomers tuning in, thanks for stopping by. 👍