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[Buggy Loop]

Hello everyone,

We released a brand new Beta Demo of System Shock for Steam Next Fest!

If you're a Kickstarter backer, and have "System Shock" in your Steam library already, here's how to access the Steam Next Fest Demo:

• >Right-click on System Shock in your Steam library, click "Properties"
• >In the "Betas" tab, click the drop down and select "Steam Next Fest Demo".

Steam should automatically switch you to that branch and will begin downloading the brand new Beta Demo as featured in Steam Next Fest.

Thank you as always for backing our game and for playing the demo!

We're looking forward to hearing your feedback as we continue to polish everything up for release next month!

Daniel G.

System Shock Producer, Night Dive Studios

Downloaded it and started playing a bit. It's been so fucking long, i forgot i haven't even done the survey of the kickstarter yet lol.

Performances are superb on a 3080 Ti, i doubt it's taxing, but the game looks so good with that art style.

Not my footage but :

 

[GnomeChimpsky]

I wasn't a big fan of the early demos but this looks fantastic and plays great. Love the 90s cyberpunk vibe as well, very neat.

I guess they're locked in for a march release like it says on Steam?

 

[ACESHIGH]

This is one of the releases of the year to me. Backed it eons ago. Hopefully they fullfill their promise down the line and give backers System Shock 2 Enhanced Edition.

 

[Buggy Loop]

I wasn't a big fan of the early demos but this looks fantastic and plays great. Love the 90s cyberpunk vibe as well, very neat.

I guess they're locked in for a march release like it says on Steam?

I think it’s a lock now for march. It seems really polished.

In the newsletter they also said by end of month that backers will be able to play the « beta » for the full game, from start to finish.

 

[Saiyan-Rox]

Anyone tried the new demo on deck?

 

[Kuranghi]

So if I haven't preordered and I just go to steam and click on download demo I will get the new one presumably?

 

[SF Kosmo]

So if I haven't preordered and I just go to steam and click on download demo I will get the new one presumably?

I think if you had the old demo, you need to go into the properties > betas section and select steam next fest. Before that I was just getting the old demo.

I only got a brief chance to try it out but it seemed like they addressed a lot of my gripes with the old demo. Looking forward to playing this soon.

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

Just 10 more demos and it will eventually get released!

 

[TintoConCasera]

Thanks OP, I would have missed this if it weren't for you.

It's pretty late over here, but I'll make sure to try this out tomorrow.

 

[Pasta la Vista]

Thanks for the heads up, downloading now!

 

[Hoddi]

I've never played the original but I played for about 30min and it seems really promising. I like the art style where everything is fairly high fidelity but the textures still have that unfiltered low-res look when you get close to them. It looks good and performs well.

Modern games have clearly made me soft though because I had no idea what to do.

 

[Buggy Loop]

Wow, i played at least 1.5-2h, i'm really impressed. Compared to the demo they initially had years and years ago (like what, 2017?), it's another league.

I'm hooked. It's really good. I didn't play the original, but i played a ton of system shock 2 and i am getting the same addiction again. The hacking minigame is trippy as fuck, like a mini-descent 3d game from the 90's. The visuals are superb and run flawlessly. The music and sound effects are on point. I'm looking forward to continuing tomorrow. The demo is long too, damn, one of the best demo in a long time.

TRY THE DEMO, anyone with steam should not even hesitate.

 

[Mozzarella]

Not sold on this remake sadly, the visuals are not fitting imo, they feel cartoonish, like this visual style does not suit a horror rpg like System Shock, adding to that the whole atmosphere is shaky, because along with the art style, the sounds and the gameplay both seem weird for the series.
But i have to note that i only played System Shock 2, never played the first one (1994).

What do SS2 fans think about this?

 

[Pasta la Vista]

Yeah, this is really good. I think they are using voxels? Looks great, atmosphere is on point. The controls and hud are modern but the exploration and lack of direct instruction is there. The layout so far is exactly like the original. Demo is pretty big, I have not finished it yet. Might be the entire starting floor before you get access to the elevator.

 

[Blackage]

I backed this so long ago lol. Looking forward to playing it in March? Hopefully it comes out?

 

[01011001]

no raytracing? it's always kinda weird when a new Unreal Engine game releases and has no RT effects. at the very least RT reflections should be in this IMO.
walking into a bathroom in a retro style game and not having a working mirror there is kinda jarring IMO, working bathroom mirrors was something many older FPS games usually tried to have, and walking in there and being confronted with an ugly ass Screen Space Reflection is just kinda off-putting to me... I don't know...
at the very least try putting in a planar reflection in select spots like these...

