What a couple weeks these have been, fellow travelers! To everyone who has played, wishlisted, reviewed, streamed, watched, discussed Joni’s harrowing and heartfelt story — we say THANK YOU! We’ve been overjoyed seeing the response to the game and how it has resonated with you.

We’ve continued reviewing and investigating your feedback, and we’d like to address some improvements we’ve either made with Patch 2 or that we plan to make going forward.

• “Horror” Tag — Many of you have pointed out that, while Joni’s journey is spooky, it’s not quite accurate to label it as a Horror game. We agree with you! Joni was always intended to be a story-rich strollplayer, not a heart-pounding survival horror game. As such we have removed the Horror tag to avoid setting incorrect expectations.
  
• Steam Deck Performance — We’ve received reports of the game randomly freezing or dropping to 1 fps on the Steam Deck. Patch 2 should fix the bulk of these issues for Steam Deck players, plus we are in the process of ensuring Joni is officially Steam Deck Verified so that you can enjoy the game wherever you choose to play!
  
• Localization — We’ve been floored by the multiple requests we’ve received to play Joni’s story in different languages. Our hope is to localize the game in as many languages as possible, and we are actively evaluating the feasibility of doing so. If you would like the game localized into a specific language, the best thing you can do is let us know the demand exists by leaving a comment here, in the Community Hub, in our Discord, or on social media! We’ll keep you updated.

Fixes:

• Fixed an issue where the goals display wasn't respecting the "when updated" setting
  
• Fixed issues where several whispering object attunement glows where too small and couldn't be seen when being carried
  
• Fixed an issue in which players could leave the bounds of the level through the master bedroom door upon reaching chapter 11

Improvements:

• Added multiple auto-save points during the Rituals in chapters 7-10
  
• Added the ability to view and select backup save files for each slot
  
• Set better defaults for Steam Deck performance
  
• Improved the memory use for shader compilation step
  
• Improved spectral writing functionality and timings across entire game to reduce frustration, especially for the more talkative Vestiges
  
• Added ability to pick up whispering objects from the ritual circle rather than simply replace them

Thank you for your patience and please keep sharing your feedback and bug reports, they help us make the game better for everyone.

You can further immerse yourselves in the Worlds Across the Causeway in our Discord and across our social media accounts…
Discord[discord.gg]
Official Website[worlds.causewaystudios.com]
TikTok[www.tiktok.com]
Bluesky[bsky.app]
Instagram[www.instagram.com]
Twitter


From our small corner of the Worlds to yours, thank you again for playing. We hope to cross paths many more times somewhere across the Causeway!

Greg Rogers and the Causeway Studios team

Hello fellow travelers! Thank you so much for your early support of our first game! We’ve been tracking our support inbox, watching the community forums, reading your blog and social media posts, and watching your playthroughs to vicariously enjoy our game through your eyes and also make sure the game is running smoothly for everyone.

Thank you so much for your bug reports so far! We have tried to rapidly address as many of them as possible, and here is the changelist for patch 1 - v1.0.5:

• Fixed an issue preventing the achievement "Subscriber to the Inquirer & Reflection" from tracking progress and completing
  
• Slightly improved shader compilation and replaced spinners with progress bars for shader compilation and environment loading
  

  We will be continuing to improve shader compilation over the next few patches

• Fixed an issue where quitting the game at the beginning of chapter 11 and later returning would cause the game to lock on a white screen halfway through the chapter
  
• Fixed an issue where the player could place a Relic in the wrong ritual circle, locking their progress (specifically near the beginning of chapter 10)
  
• Fixed an issue where one Vestige would unintentionally follow the player around and get in the way at the end of chapter 10
  
• Fixed an issue where invisible walls and ramps were appearing in the downstairs hallway and Coulson's studio at the beginning of chapter 11
  
• Fixed an issue where the chapter 12 title was missing on the save slot select screen
  
• Adjusted the "new game" menu item to show save slot selection even when there are empty slots
  

  Previously it automatically selected the first empty slot if there was one, but we've seen indications this caused concern for file integrity on subsequent playthroughs

• Added a feature to create backups (max 3 per slot) of save files while progressing
  

  UI will be added to access them in-game in a future patch
  These backups can be manually found in the file system as follows:
  Windows: <your_username>\AppData\LocalLow\CausewayStudios\The Haunting of Joni Evers\Saves
  Mac: /Users/<your_username>/Library/Application Support/CausewayStudios/The Haunting of Joni Evers/saves/

Again, from our small team at Causeway Studios, thank you! We’re heading back into the project to fix a few more issues as well as getting into preproduction on the next tale from the Worlds Across the Causeway.

Please keep sharing your thoughts and feedback (especially in the form of reviews here on Steam) and send us any bug reports you have to support@causewaystudios.com so we can get you back into the Cunningham House!

