Soulfused Devlog #1
A lot has happened since Next Fest in October. If you've been following me or the game you might be wondering why things have been so quiet. This devlog is here to answer that and to let you know that the game is still moving forward.
Progress and Parenthood
The short answer to the radio silence: I became a dad in December. It's been a wild ride with little time for work (or sleep) these last couple of months, but it's also been a wonderful start to a new and exciting chapter in our life journey.
Of course this also means that the progress on the game has slowed down quite a bit. I had originally hoped to finish things up before the baby arrived but, like many deadlines, this one also flew past while making a funny sound.
That said, I'm now looking at a Q1/Q2 2026 release. I'll share an exact date as soon as I have one. Stay tuned!
Now, let's talk about the game!
Where it comes from
I've been working on this game on and off for about 3 years now. It's a solo project, though I've licensed some of the assets used. It started out as a hobby project that I created to test out some level generation ideas I had for another game. The text based input system actually came a little later and was originally a debugging tool for the level generator. That part ended up being much more fun to work with and more interesting to play with than I had expected, and it quickly became the core of the game. Almost no code of the original level generator experiment remains as the game has now grown into something that can stand on its own.
The decision to release it commercially came about a year ago and was actually closely tied to us finding out about the pregnancy. Like I mentioned, the estimated birth date became a sort of mental deadline for finishing things up and releasing. That was also the reason I decided to go with the October Next Fest instead of waiting for a later one. Even though I didn't quite manage to hit that deadline, I'm still happy with the progress and the choices that got us here.
Where it is
At this point the game is pretty much feature complete. There are a couple of loose ends I still need to tie up but all pieces are fully playable and my most recent focus has been bug fixes and polish. I've also brought the game to a handful of events for demoing and live testing, so a nice chunk of that polish is based on player feedback and testing observations. For example, I’ve redesigned and simplified the Hub and Player views based on what I've learned from players playing the game. There's still some color tweaking that needs to be done to make sure all text is easily readable.
One of my biggest motivators is actually seeing the game in the hands of real players. I will never fail to be surprised by what people try to do and the results they expect when trying demos and prototypes. The creativity is amazing and as a direct result I've greatly expanded the list of valid inputs in the game. That list is never going to cover all possible edge cases but I will keep adding to it as development continues and I get to see more people play.
Where it's going
The biggest remaining chunk of work is the implementation of the story. Right now the full story exists as an overly complicated flow chart and bringing that flow chart into the game is taking a lot of time and energy.
Once that is done, focus will shift to testing and balancing leading up to the release.
On top of this, I'm also planning to release an updated demo sometime within the couple of months. This will feature all the latest polish and bug fixes, as well as a 4th level which introduces you to one of the key characters you'll be working with through the remaining majority of the game. If you've played the current demo you might already have heard a Whisper from them.
Thanks for reading! If you want to stay closer to the development of the game I usually post updates first on Bluesky.
