Wccftech has reviewed P.A.M.E.L.A.:

P.A.M.E.L.A Review – Eden and Hell

The world is headed towards a disastrous future, as humanity continues to deplete resources and continue living way beyond its means. To prevent complete annihilation, humanity built floating arks to bring forth a new era of prosperity under the control of a select few. Needless to say, this is the perfect recipe for disaster, as shown in the survival-horror game P.A.M.E.L.A.

P.A.M.E.L.A is set in one of these floating arks called Eden where select people have been relocated during the event known as the Exodus. As the situation on the surface was deemed unsalvageable,  clean energy company Bio-Stera saw no alternative but to abandon it completely and create the perfect human society through almost complete control of every facet of life. Overseeing the system was the AI PAMELA, who came to understand and care about humans in the years following its creation.

[...]

With its excellent world-building and intriguing story, P.A.M.E.L.A could have been a great survival game, but it sadly fails to reach the must-have status due to a variety of issues. The game can still be an enjoyable experience, but how much really depends on the player's tolerance for mediocre combat, bad enemy AI and the many technical issues.

Score: 6.5/10

P.A.M.E.L.A. has been released on Steam.

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P.A.M.E.L.A. is an intense open-world survival horror game set in Eden, a fallen Utopian city.

Play as a Sleeper, awoken from cryosleep in Eden, a fallen utopia wrought with death and danger. Utilize a wide range of hi-tech weapons, equipment, and build-able items that can be upgraded to suit your needs. Meet PAMELA, an omnipresent AI overseer who is left alone watching over the once-vibrant city, now reduced to a silent monolith gliding across the ocean.

Key Features

• Friends and Foes

Survive against multiple NPC factions, including the Afflicted citizens, security droids, robotic custodians, and more mysterious denizens hidden within Eden's depths. Each faction exhibits its own unique behaviors and alliances which can be manipulated to turn the tide of combat.

• Scavenge to Survive

Experience tense gameplay in a richly developed sci-fi universe. Each decision is meaningful, and each encounter could be your last. Wield and customize an array of modular equipment to defend yourself and explore the environment. Utilize an immersive UI and full body awareness, which removes all boundaries between the player and the horrors of Eden.

• Enhance Yourself to Thrive

Manage the power reserves of the city, using energy only when necessary to avoid the dangers of being stranded in the dark. Upgrade your weaponry, and construct a safe haven to defend against the denizens of Eden. Enhancing your body with Bio-Augments will give you an advantage over your enemies, but at what cost?

• Uncover the Truth

Uncover the tragic events that lead to the downfall of a civilization, and fight for your life as the broken citizens of Eden defend their home against your intrusion. With a personality-driven AI system, no encounter will be the same as the Afflicted react in unpredictable ways, driven by their excruciating pain and disfiguring disease.

The P.A.M.E.L.A. devs need feedback for their new crafting system:

Dev Blog 79: Feedback Needed! Crafting & Harvesting

Hey everyone!

If you've been following our development, you may have read that we're currently reworking the crafting system to simplify it and make it less painful to use overall. We'll be launching this update alongside with Level Streaming and the massive Nirvana expansion before the end of the year. This is a pretty large change to the game so we wanted to get your opinions on it before we just launched it silently and hoped for the best.

Overview Of The New Crafting System 

In order to streamline crafting resources the base elements such as carbon have been removed and are no longer needed to create crafting components. Components can now be found and looted directly from the world.

• Components have also been streamlined by removing their upgraded versions and simplifying their names. Can’t remember if you needed Dymop-something or Alumino-etc glass? It’s just “Glass” now.
• With the removal of upgraded components, a few leftover junk items have been converted to be extra crafting components to keep some variety in crafting recipes. Our new total for crafting components is 11, where it used to be almost 30.
• To free up inventory space Components now deposit directly into the Engineering menu and can be seen on the right panel (where the Elements used to be displayed) and each component has its own individual cap (99) instead of the shared cap that elements used.
• If a component in the menu is at its cap the component will be deposited into the inventory for storage or to feed to the recycler.
• All crafting recipes have been updated to only use components, with more and rarer components required for rare and powerful items as well as upgrades.