Until we meet again along the Causeway,

Kjartan Kennedy and the Causeway Studios team

Fellow Travelers,

At long last the clouds have formed, the storm has descended, and Joni's harrowing night has begun. Thank you so much for you support so far, it is what has kept us striving to bring you this emotional tale that we hope will deeply resonate with you. We're so excited to get this game into your hands, see you uncover everything about the Cunningham House, and hear about your experiences with the Vestiges, Rituals, and Haunting.

Enjoy the new launch trailer below, but first: We are a small indie team with dreams of many more stories to bring you, so here are the best ways to support us and help make that happen:

• If you buy the game, please consider leaving an honest review on Steam! Reviews have a massive impact on indie games and we'd love to see your thoughts and experiences through a review.
  
• Share the game with family and friends or on social media with your followers to help spread the word and give others a chance to discover their next adventure. So many indies are discovered with a simple share or casual discussion.
  
• Join the community in our Discord[discord.gg] and follow us on Twitter to share in the excitement and get to know other great gamers.

Get ready to face the past, break a curse, and experience a heart-wrenching family tale.

Investigate every room and search the forgotten corners of the Cunningham House to uncover stories of the entire Cunningham family, and the keys to reconciliation.

Find Whispering Objects to draw out the House's latent magical energies and manifest powerful Relics, each revealing more of Joni's and the family's past.

Work with Vestiges to uncover and examine lost memories, leading to new revelations about Joni's relationships with her estranged family.

To celebrate the release, The Haunting of Joni Evers is 20% off until January 27th! Kick off your new year with a spooky haunting and emotional family journey!

https://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/app/2828590/The_Haunting_of_Joni_Evers/

Our team is standing by ready to fix any potential issues that come up. If you run into anything strange while playing (well, besides the fact that the house is haunted...), please reach out through one of the methods below with all the info you have (screenshots or video are particularly helpful) so we can try to help as quickly as possible!

Discord Server Support Channel[discord.gg] - The fastest way to get support
(Steam) Tech Support



You can further immerse yourselves in the Worlds Across the Causeway in our Discord and across our social media accounts…
Discord[discord.gg]
Official Website[worlds.causewaystudios.com]
TikTok[www.tiktok.com]
Bluesky[bsky.app]
Instagram[www.instagram.com]
Twitter

Fellow Travelers,

We are absolutely thrilled to announce that Joni’s tale begins on January 13th, 2025!

Watch our release date announcement trailer below to catch some new glimpses of the Cunningham House and everything you’ll encounter while exploring.

Get ready to face the past, break a curse, and experience a heart-wrenching family tale.

Investigate every room and search the forgotten corners of the Cunningham House to uncover stories of the entire Cunningham family, and the keys to reconciliation.

Find Whispering Objects to draw out the House's latent magical energies and manifest powerful Relics, each revealing more of Joni's and the family's past.

Work with Vestiges to uncover and examine lost memories, leading to new revelations about Joni's relationships with her estranged family.

Follow us on our socials, join our Discord, and be sure to wishlist the game to countdown until the game’s release! (For example, we'll soon share the story of how The Haunting of Joni Evers came to be our debut game.)

https://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/app/2828590/The_Haunting_of_Joni_Evers/


And further immerse yourselves in the Worlds Across the Causeway here…
Discord[discord.gg]
Official Website[worlds.causewaystudios.com]
TikTok[www.tiktok.com]
Bluesky[bsky.app]
Instagram[www.instagram.com]
Twitter

Fellow Travelers,

With a very short time until the release of The Haunting of Joni Evers we're excited to participate in Next Fest for one final round of feedback and for you to get a taste of our spooky and emotional game.

Please enjoy the beginning of Joni's thrilling night, send us your favorite moments and your feedback, and share it with your friends!

The demo will be available until November 1st, when we will take it down for our final release preparation. If you run into any issues or have any questions, the official Worlds Across the Causeway Discord is the fastest way to get help and answers.

P.s. don't forget that we'll be debuting a new trailer with brand new content at the Indie Horror Showcase[www.indiehorrorshowcase.com] on October 24th!

Fellow travelers, it's been a busy time these last couple of months and we have a couple of exciting updates to share!


First things first: we have reached our Content Complete milestone for The Haunting of Joni Evers (which we're also referring to as our Beta milestone). This means every story beat, line of dialogue, spooky moment, and emotional gut-punch is fully assembled and experienceable in-game.
Now we start the final pass, polishing everything to make sure Joni's emotional tale lands the way we want and preventing any nasty bugs from ruining it.


In other (just as exciting) news:

• Updated free demo: We very recently updated our demo, featuring the first two chapters of the game, to be more in-line with how our gameplay and effects have evolved and to prepare for...
  
• Steam Next Fest: ...our participation in the upcoming Next Fest, showcasing demos for all kinds of incredible upcoming games. We would be eternally grateful if you check out the updated demo, wishlist the game, and tell your friends from Oct 14-21.
  
• The Indie Horror Showcase: Finally, The Haunting of Joni Evers has been selected to take part in the Indie Horror Showcase on October 24th at 10am pacific time. We will be debuting a brand new trailer with new content as part of the showcase, so make sure you tune in!

