Greetings, occultists and explorers!
It is high time we share a bit more in-depth look at some of the mechanics you can look forward to in Decadent - and as it is a Lovecraftian game, we thought we would start with the Madness system!

While playing the game, you will encounter many situations that will create a drain on your sanity - from exploring the Weirds, anomalous locations where laws of nature as you know them may not apply and encountering eldritch, otherwordly monstrosities to more mundane, high-stress situations, such as running out of ammo in the middle of a tough fight. All such events will increase your Madness, and as it progresses, you will feel its effects on gameplay as well. We have prepared a narrative trailer, illustrating a truly extreme case of Madness corrupting your mind:

The effects of Madness may vary depending on your current situation, but in general, there are several states of mind, each with progressively more severe effects. But you have a choice - play it safe and try to control your mind, or give in to the insanity of the world around you, and fully embrace the Madness - as it can grant your character very useful boons, not only penalties. We will not spoil all the details yet, but to give you a few examples:

Mild Visual Distortion: At this stage, you begin to notice slight distortions in the perception of the world around. Interface elements may float or blur slightly, and textures in the game may appear fuzzy. All this gradually increases the feeling of discomfort, but does not yet critically interfere with gameplay or put you in danger.

Enemy Anticipation: One of the interesting effects of the medium level of insanity, is an increase in the player's intuition. In a state between reality and hallucination, you begin to sense the presence of enemies in advance. This is shown in-game in the form of a slight illumination, or seeing the outlines of enemies that would be otherwise still out of sight - thus allowing you to prepare for the fight ahead, and avoid ambushes. This mechanic balances risk and reward: the more you plunge into madness, the stronger your prescient abilities, but the less control you have, and the more dangerous the world around you becomes.

When John Lorn fully succumbs to insanity and reaches a state of complete madness, controlling the character becomes much more difficult, as the hero's mind is plunged into chaos. Moving and even turning around become inert, less responsive, as if the character is losing control of his own body. You will need to put much more effort into executing precise actions, which creates a feeling of losing touch with reality.

Severe visual distortion: The world around you turns into a nightmare. The contours of objects and enemies become distorted, as if looking through broken glass, colors become either overly bright or dim and muted. It is difficult to determine where reality ends and hallucination begins.

Appearance of non-existent enemies: Enemies can suddenly appear before your eyes, and disappear just as quickly. You can no longer be sure if the threat in front of you is real or just a symptom of your diseased mind.

Shaking Hands: In a state of extreme insanity, you start losing control over your body, and your hands begin to shake. This makes it difficult to act with any precision - the cursor may “wander," making shooting and inventory management much more chaotic and less reliable. Errors may occur during weapon reloading - you can accidentally drop ammo, or even lose your grip on the weapon altogether.

Decadent is still in fairly early stages of development, and not all design decisions have been made yet. For example, you can see we have omitted the mention of any positive effects stemming from Total Madness - what do you think could be the biggest boon of completely losing your touch with reality? Let us know in the comments under this article, or in the Steam Discussions.

That's all for now, but stay tuned, we will bring you more details about Decadent soon - make sure to wishlist and follow the game, so you don't miss any updates!

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