Thanks Farflame!

Pamela v0.2.1.2 is live on Steam:

Mega-Update: PAMELA v0.2.1.2 is Live – Crafting, Tutorial 2.0, and much, much more!

<Please note! This update will cause existing world save files to be deleted!>

Happy Thursday, Sleepers. Sit down, get comfortable, and grab a snack because this is going to be a long read!

Picture in your mind a snowball, rolling down a snowy slope. It starts out small, but before you know it you’ve got a ton of frozen destruction barreling down towards you.

That’s pretty much what happened with this update; with each passing day we squeezed in more new features, optimizations, and fixes, and this ended up postponing the update up until today. This is now *by a huge margin* our largest update since launch. Thank you for your patience during this period between updates; let’s dive into it!

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

A new version for the Early Access game Pamela has been released:

Patch: PAMELA v0.1.3.8 is Live! Big Performance, Stability, & Saving Improvements

<Please note! This update will cause existing world save files to be deleted! Several corrupt objects were previously causing saves to be corrupted, which have now been fixed.>

Happy Friday, Sleepers!

We’ve got a juicy update for you this week, with a wide array of fixes and improvements across the board. The main highlights with this update are performance improvements, saving/loading stabilization, and item rarity overhaul.

As far as optimization goes, we’ve done a pass over several backend systems, reducing the overhead of items in the world, and streamlining some scripts to run only when specifically needed. We also fine-tuned lighting layers, meaning that objects which do not need to receive sunlight are much cheaper to render.

Saving and loading has gotten another handful of fixes; many of you were experiencing your bases disappearing when reloading after the last update, which should now be fixed. Unfortunately this means that we need to wipe saves with this update to ensure everyone’s got a clean slate, without corrupt files.

Last but not least, we’ve reworked the way item rarity is calculated. With our new system, spawn rates are much more controllable and reflect item rarities properly. This should result in much more logical dispersion between common and rare items, and seemed to be a great change from our internal testing.

Those are just the highlights; as always find the full Changelog below. We’ve received several crash reports in the week since the last update, which we are actively looking into and working with Unity to track down. We apologize for those of you still experiencing these crashes; if you have not already, please send your crashlogs (located in steamapps/common/PAMELA/) to support @ nvyvestudios.com so we can look into your unique issue.

Have a great weekend, hope you all enjoy the update. Let us know your experience in the comments!

Changelog [...]

Thanks Farflame!

Pamela v0.1.1.6 has been released:

Update: PAMELA v0.1.1.6 is Live!

<Please note! This update will cause existing world save files to be deleted!>

Happy Monday Sleepers!

After some delay fixing last minute issues, we’ve got our first major update ready for showtime.

Why are we calling this a major update, you ask? Well, because there’s a metric ton of fixes, optimizations, and balance tweaking resulting in our by-far largest set of patch notes thus far.

As always, thank you so much to all of you who’ve posted bug reports and in-depth notes here; this is so crucial, and enables us to churn out these updates in a timely manner for everyone’s benefit! Please keep it up, you’re all awesome.

Here are the main highlights of this update:

Saving is significantly more stable and reliable

Due to some unexpected last-minute issues at launch, saving and loading have never quite worked properly. We apologize for all those of you who have lost your epic loot after the save system has hickuped – the underlying issues has now been fixed, and though we’re still working on improvements, you should now be quite safe to build bases, upgrade items, and more without fear of losing everything next time you play.

RAM Usage has been reduced significantly

Through working directly with Unity, we’ve implemented some huge optimizations that have reduced memory usage dramatically (down from roughly 7.5GB to 5.3GB in our testing thus far). These optimizations should reduce crashing for some users, as well as decrease loading times and improve in-game performance. We are still working on some loading time reductions for those of you who experience extreme times (15+ minutes) and will post further updates as we progress.

