Posted November 30, 2025 by Neon Brain
#blog
2025 is ending, it’s been quite a turbulent year both for the development of this game and my personal life, but I’m still thriving.
The Steam Demo has been quite a success and interest in the game has grown exponentially ever since, so I want to thank everyone who’s played it and supported it. If you wanna support it further, please leave a Steam review on it.
Since it’s no secret I’m working on a big Steam Next Fest update, here’s a quick rundown of what’s going on and what happened in November:
I actually finished the level layout much sooner than anticipated, which means I got to work on the enemy roster earlier than planned. Even rigged up some triggers already.
I did have to make a detour and shake up the acid lake in the fungal grove with weird rock formations due to performance reasons (Godot hates big wide-open spaces). I kind of miss when the bridge was the main focal point of the area, but honestly the rock formations ended up being interesting too (at least for me).
The mushroom enemy lineup is almost complete. I still wanna make:
A stationary mushroom enemy
An airborne mushroom enemy
If time allows, I’d also like to make more wildlife creatures, which ties into…
More lore additions and story bits.
After I’m done with the mushroom enemies, I’m jumping straight into the bosses for the level. One of them is gonna be a stationary kind, so I’ll need to code a separate boss script for it, since the current one doesn’t account for that. I can easily see myself spending time on this over my holiday break. I tend to spend most of my holiday time alone anyway, so might as well be productive (for the uninitiated, I work on this game part-time).
The other boss is much more standard, and that whole process is a very well-oiled machine by now, so it shouldn’t take too long.
Then it’s enemy encounter design. I already have a bunch lined up, so that should go relatively smooth. I’ve learned the game benefits more from fewer forced encounters, so expect that going forward.
Finally, some story bits to tie it all together, followed by intense playtesting.
NOTE: Your save file will carry over to the Steam Next Fest version. Nothing is stopping you from playing now and picking back up when the fungal grove is unleashed.
I can see myself doing a little more content after Next Fest, the number of spells right now is a bit pitiful, and of course there’s the ever-so-elusive intro cutscene haunting me from the backburner. Maybe if I’m ahead of schedule, I’ll slip in more spells before launch.
Once all that is done and polished to my satisfaction, it’ll finally be time to say goodbye to working on demo stuff. Everyone who’s kept up with this game knows the demo is basically a shareware episode. Now imagine what that means for the first early access build when this demo is nearly 3 hours on a first playthrough…
So let’s talk about scope.
The demon in the room, one echoed by my gamedev friends and journalist friends, is scope creep.
I’m very self-conscious about that stuff, to the point where I’ve scaled back on a lot (thank god I kept alot of plans to myself), so fear not: I am feature freezing in 2026.
Feature-frozen items:
3 save slots system
Story progression system that changes some NPC dialogue as you progress (way simpler than it sounds)
Journal system to keep track of progress (basically a retooled data pad)
Passive abilities you can equip (partially there already)
The rest of the game’s arsenal
More fleshed-out boss code (been chipping away at this in secret, teehee)
Eidolon summons (won’t be in the first EA build, but the save file needs to acknowledge the system)
Once these are implemented and ironed out, the game enters early beta, meaning I can continuously work on the rest of the game without constantly nuking your save file. Pretty swell, isn’t it? Major content updates are basically gonna become MMO expansions at that point.
I don’t only want it to be meaty, I want it to be satisfying. I want the first EA build to end with you killing one of the major antagonists. Something that makes you want more but also feel like you accomplished a major story beat before the curtain closes (in theory).
Can I do all that before the end of 2026? Extremely up in the air. Maybe the things I listed will be done in less than a month, maybe it’ll take half a year (I’m not that slow at coding and implementing stuff, to be fair). What’s certain is if I can’t make it in 2026, I will 100% make it in early 2027.
I’ll also be hosting public playtests on Steam once a major level is completed. That way I can gather feedback and not leave a lot of you starving. Maybe this Itch page could find a second life by permanently hosting playtest builds.
That was a lot to go over, but there is a lot to be done, so it tracks.
Anyway, hope this was informative or enlightening.
Happy holidays!
P.S. Gonna take a short hiatus when Metroid Prime 4 comes out. I waited way too long for a follow-up to Prime 3, and I refuse to get spoiled.