isn’t this usually a new year’s type of thing?
Well, yes. This one might be a little longer than our usual. If you just want the updates, understandable.
When we first started working on this game, we had a pretty loose goal based on the themes that we had going.
First, it was going to be kind of spooky and include some jumpscare kind of mechanics. Second, we would have something playable as a demo for people by October 2024. (lol).
All of this was based on a game jam entry we submitted in Feb 2024!
A lot of things we eagerly promised to ourselves didn’t materialize. We changed our minds on things a countless number of times!
We first launched our attempts at social media and web presence in January this year, but our first real commitment was to have something playable in October 2024. Seeing as it is now October 2025, here we go.
where did the time go?
It’s an interesting topic to write about. Neither of us is full time on this project, nor are we experienced in any major or minor game development process.
Some days, it’s difficult to find the time. Even if you have the time, often a number of factors contribute to inability to focus on the work itself.
There have been ebbs and flows during the past year, and maybe the most important part of the whole thing is that we have kept a steady pace. Some weeks are light on content additions, but there are consistent updates to the codebase as we continue to work on it!
well, what did we do?
multiplayer
We spent a lot of time working on the multiplayer component of this game. It has been and continues to be an important part of the game for us, and at first it was probably more important to us to figure out how multiplayer worked than figure out how the game should work.
I don’t think we would recommend that approach again, but that’s how it went!
Additionally, we’ve been learning as we go, and we’ve run into some pitfalls with multiplayer specifically that have required a few rewrites of the logic.
Some of these issues didn’t appear for months and months, like some of our patterns were saturating the connection between players and causing random latency spikes. That took a while to discover and fix.
Other things we adjusted were gameplay related, like how many players should we make this game for? We started with 4 and have landed on 2, resulting in some features that we spent time on but ultimately scrapped.
game features
Speaking of game features, we’ve been consistently adding stuff. Talk about scope creep issues.
The game is mostly based on traversing a world and discovering items that will get your spirit engine back up and running.
And lately, most of the features that we added are features we needed to be doing from the beginning and decided to put on the backburner until we had “more important” things solved.
Those “important” things were often some of the background processes, like how multiplayer works, how the player’s character is set up, how various UI elements should work, etc.
In other cases, it’s random things we thought might be cool. This includes the pet system we added on a while back, which allows characters to find and partner with various friends in the game.
art
Art, like many skills, comes more easily to some than others. We are not amongst those to whom it comes easily.
This just means it’s taken us a little extra time to learn, practice, and know what works. Even now, new art and animations take a lot of time and can be daunting. However, the payoff is huge and it’s lots of fun to see our characters and worlds come to life.
Even though we haven’t been on the most obvious path to completing the game, we’re still on the road and these things are coming together quicker now than before!
what next?
We always close out the studio update with something like this, but we don’t always have interesting things to show or talk about, and that’s okay.
This time, we kinda do, and guess what?
actual updates since last month (and why is this posted so late, anyway?)
What’s Next? That’s right, it’s part of our updates from the past month.
demo submission to mivs
Yeah, we did that. There is a popular music and game festival (MAGFest) that does an indie game showcase.
With little to no expectations, we scrambled some features together to put together a multiplayer-enabled build of our game, then put together a demo reel.
Good news, bad news. We didn’t get selected to present, but we did get a ton of helpful feedback on our game from the judges.
The pressure of having players witness the game we’ve worked on for over a year has motivated us even more. The whole experience was kind of good for us to break our routine, grind a little bit to get things presentable, and the payout was worthwhile.
We’ve already been using the feedback to lean into the future progress of the game!
new npcs and enemy types
When we submitted the game, we knew the actual core gameplay was pretty light. We have a theme and a hook, but the concept is surface deep.
Something we always knew we would need is additional enemy/npc types with varying behavior. Without spoiling everything, we’ve already added six new NPCs into the game!
ui overhaul
Our UI has always been minimal and functional while we worked on other parts of the game. For getting mechanics going, this was fine. For submitting the demo to a showcase… it was probably lackluster, and we knew it.
We did recieve a bit of feedback that has helped us make some design choices in just the past 2 weeks.
As a result, we changed our ideas on some of the game, including a long overdue look at how the player’s UI should be.
actual social media content
It’s happening, and mostly on our instagram.
At least, for now.
that’s enough
Agreed.
There will be more updates soon, and maybe even on time!