Hacking Balance 3.0

We’ve been tinkering further with the hacking difficulty systems; at launch, too many objects were locked with too high of difficulty, so we nerfed them quite significantly. Last patch, it seemed that hacking became trivial in most cases, so we’ve played with the way difficulties are calculated. Read the Hacking section of the patch notes for the full info on these changes.

Tons and tons of additional fixes and balance Tweaks

There’s simply too much to describe here, so please read the full patch notes if you’re dying to know every fix. We’ve been replying to threads to notify the OPs if the issue has been fixed, so please check there if you recently posted about a bug.

Phew, time for the patch notes. Please let us know your experience below, hope this update is a solid improvement for every one of you! We should have another patch coming mid-week, depending on how we progress with a few things we have in the works.

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P.A.M.E.L.A has been released on Steam Early Access. To read more about what to expect go here.

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So! What's in the game right now? Read below for info about everything you can experience in P.A.M.E.L.A. today.

Core Survival and Exploration - Within the fallen utopian city of Eden, you'll need to pick through the remains of a civilization to find food, water, and stimulants to keep yourself alive. Explore a huge, interconnected network of sci-fi urban environments, including a residential tower, transit station, security hub, shopping mall, sprawling outdoor courtyard, and more.

Combat and Stealth - Encounter, or avoid, the various stages of Afflicted citizens of Eden; from the heavily deformed "Stage 2", to the fearsome "Reapers" which have been turned into deadly killing machines through bio-chemical bonding with the Affliction

Weaponry, Equipment, and Upgrading - Find powerful Holographic Defense Module Attachments, which can be equipped 2 at a time (along with 3 utility attachments) to customize your personal loadout. Uncover and equip armor, utility attachments, improved flashlights, bio-augments, and much more to improve your survivability and gameplay options.

Base Building - Utilize a flexible building system to place node-base wall barriers, hydroponic farms, defense turrets, and more in order to set up a sustainable safe haven wherever you choose within the city.

Eden's Security Force - Imposing Seekers and the diminutive Observer droids still patrol the halls of Eden, on eternal watch for aberrant citizens; take care, as Seekers can turn their attention to the player, if you're caught while hacking or attacking security droids!

Lore, PAMELA, and the Fall of Eden - Uncover Echo audio logs scattered throughout Eden from PAMELA, Eden's AI overseer, that tell the story of her creation all the way until the Fall of Eden. PAMELA will also convey special abilities to the player, unlocked through special Compute Cell items scattered throughout the world. Datalogs left by Eden's citizens also provide insight into the once-perfect workings of Eden. Stay tuned for some big updates in this area, see below!

Lighting and Power Management - Using Power Breakers and larger Power Stations, toggle power modes from on, to emergency, to off; each mode consumes a different amount of power, but can assist in lighting up the environment and making survival more manageable. Power Stations serve as conduits between Eden's central power reserve and your current district; you must draw power from the reserve before turning the lights on in a given district!

Carry over Genome Points between lives - By surviving and killing enemies, you will collect Genome points, which are received upon death. Before respawning, you'll be able to spend these points on stat upgrades to improve your survivability next time around!

That's quite a bit to experience!

However, we're not stopping there. Over the next few months, and depending on your collective feedback, we'll be rolling out a few major updates. This is definitely subject to change, based on feedback, but here is our current plan for the next major updates:

Bugfixing and Stabilization - We'll be continuously squashing bugs and smoothing out the experience throughout Early Access; this will definitely be our #1 priority for the first few weeks following launch, to make sure your main issues are being addressed.

Performance Optimizations - We've built a huge world, with only a single loading screen at the beginning, and there are a few areas that require further performance optimization. We'll be working on this throughout Early Access.

PAMELA Lore Systems, V2 - We'll be greatly enhancing PAMELA's integration throughout the game world, including her being present more often as you explore the city. We were close to having some of this implemented for launch, but held it back to make sure that it's not rushed in.

New Area and NPC types - You may have noticed a large, red, smoggy area in the Oasis Courtyard... this will be the focus of an upcoming update; stay tuned for more information!
[...]

