Subliminal: Episode 1 | v1.0.9 Update Overview

Hey everyone!

If you haven't already taken a look at our Look Ahead post, v1.0.9 is our next content update for Episode 1, resuming active updates with a wide range of changes for players to enjoy.

Highlights

• Upgrading from Unreal Engine 5.7 to 5.8, including support for Lumen Lite in a new Low graphics preset and other performance improvements • A completely revamped settings menu, with over thirty new settings and new descriptions for many other settings • Initial HDR support, with more options coming in v1.0.9.x • Improved Controller Support, including vibration support • New in-between checkpoints spread throughout the Episode, allowing players to get back to where they were quicker through a new option in Memory Load • New post-game content with the Modifiers system, including Developer Commentary • A revamped ending for one of the alternative paths in the Episode • The return of several pieces of cut-content • A change in how future content is delivered • And over 150+ fixes and quality-of-life improvements to all current Episode 1 content!

Since it's been a while since our last update back in June with v1.0.3, there's quite a bit to cover, so this post may be a bit more in-depth than normal.

Engine Upgrades

As some players have likely noticed in our past patches, we typically don't stay on any one set version of Unreal Engine 5 (UE5). (Given our longer development cycle for Episode 1, it has existed on almost every major version of UE5!)

We typically decide to upgrade the engine if there's a fix or change that is directly beneficial to us, or for changes on our end for future features. (As the engine Subliminal runs on is not the base version of UE5)

Beginning with v1.0.9, Subliminal will be using Unreal Engine 5.8.4 as its base (previously 5.7.4 in v1.0.3), featuring additional improvements to several features we make use of, in addition to performance improvements across all quality levels, including a new Low preset taking advantage of Lumen Lite.

There have been additional changes made on our end as well, primarily to improve lighting in certain conditions, some features in v1.0.9, and improvements to controller and Steam Deck support.

There are currently no plans to bring Subliminal to Unreal Engine 5.9 or 6.0 at this time, but both are versions we are actively keeping our eye on when it comes to our current and future projects.

Settings Revamps

Many players have noticed, even back during our original October Demo last year, that our Settings menu has always been relatively simplistic, in addition to it having very limited controller support.

Truth be told, as time has gone on, this menu had been an internal burden on us for many months, from much of its behavior being hardcoded, as well as it being developed at a time when Subliminal didn't have controller support, leading to a lot of shortcuts with its existing design that led to it no longer being viable to work with as we looked forward.

With v1.0.9, the settings menu has been rebuilt from the ground up, with improved performance, ease-of-access, controller support, and more!

Featured below is a comparison between the settings menu, as it appears currently in v1.0.3.5, and how it'll appear with our next update:

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New Settings

Alongside the new settings menu, v1.0.9 also includes over thirty new settings, including but not limited to: • Options to configure the crosshair opacity and radius in various states • Options to scale all HUD Icons as well as Subtitles • Individual toggles for all HUD Icons, to either hide or show them • Initial support for HDR displays, with more options arriving later in v1.0.9.x • Improved ultrawide (non-1080p display) support, through a new HUD Icon Anchoring option, anchoring HUD Icons toward the center or edge of your screen • Backdrop and Backdrop Opacity support for HUD Icons and Subtitles, allowing for better visibility • Improved controller support, with full vibration and deadzone support

Layout & Behavior Changes

Additionally, many settings have been updated with new or edited descriptions to properly describe their features, in addition to the following layout and behavior changes: • Post Process settings have been moved to the bottom of the Graphics category • The Colorblind Mode setting has been moved to the General category • The Hit Lighting Mode setting has been moved to the Graphics category, now located under the HWRT (Hardware Raytracing) option • The dedicated Apply button has been removed, replaced by other indicators (Pending) and a revamped Apply/Revert screen • All Reset ALL buttons are now HOLD actions, as a parity change with the Recompile and Reset All Settings buttons in the General category • Various setting names have been adjusted to have shorter representations, to improve localization, and to avoid longer text in certain languages • Various sections of the settings menu now use collapsible tabs, allowing for a cleaner interface and avoiding a longer list with every option expanded like in the previous menu • A new status indicator is now present beside the GPU name in the Graphics category, displaying one of three levels of available Raytracing and Async Compute feature support: 　◦ OK — Full support 　◦ LIMITED — Limited support; some options may cause increased instability, or in worse-cases crashes (Namely, HWRT) 　◦ NONE — No support; some options may be unavailable if you see this

Checkpoints

A common request amongst players since our launch back in March has been for more checkpoints across the game, and while we addressed part of this request through checkpoints in higher-intensity sections (Chases and resettable challenges), addressing this in a more general-sense was a more complicated goal.

Some players who have been digging around might have noticed that back during v1.0.3, we added a hidden Debug Menu to the game, which at the time was primarily used by the team to test certain sections of the game more quickly.