We're getting close, very close, to the full release. The excitement (and all of the other emotions that come along with putting the finishing touches on creative work) here at the studio is palpable and we cannot wait for you to help Joni break this curse.

'Til we meet again along the Causeway,
Kjartan Kennedy (he/him), Studio Director

Fellow travelers,

The updates and milestones are coming in faster and faster these days, with today's news being that we have officially reached our Alpha milestone. The most important part of this milestone is being able to play the game from beginning to end, and I can't put into words what a joy (and terror, this is a spooky game after all) it is to be able to do so.


Throughout development we've tried to avoid overplaying our hand to keep the mysteries around Joni's haunting from being revealed, and that won't change. That said, we want to keep giving some idea of what we've been up to. In reaching our Alpha milestone, here's some of the work that went into it:

• We soft-locked the script at 134 (!) pages[x.com], with one final VO recording session to go
  
• We developed a whole set of spooky moments to raise the tension in certain chapters
  
• We finished up custom art assets for all of the Relics and Whispering Objects throughout the story
  
• We finished the core of and implemented all of the Rituals that go throughout the game, including Joni's final confrontation

Now that we can experience Joni's tale from beginning to end it's time to fill in the last gaps and keep iterating until we're happy. This is the last core development milestone where we actually add things to the game, so we'll be finishing up art assets, finalizing visual effects, polishing mechanics, plugging the narrative edges, and having our final recording session with Joni's voice actor. Once we hit our Beta development milestone all of our efforts will go into bug fixing and final polish. Release is just a few short months away and our plans are all coming together.


Things are going to keep ramping up as we get closer to release! In the coming weeks we'll take part in some events, share more development progress, and our demo will be available on Steam again soon. While you wait for that, here are some links in case you've missed anything:

• Steam page (please wishlist and share): https://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/app/2828590/The_Haunting_of_Joni_Evers/
  
• Discord community (join us to talk about Joni or the Worlds Across the Causeway): https://discord.gg/Bhp7nZkaVw
  
• Twitter (follow for smaller updates and announcements): https://twitter.com/CausewayGames

'Til we meet again along the Causeway,
Kjartan Kennedy (he/him), Studio Director

Fellow travelers,

We’re excited to share a couple of announcements today: reaching a development milestone and the launch of our Discord server[discord.gg]!

First, we reached an important milestone this week: Pre-Alpha! This means a lot of different things at a lot of different studios but for us it means that we have in some way “proven” every single aspect of the game. From chapter 1 to the epilogue, from the basement to the library, from voice acting to visual effects, and from portals to spectral writing, we have an initial version of everything that we are happy with the direction of. With being only a week or two out from soft-locking the script, now it’s all about raising everything to our high standard of quality through iteration. There’s lots to be done, but the game is coming together really well and we’re hurtling toward the finish line.

Second, and in celebration of this milestone, we’ve started a Discord server[discord.gg] for The Haunting of Joni Evers and the wider Worlds Across the Causeway! Join us to stay up to date on development, learn more about Joni, meet the developers, discuss and explore the Worlds, and be part of a community of curious story lovers.

A huge thank you to everyone who has played the demo, wishlisted, and shared with their friends so far! We hope you’ll join our Discord community[discord.gg] and continue sharing the game so as many people as possible can experience Joni's tale and help her break the curse.

Greetings fellow travelers,

We have a couple of very exciting and intertwined announcements:

On partnerships, publishing, and expanding the reach of Joni's tale

The team here at Causeway is excited to announce that we have formed a new partnership with indie.io to publish The Haunting of Joni Evers! We are a small team of 5 making this game and while we’re very good at telling stories and making fun games, getting them in front of gamers like yourselves is not our strong suit. As we were researching potential partners, indie.io stuck out to us with their track record of helping other indies reach a wider audience and once we started talking to them their enthusiasm for Joni was unmatched, and the path forward was clear. This partnership will enable us to focus our attentions on crafting the personal, terrifying, and emotional experience we know you're all looking forward to.

For those of you who may not know, having a game publisher like https://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/developer/indieio greatly helps indie developers focus on game development while they handle all the behind-the-scenes magic. From helping manage store pages to crafting marketing campaigns and even helping the game shine at both digital and live events, publishers help in all the aspects that indie developers often struggle with.

Milestone: 4,000 Wishlists!

We just passed four thousand wishlists and it just keeps going! This is a great example of how indie.io has already been helping you all discover our game and we can’t wait to let you experience Joni’s tale later this year! If you haven’t yet, be sure to share the game with your story-loving friends.

In Summary…

Thank you for coming along on this journey and being excited for The Haunting of Joni Evers! As a reminder, please wishlist the game and share it with your friends: https://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/app/2828590/The_Haunting_of_Joni_Evers/


Til next we meet across the Causeway,

Kjartan - Studio Director and Tech Lead