@DSOGaming P.A.M.E.L.A. is entering Steam early access March 9th. There are some new screenshots at the link also.

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http://store.steampowered.com/app/427...

P.A.M.E.L.A. is an open-world, utopian survival horror game coming to PC on March 9th 2017. Get more info at http://www.pamelagame.com.

Explore and survive in a Utopian future, ravaged by humanity's misguided pursuit of perfection. With the help of an enigmatic ally, scavenge, discover and fight for your life on Eden, a floating monolith of a dead civilization.

SURVIVE - Eat, sleep, and find shelter in a strange and unforgiving world.

DISCOVER - Unveil the tragic mysteries that lie within the walls of Eden.

SCAVENGE - Find supplies and equipment before someone else does.

BUILD - Utilize advanced technology to construct and fortify your own safe haven.

FIGHT - Wield a wide array of advanced equipment and weaponry to defend yourself against Eden's residents

We are currently in alpha development for Windows PC. Stay tuned for more updates!

Farflame spotted dev blog #57 for Pamela:

Oh hi! I didn’t see you there. It’s a good thing I have this Dev Blog handy here with me…

The dev team is coming up to an exciting couple of weeks here as some long-awaited features are starting to be created! Many of these features have been planned for well over a year, if not longer, so you can imagine how excited we are to see these dreams becoming a reality. The first of which are random and timed events that James has made some stellar progress on this week. So far you can expect to see riots break out, power outages that you’ll have to investigate, security lock-downs you’ll probably want to avoid and of course the constant depletion of things like food, drinks and energy from Eden as its inhabitants nibble away at its supplies. All put together, these events will help keep the game fresh, the world dynamic and the difficulty ever-increasing. And more events will be created next week, and further in the future as well!

This week we’ve also done an integration pass on many of the new features and systems that have been created in the previous weeks. This essentially means getting all of these new things out of our test scenes and into the game, ready to be played! Ian made some great progress tracking down some nasty bugs that were clinging like velcro and made a sweet new system that will allow us to have more precise reflections with a much lower cost than before. James on the other hand implemented his new spawning/respawning system and many more features into the main scene as well.

That sure sounds like a lot of stuff… But what’s this? There’s more?!

Adam

• Finished the “High Security Rehabilitation” area inside the Garrison district
• Started and finished “Low Security Rehabilitation” area inside Garrison
• Started and finished the “Armory” inside Garrison

Alayna

• Continued menu polish on Main Menu, Respawn Menu, Genome Point Menu & Options Menu
• Wrote in-game descriptions of Augment skills and Spawn locations

Christian

• Finished the first pass on enabling the NPCs to attack player bases

Patrick

• Finished the high-poly sculpt of the heavy armor suit, which can be worn by NPCs and the player

Ian

• Continued the integration pass from last week, making sure that everyone’s new features were working well together
• Created a system to drastically reduce the number of reflection probes drawing in the scene, while allowing us to use more of them at the same time… mind freak
• Did a bunch of bug hunting / slaying on some really hard to track down items

Mathew

• Finished damaged environmental pieces, will be used for upcoming “World Repair”
• Modeled Cyano-tube Repair kit item
• Started creating Storage Container buildable items, a place to store all of your stuff

James

• Created a bunch of random / timed events:
  • Riots
  • Power Outages
  • District Lock-downs
  • Item Scarcity System (items slowly dwindle from the world as other occupants consume them)
• Integrated the new spawning/respawning system into the main scene

Chris

• Finished buildable interaction menu, used for certain props such as hydroponic farms and water condensers
• Integrated the Options Menu into the Pause Menu, as well as the Main Menu

Farflame spotted some news about the lore of Pamela:

A wild Friday has appeared! Let’s welcome it with Dev Blog #52.

If you missed the big announcement last week, we posted our new launch date for February 2017! We’re super excited about how much better the game will be when it hits the public because of this extra time and from reading your feedback from last week, you feel the same way too. We’re just going to continue on with powering through developing all this content and keep our regular format updates coming.