 

[Pasta la Vista]

Finished it. Yeah it ends once you get access to the elevator. As a fan of the original, I really like it.

 

[The Cockatrice]

Im not teasing myself anymore. I'll wait for the full release, which is prolly 2025 because I'm more than certain this will get delayed for the million time again.

 

[Zuzu]

It seems good to me. Looking forward to the full release

 

[MysticalChaos]

Wow great find. Didn't see this reported anywhere in gaming news. Very cool to see Blade Runner, Watchmen, Alien, and Prey easter eggs right at the beginning of the demo

 

[Saiyan-Rox]

No steam deck version of the demo

Sad panda

 

[MidGenRefresh]

How many demos do we need? Just release the game already.

 

[mrmustard]

Missed it in the 90s so this is day one for me.

 

[Nocturno999]

I think they nailed on capturing the PC gaming 90's feel. Only downside is that melee feels imprecise and unimpactful.

 

[TintoConCasera]

Tried this for about 45 minutes, don't want to keep going to avoid spoiling anything until the game releases. This is an easy day 1 for me, specially given the 40€ price tag.

I love it. The voxel/pixelated vibe gives it a very unique look, and it's clear that a lot of care has been put into that. Environments make great use of colorful lights and the ambient music is pretty nice, so great atmosphere overall. They nailed the cyberpunk-terror vibe I guess they were going after.

But I have to agree with Nocturno999 , the melee combat with the pipe feels like shit. More like hitting the enemy by swinging the weapon, it seems that the important thing is to have the cursor above the enemy when you click on the attack button, which feels kinda weird to me. It also could use more range.
Thankfully the shooting feels much better, at least based on the two weapons I've tried. I mean, it's not DOOM Eternal, but it does the job and feels nice enough.

I really liked the hacking too, even if I wasn't sure of where I was going.

 

[nightmare-slain]

Awesome, will give it a shot after I play Hogwarts for a while.

 

[Fools idol]

Finished it. Not bad, not bad at all.. I personally don't find the original scary in any way, now was I scared by the new demo sooo... is what it is.

 

[TintoConCasera]

Finished it. Not bad, not bad at all.. I personally don't find the original scary in any way, now was I scared by the new demo sooo... is what it is.

The original wasn't a scary game in any way. I don't like when remakes change the atmosphere of the game, but in this case I have to admit it fits really well.

 

[Soodanim]

I backed the Kickstarter for this but it's been a long time since I've read any of the update emails. I had no idea there was a demo, but that's on me. I don't know whether or not to bother with a demo or just continue waiting.

 

[MysticalChaos]

Please let System Shock 3 be next. Better late than never...

 

[Con-Z-epT]

I love the art style so much and together with the music the whole atmosphere is pretty tense. I also like how slow and deliberate the movement feels. The newly added dismemberment system is a nice addition. Let's hope that it plays well. I'm still super excited.

The worst part is that it's still not released and i pray that this will see the light of day in march.

 

[ShadowNate]

If they indeed release in March, then there's a purpose to an updated demo.
Testing the waters, getting early feedback and restarting the hype are all valuable.

I'm still going to wait for the full release. Probably not buying day-one unless it's super well reviewed, but otherwise happy this finally gets properly out.

 

[The Cockatrice]

Please let System Shock 3 be next. Better late than never...

Humanity will cease to exist before these devs finish any new project. They've taken a million projects when they could barely finish one that started what, 7 years ago? Good luck waiting for SS3.

 

[Buggy Loop]

Yea, my biggest complaint is the feeling the melee has. Do enemies stagger you as you swing if they attack? I swear, what normally takes 1 big hit + normal hit on a mutant, if they swing at me we start a slap war and I can lose almost all the health if I don’t step away, so the hits I give don’t register.

The energy gun though, I loved it. Press T twice to select the over mode, enemies just splash on screen like the good ol gibs.

 

[Doczu]

So is PS4 still getting it's version? Or has it been shifted.to PC and current gen? I swear to God i can't find any solid evidence they are still releasing, as if they ghosted the PS4/XBO

 

[Skifi28]

Runs great on a 1060. Kind of expected seeing the visuals, but you never know these days.

 

[SF Kosmo]

Just 10 more demos and it will eventually get released!

They announced the public beta, which is playable start to finish, goes live this month. I think the finish line is finally in sight.

It is hilarious how many unique demos we've gotten of the same beginning portion of the game though.

So is PS4 still getting it's version? Or has it been shifted.to PC and current gen? I swear to God i can't find any solid evidence they are still releasing, as if they ghosted the PS4/XBO

It's still releasing on PS4/XBO, yes.

