Office Party Tech Demo Alpha 0.1.3405: Time to Hack! (Patreon)

Hey Partiers!

We've got a new Office Party Tech Demo Alpha for you! Build 0.1.3405 is ready for Alpha Tier and higher Patrons, with a new hacking minigame, more story improvements, better controller support, and a whole bunch of fixes since the last Patreon build.

Introducing Backdoor

Your phone has a new app, and your neighbors might want to reconsider their security arrangements. Backdoor lets you try our new skill-based hacking minigame for electronic locks. Because knocking politely was never going to be everyone's first choice.

There's currently only one thing you can hack in this build. This is your first look at the system, with more uses planned as we build out the game. Give it a try and let us know how it feels!

More trouble in the neighborhood

We've been giving the story plenty of attention too. Hair of the Dog has revised stealth and hacking routes, improved detection, and more reliable quest handling. There are also new missed-opportunity notifications and a collapsible Missed section in your phone, so it's clearer when a quest's starting window has passed.

We've refined relationship progression, clothing and intoxication reactions, and a lot of dialogue and quest interactions involving Skye, Roxy, Randy, Tatiana, and Chupito. Your neighbors are still a handful. They should just be a little more consistent about it.

A little less wrestling with the controls

Controller support has expanded across gameplay, menus, your phone, and character customization, with remappable controls and more consistent navigation. If you tried a controller in an earlier build, we'd love to hear how this one feels.

Some other highlights:

• Smoother movement and animations. Improved sitting and sunbed poses, door interactions, foot placement, swimming, and pool-ladder transitions.

• More reliable saves and loading. Better restoration of activities and carried items, smaller save files, background autosave and quicksave writes, and backup recovery for damaged saves.

• Inventory and interaction fixes. Improved storage-chest transfers, item displays, and Roxy's sunscreen minigame, including fixes for slow strokes being mistaken for rough handling.

• More visual polish. Improvements to hair, clothing, lighting, cameras, and character customization, alongside performance and stability work.

A change to BYOK AI

We've removed BYOK (bring your own key), which let you connect your own AI provider, along with its text-to-speech options. We haven't been able to get the game approved on Steam with BYOK included, so we've removed that setup from all builds while we work on a new system to replace it. We'll share more about that as it comes together.

The built-in AI options are still available on supported systems, and AI is still completely optional. You can play the game without it. If you were using BYOK, you'll need to select a built-in mode in AI Settings to use AI again.

We've also continued improving the built-in AI. In High mode, your typed conversations and phone replies can now affect relationships, and characters can acknowledge more of the things they've experienced or witnessed.

Keep the feedback coming!

This is still an Alpha tech demo, with more story, content, and systems in development. Thank you to everyone who's been testing, opening tickets, and helping other players on Discord. Your reports help us track down the weird stuff. If you hit a bug, your build number, what you were doing, and a screenshot or short video are a big help. PC specs and graphics settings are useful for performance or visual issues too.

Don't forget to wishlist Office Party on your storefront of choice!

Get the new Alpha

Alpha Tier and higher Patrons can download Office Party 0.1.3405 here. Log in with the Patreon account connected to your membership, then extract the ZIP before launching the game.

Read the full release notes

Thanks for playing, breaking things, and helping us make Office Party better!

— The Eek! Team