What those players may not have realized, however, and has been a trait some of our other past update features have had in common, is that this menu was also used for trialing future features, in this case: Checkpoints!

Beginning in v1.0.9, the over fifty checkpoints from that menu have now been made available as in-between save points.

This means that if you exit the game whilst in the middle of a memory, you'll see a new Continue option in the main menu, allowing you to return to where you were in the game rather than replaying a memory from the beginning.

Note: There are not any in-between save points during chases, since it eclipses our existing features. They do however still exist in the aforementioned menu.

Additionally, while the Demo version now also supports this menu, it does not add any player-facing save points due to its shorter length.

We are also looking into the potential of expanding the Memory Load screen in a future update to allow for individually selecting discovered save points.

This, however, primarily comes down to how we want to do this from a frontend (UI) perspective, as the current behaviors in v1.0.9 already allow this feature to exist.

Post-Game Content

One pattern of feedback among players that we've noticed, and seems to often be a similar case in other titles -- is that it often conflicts with each other.

• For chases, some players may want a challenge, while some may want an easier and more casual experience. • For environments, some players may have preferred certain design choices over others, while others may see it as the exact opposite. • For puzzles, some may prefer less (or even none) of them, while others may (similar to chases) want the challenge.

One of the harsher lessons we've had to learn since launch was how to find the best route towards balancing towards both sides, while also retaining the vision we have in mind when developing Subliminal.

With v1.0.9 also comes a change to how we're beginning to handle that -- and how content is being developed as a whole.

Modifiers

Beginning in v1.0.9, players who have completed any of the four Episode endings will now see a new tab in the General category of the Settings menu called Modifiers.

Modifiers are a set of options that allow players to customize the game more to their liking, in addition to also allowing us to bring bigger changes to the game sooner through feature-flagging, as well as being able to restore several user-requested pieces of cut content, faithfully restored and brought up to Episode 1's current quality.

In this initial rollout of the Modifier system, there are seven different modifiers to choose from, and they can be mix-and-matched however the player chooses to form some interesting combinations.

As time goes on, we'll be adding more to this system, driven both by user-feedback and depending on future content.

Disclaimers

As Modifiers are an entirely new system, there are a few notes to how players can customize these options:

• Modifiers can only be customized in the Settings menu while in the main menu, and will not be toggleable while in-game. 　◦ That being said, runtime-swapping is supported on a backend-level, since we expect certain players to try and get around this. Please note, however, that runtime-swapping may cause issues. • Modifiers are a permanent unlock, meaning that even if you do a Memory Load reset to wipe player data, Modifiers will remain unlocked once you achieve the requirement of completing any ending. • Achievement earning is NOT blocked with Modifiers enabled, as many of these modifiers come from pre-existing content, so to the team it made no sense to restrict something that previously wasn't restricted. 　◦ This may, however, change in the future, with certain modifiers blocking certain achievements. • Modifiers are non-canonical, and should not be treated as such.

Modifier Overview

Limited Sprint

One of the additions to v1.0.9 re-implements a previously-cut Sprinting SFX for Caleb that would occur if the player was sprinting for too long.

When this modifier is enabled, however, this goes one step further by replacing the running icon with a sprint bar that, once exhausted, will prevent Caleb from sprinting until the bar finishes replenishing over time.

This feature was originally featured on our Patreon between March and April of 2025, though was cut after the feature was out-voted.

With some repairs, this feature now has a permanent place as a modifier, bringing the feature back in its original form.

Note: The sprint bar visibility can be controlled through the HUD Icon settings.

"Classic Mode"

Note: These modifiers are exclusive to Episode 1 and The Archives, and will not be in Episode 2.

In addition to the aforementioned pattern of feedback we noticed earlier, we did also notice a trend where a subset of our audience wanted to see more of our original gameplay elements make a return in some way, or otherwise disliked how often the Episode went through major changes.

This also includes the myriad of content creator videos that very quickly became outdated or obsolete due to the number of changes made.

To address this, we didn't want to just bring back these elements as one toggle, but instead turn it into a more modular system, allowing players the agency to choose what parts of the original experience they'd like to use.

This led to the creation of four modifiers, with all four being enabled providing a best of both worlds experience -- the best of what our launch featured, while retaining the quality-of-life and lessons learned from post-launch:

Classic Entities

In addition to this modifier returning the appearance of both entities in Episode 1 to their original models, it also affects entity behaviors as well.

For most chase sequences, this makes Smile especially into a much more active threat for the player, with harsher timings similar to what we had at launch, but still leveraging other changes that avoid it becoming impossible/unfair.

Note: Memory Disposal's chase sequence timings are not affected by this modifier.

Classic SFX

This modifier controls the entity SFX that is played in-game, primarily affecting chase sequences, where these effects drastically differed between their introduction in October's Demo and the full release back in March.

