Posted December 11, 2025 by KeyQuest Studio
#Devlog #Playtest
Hey everyone!
We’re thrilled to bring you our first official Devlog as we move from our closed playtest into a small open playtest. This past week has been incredibly insightful, and thanks to your feedback, we've made meaningful improvements to the core systems of DarkBazaar.
Let’s dive into what we heard - and what we’ve changed.
The new build is up! Try it here: https://keyqueststudio.itch.io/darkbazaar
Those of you who joined the closed playtest gave us some fantastic feedback. The overall vibe was very positive - you enjoyed the setting and felt the game had a strong foundation. But you also pointed out a few key areas that needed love:
Progression felt underwhelming.
The game was a bit too easy.
Success leaned too heavily on luck, not strategy.
Choices didn’t feel impactful enough.
This feedback became our roadmap for the week - and we have tried to move fast.
Whenever you pay off your debt, a new stat summary page appears showing:
Crates bought
Weapons sold
Contracts completed
Profit carried into the next cycle
You'll also be presented with three upgrade choices, letting you shape your progression in meaningful ways - capacity boosts, instant money, additional respins, and more.
To reduce luck dependency and increase strategic depth:
You now get a limited number of respins per day to reroll crate results.
There is now a daily crate purchase limit, making each decision more meaningful.
These changes seek to create a more thoughtful, player-driven progression loop.
We also made several balancing adjustments to tighten the economy, sharpen difficulty, and reward smart decision-making:
Lower base weapon values → Selling weapons individually is less lucrative.
Higher contract payouts → Contracts are now a more appealing, strategic choice.
Higher rarity value multipliers → Making higher rarity more important. Which in turn makes upgrades matter more.
Magazine Upgrades Buffed:
Now provide:
2× weapon type value, or
+50% chance of rolling a weapon type
(Previously both values were only 15%.)
Debt scales faster than your advance, raising the stakes.
The game's pacing should now feel more intense and challenging.
In short: stakes are higher, contracts matter more, rarity matters more, and upgrade decisions carry more weight.
Thanks for calling these out - here’s what we’ve squashed:
Fixed crates becoming uninteractable and freezing progress.
Fixed the zero-debt loop that prevented new debt cycles from starting.
Fixed expired contracts consuming weapons - items now return safely to storage.
Fixed two infinite money exploits:
Infinite payouts
Infinite selling of the last weapon in a crate
(R.I.P. infinite wealth runs - you will be missed 😭)
A bunch of small improvements also made it in:
You can now play mostly with the mouse.
Pause menu added (including mute options).
Improved UI flow:
Automatically return to your desk after finishing crates
Prevent entering the crate-opening sequence when you have no crates
These changes smooth out the experience and reduce friction during play. On top of that we have made a lot of small UI/UX fixes.
This patch also introduces several new weapons to diversify your arsenal:
Folding Shovel – Melee
Makarov – Pistol
Eagle – Pistol
TC-9 – SMG
MAC-10 – SMG
MP5 – SMG
M60 – Heavy
If you have wishes for weapons please let os know! We love making them 😍😄
Thank you to everyone who participated in the closed playtest. Your feedback directly shaped this update, and we’re excited for you to experience the improvements first hand in the open playtest.
We’re just getting started - keep the feedback coming, and we’ll keep building DarkBazaar together.
See you in the Bazaar. 🖤