For this week’s development highlight, our lore systems have started to take shape this week! This first step is in the form of lore entries which can be found in items around the world such as Data Tablets and Laptops. These entries will then be entered into your Datapad menu for you to revisit at any time. You will find things like emails, instant messages, broadcasts, journals and more from the citizens before and during the downfall of Eden 052.

In other news, Adam has finished modeling quite a large area of Garrison, the Barracks. This should be a pretty interesting place to explore and acquire loot from and it’s underground! Alayna planned out some awesome events world that will be worked on in the near future and Ian has been creating some awesome PAMELA abilities.

To our fellow Canadians, Happy Thanksgiving this weekend! Our holiday falls on the Monday so next week will be a bit shorter than usual.

[...]

P.A.M.E.L.A. will probably be released in February 2017:

Dev Blog 51 – Release Date Update

This week we’ve got a pretty major announcement to make, one that many of you have been asking about lately. Apologies for being a bit hush-hush with this lately, but we wanted to make sure that we were totally confident before sharing anything.

If you’ve been following our dev blogs on Steam, or even on our website before our Steam page went live, you know we’ve been hard at work bringing this game to life for a long time, just over 2 years in fact. P.A.M.E.L.A. is our first game here at NVYVE Studios, and the development process has included an equal share of successes and hardships, as fellow developers will be intimately familiar with. We’re all perfectionists, and the last thing we want is to fall short of meeting your expectations when we release P.A.M.E.L.A..

The news this week, after weighing the pros and cons, is that we’re pushing back our previously stated “Fall” release date. I’m extremely proud of what we’ve accomplished thus far, and if you’ve been keeping up with our dev blogs, hopefully you’ll be able to see that we’ve been pushing constantly to both build a great game and be as transparent as possible. Development is moving at a great pace, and we know that with a few more months we’ll be able to add a ton of great new content and polish for you to experience at launch.

So, you might be wondering, when ARE we releasing? We’re able to pinpoint a window with a high degree of confidence at this point, and that window is “February 2017”. This will give us some much needed extra time to add features and content, as well as polishing what’s there. While I can’t pinpoint an exact day to mark on your calendars just yet, rest assured that we’ll be announcing a firm date shortly into the New Year, as soon as we’re able to do so.

[...]

Thanks, Farflame!

In this dev-blog you can learn more about the game Pamela:

Dev Blog 50 – Pamela Abilities, Store Kiosks, and More

Welcome to the 50th P.A.M.E.L.A. dev blog from the team here at NVYVE Studios! It’s been a nice sense of routine for us to put these together each friday, and we do hope that you all enjoy checking in every week!

This has been another solid week, with everyone accomplishing some great work (except for Adam and Alayna, who were super sick and in quarantine most of the week… but are now recovered!). We’ve finished up our huge sprint of mo-cap work, which is kind of a huge relief as there was quite a large list to work through. To provide a highly dynamic combat experience, each NPC has almost 200 unique animations for movement, attacking, dodging, being hurt, retreating, etc. The number of animations we’ve done for these new characters is roughly twice the amount we used to record, which means less repetition and much more organic reactions to the player.

In art news, Mathew finished up a huge batch of awesome high-detail props for the Garrison security area, which will go a long way towards fleshing out the area’s military feel. Patrick finished up a datapad model, which will be scattered throughout the world and contain lore for the player to track down, as well as almost finishing a few new shield models the player will be able to equip. Good stuff!

The programming team made some huge progress this week as well; several Pamela abilities have been implemented, store Kiosks for buying items have been created, and more which you can read through below.

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Thanks Farflame!

@Dsogaming they announce the pc requirements for Pamela which is on Steam early access.

NVYVE Studios has released a new set of screenshots and revealed the PC system requirements for P.A.M.E.L.A. P.A.M.E.L.A. is an intense open-world survival horror game set in Eden, a fallen Utopian city and according to the PC specs, PC gamers will need at least a modern-day quad-core CPU, 4GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GTX 550 Ti. Do note that as the Steam page claimed, these specs are subject to change.