Classic Environments

This modifier brings with it the return of several launch environments that had changed significantly between launch and v1.0.3, while also retaining the quality-of-life improvements made in those patches for these areas to stand at the same quality.

Note: Not all original areas have made a return with this modifier, for good reason. Much of what has returned was based on interest we've been observing. We'll also be using this modifier in the future for content preservation for future major changes, in scenarios where the prior environment is something players would like to remain.

Classic Mechanics

This modifier can either be used on its own, or in conjunction with Classic Environments to bring with it the return of several mechanics that were altered or removed between launch and v1.0.3, including some moveable objects and the timed sensor light mechanics featured in some puzzles.

Note: Some areas using the Classic Environments modifier also require Classic Mechanics to be enabled.

Experimental FX

This modifier is used for a few varying purposes relating to experimental or previously-scrapped visual effects, including but not limited to:

• A different, Niagara-based appearance to all Shadow Figure sequences, previously seen in our trailer earlier this year but scrapped due to performance and visibility issues. 　◦ This feature does NOT support runtime-swapping, and is only polled when an applicable sequence starts. • Two new post-processing options for enabling and controlling Sharpness and Film Grain intensity. These have been marked experimental until a future update, and are related to some planned changes for Episode 2 we're working on! • When combined with Classic Entities, uses the Pupil version of Smile's original model. This version of Smile was originally introduced on Patreon, then in the October Demo; it was scrapped due to issues in its eye-tracking and not giving the intended initial reaction to Smile that we were looking for. 　◦ This returning feature comes with bug-fixes to both Smile's eye tracking and Smile's original model to resolve some legacy issues. 　◦ This feature does NOT apply to sections after the first bounce house chase sequence. This is due to the original intention being that Smile would be blinded during this chase sequence halfway-through, resulting in the blind appearance that Smile's original model later had after the Pupil version was scrapped.

Note: This modifier will be expanded in the future for other features, if the decision is made to feature-flag them first prior to a full rollout.

Developer Commentary

To share a more behind-the-scenes look at the making of the episode, its technical and design decisions, and more, commentary nodes may now appear throughout relevant areas featuring audio commentary from various team members when this modifier is enabled.

These nodes can be played at any time by hovering over them and using the INTERACT key.

Additional commentary nodes will be added to The Archives as well, upon its release in Early 2027.

Existing Content Improvements

Alongside the aforementioned changes, there have also been over 150 recorded fixes made since our last update in June, affecting almost every map in the game, in addition to various player and mechanic quality-of-life changes.

Additionally, despite v1.0.9 not being a narrative-focused update, we have made changes to some areas to expand upon our story, in addition to reworking one of our endings for it to match more to our original intentions.

We'll keep these details vague for now to avoid spoilers, as we'd like players to see these changes naturally, as has been the case in past updates where some content was omitted from changelogs to keep it a surprise!

Content Delivery Changes

Finally, to close out this overview, we'd like to also re-iterate the changes to how future content is being delivered, which we brought up briefly in our Look Ahead post.

Previously

• We introduced a change earlier this year where the last minor version of every major version would be available as a selectable version in the Game Versions tab in your Steam Properties.

Beginning This Month

• Starting today, a previous_release branch is now available for players to be able to rollback to the last version of the game, which will be updated whenever a new release is available. 　◦ Since the current release, as of writing, is v1.0.3.5, this branch contains v1.0.3.4. 　◦ With v1.0.9's release, this branch will update to v1.0.3.5, in addition to a dedicated branch being available from the change we've previously introduced. • On October 16th, and applying to ALL major updates from now on, a preview branch will be made available, allowing players to have an early look at upcoming releases, at most a few days prior to release. 　◦ These releases are intended as release-candidate builds and are meant for a soft-rollout to ensure a quality and stable final release, in comparison to past releases requiring multiple hotfixes to become stable.

We are additionally looking into user feedback regarding making more versions from the v1.0.x patches available as Game Versions -- if you do have a favorite version, please let us know! (Given how often major changes occurred during these patches, we can make exceptions to the "last minor version of every major version" note from earlier.)

In Early 2027

• Alongside the release of The Archives, and as mentioned in our other post, ALL Patreon build NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) that were being enforced will be voided. 　◦ With this change, players will be free to discuss and post content from these older builds and will additionally be able to play these builds themselves, through both the Game Versions tab and through a public mirror. 　◦ Due to Steam's terms of service, some older builds may only be available through the aforementioned mirror. We will discuss this in more detail as we get closer to The Archives' release and have concluded a thorough content review on these builds.

Closing

As our other post mentioned, we would like to take the time to thank everyone who has continued to support us throughout the development of Subliminal.

Beyond some bumps in the road, and mistakes we've made (And likely more we'll make and learn from in the future), we're looking forward to the future and what's to come for Subliminal!

Stay Tuned!

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