 

[Doczu]

It's still releasing on PS4/XBO, yes.

That's good to know. I really hope it will release other wise no SS for me for a while.

 

[SF Kosmo]

Sunk a little time into the demo finally. It feels like a big step up from the old one, even though it's essentially the same chunk of game. Changes that jumped out at me:

• The most obvious change is, of course, the new intro sequence and opening in the apartment. This sequence doesn't stand out as especially great to me, but it sure beats the old text scroll and it helps ground the game in a world a bit more.
• The gamepad controls are way, way better, and it now feels comfortable to play the game on just a controller (where previously some functions were keyboard only and menus felt bad on controller). UI in general is much improved.
• Level design, while still following the basic layout of the original, takes a lot more liberties with the map now. Places feel a little more lived in and grounded in their functions than the sometimes samey corridors of the original.
• Encounter rate and difficulty feel ramped up, but this is appropriate since the improved controls make combat a lot easier.
• Better visual variety for enemies, more animations and behaviors
• They dialed back the fleshy subsurface scattering on the zombie skin, which doesn't look as good but maybe feels more consistent with the rest of the art.

You can definitely see they've done a lot of iteration and refinement, even with the stuff that felt fairly "finished" in last year's demo. It seems pretty polished now, I think they are getting very close to release.

 

[GymWolf]

Happy that i didn't tried the old one.

 

[TintoConCasera]

No steam deck version of the demo

Sad panda

Watcha mean? I've been able to play it on my Deck.

It plays fine. I set every graphical option to High and limited the framerate to 40fps. Ran smooth at all times except at the intro in the apartment, where it dropped to like 35fps.
With those settings battery estimation was at like 2 and a half hours. It also comes with controller support by default.

Not the kind of game I'd play on the Deck tho, but for those interested, it's playable.

 

[baphomet]

Unfortunately I was under the impression this was a full-on AAA remake of System Shock.

Either way I'll still purchase because I liked the demo and have actually never played the original. I just thought this was something slightly different than what it is.

 

[AV]

Unfortunately I was under the impression this was a full-on AAA remake of System Shock.

Either way I'll still purchase because I liked the demo and have actually never played the original. I just thought this was something slightly different than what it is.

It's a full remake, isn't that enough? You were never going to get a AAA remake of a niche old game like this.

 

[Saiyan-Rox]

Watcha mean? I've been able to play it on my Deck.

It plays fine. I set every graphical option to High and limited the framerate to 40fps. Ran smooth at all times except at the intro in the apartment, where it dropped to like 35fps.
With those settings battery estimation was at like 2 and a half hours. It also comes with controller support by default.

Not the kind of game I'd play on the Deck tho, but for those interested, it's playable.

The old demo works but looks like the new one doesn't

Reading the steam community comments anyway unless they fixed it since I posted.

 

[TintoConCasera]

The old demo works but looks like the new one doesn't

Reading the steam community comments anyway unless they fixed it since I posted.

Well as I said, I was able to play the new one. Just switch to proto ge and you are good to go.

 

[Saiyan-Rox]

Well as I said, I was able to play the new one. Just switch to proto ge and you are good to go.

I'll have a look now

 

[Denton]

In the KS update they say release should be next month. Curious if it will finally launch. Hopefully the game is successful enough to be well profitable.

 

[Alexios]

Unfortunately I was under the impression this was a full-on AAA remake of System Shock.

Either way I'll still purchase because I liked the demo and have actually never played the original. I just thought this was something slightly different than what it is.

The initial plan was the same as what you see here, the very first alpha was pretty damn close in style. Later on there was a short ambitious phase where they were gonna do a complete overhaul rather than this very close to 1:1 remake, more akin to System Shock 2 even with modern sci fi design environments and what not instead of these old school non descript samey sci fi backgrounds, but that was shelved/canned with the project itself in danger of being canned and then they finally got back to the original plan which was, again, what you see here and we're finally going to get, hurray.

First vs previous demo.

 

[darrylgorn]

Good. I can finally laugh at Star Citizen backers without any remorse.

 

[SF Kosmo]

Unfortunately I was under the impression this was a full-on AAA remake of System Shock.

Either way I'll still purchase because I liked the demo and have actually never played the original. I just thought this was something slightly different than what it is.

It was at one point. Initially it was pitched as a very indie Unity engine thing, then they tried to scale it up to AAA but they never managed to secure the funding to see it through and it was kind of a whole big controversy because they basically had to tell the Kickstarter backers they were out of money and didn't make the game.

Then they secured the budget to finish the game as something closer to the original pitch but in Unreal and with some additional scope, and that's what it's been ever since.