P.A.M.E.L.A. PC Requirements:

MINIMUM:

OS: Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit OS required)
Processor: Intel Core i5-2300 2.8 GHz
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 550 Ti
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 8 GB available space
Additional Notes: Subject to change before launch

RECOMMENDED:

OS: Windows 10 (64-bit OS required)
Processor: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 970
DirectX: Version 12
Storage: 8 GB available space
Additional Notes: Subject to change before launch

P.A.M.E.L.A. has been greenlit on Steam. The sci-fi first-person survival horror game with RPG style progression will hit the shelves in 2016. Some info:

How can I keep updated with the game’s progress?

On the front page we have a simple and secure newsletter that we would love for you to sign up for! Be the first to find out about development progress, special offers, closed alpha and beta access and more!

 Is there going to be VR support?

VR is something that we all love and are definitely interested in. Currently we are waiting to see how the platforms and technology develop until we can make any official commitments.

 What other games inspired us?

We were inspired visually by games such as Mass Effect and Mirror’s Edge, in their portrayal of clean, believable environments with punches of color throughout. Thematically and game-play wise, we were inspired by Deus Ex and Bioshock in their explorations of human nature, bio-augmentation, and free-form style allowing players to choose their own style and path.

 How many people are working on the game?

Currently there are 4 of us, and all of us wear many many hats!

 Day/Night cycles?

Yes, day/night transitions will alter the entire feeling of Eden, and affect the gameplay as well.

 Will there be dynamic weather?

Yes! This will also be very important for the gameplay.

 Can I play with my friends?

Co-op is something that we would love to have, and are definitely looking in to.

 Is there permadeath?

Yes, if you die in Eden, you do not come back. If you are playing in normal mode, the world will still persist, but you will become another awoken character losing augmentations and your inventory. In hardcore mode, everything will be lost, though there are special circumstances that may affect this.

 How does progression work?

There will be many ways to progress as a visitor to Eden. You will be able to find a vast amount of weapons and attachments for your AARM, alter your body through augmentations, tweak individual weapon parameters, and discover many secret upgrades as well!

 Is there loot?

Yes! We are really endeavoring to include as much loot as possible, and we have many awesome ways we are considering doing this. The exact details are a secret right now though!

 Is this a linear story-driven game?

No. Pamela is not linear, but it will include a vast amount of lore on the setting, events, and the people who lived there. Story will be discovered through a more flexible medium that allows players to experience at their own pace, in their own order; whether through audio logs, computer terminals, NPCs or posters. Some lore will educate, and others will let you in on secrets that may give you an upper edge to survive.

 How big will the game world be?

We have only just shown a small portion of Eden called the Promenade. This mall setting is only half the size of its true presentation, and is only one of many completely different locations among Eden. Players will be able to walk freely from one side to another, and plan out possible destinations from simply looking out the many vast windows.

 What are the main themes behind the game?

Pamela is about exploring humanities fascination with technology and perfection. As we progress as a species, we are becoming ever more connected to technology around us. We are also trying to eliminate all faults in ourselves, medically or mentally; but these types of endeavors are never without repercussions.

 What languages will be supported?

Currently Pamela is only officially announced to be in English. We will try to localize in other languages and regions if enough interest is shown.

 Why is the game called Pamela?

Pamela is the name of the sympathetic AI caretaker of Eden. She will aid the player with special abilities that will be influenced by the way the player interacts with the world.

 Is this a zombie game?

No! The currently revealed afflicted residents are in incredible agony due to a progressive bone affliction, and thus act erratically. They have a personality-driven AI system that is randomly generated per enemy to allow them complex interactions such as running away in fear, curiosity, and sympathy. They will also need to eat and sleep just like the player, and will consume resources and items around the world.

 What platforms are we releasing on?

We are only officially releasing on PC as of now, but we are also considering consoles, and experimenting with VR.

 What is the release date?

We are working very hard to get Pamela out as soon as possible! Right now, release is slated for 2016.

 What type of game is Pamela?

Pamela is an open world, Sci-Fi First-Person Survival Horror game with RPG style progression.

-> Alpha Gameplay Trailer