itch.io

Hello everyone,

I decided to start sharing our progress here about our upcoming game Dark Queen of Samobor, a side-scrolling action-adventure game heavily inspired by the atmosphere of INSIDE, Slavic mythology, Croatian folk tales and combat mechanics from games like Neva, Dead Cells and Song of Iron.

I'm planning to set up a proper Itch page sometime next week: [upcoming Itch io page] and start doing devlog articles there and share those updates here as well.

The story of the game centers around a knight coming home from a crusade and realizing that an evil queen (inspired by the myths about real-life Barbara of Cili who was accused of practicing witchcraft, alchemy, and sorcery) has woven his homeland into darkness. 

You experience this game by stepping into a book, told through 5 chapters, each one in a different biome and with a few new enemy types inspired by Slavic folklore. We aim create a cinematic experience that would give you a similar feel to being a hero in a fairytale.

For now, the game only has a Steam page but you can follow my profile on Itch here for more info as well.

We also have a Discord server you can join, where we post our weekly (or sometimes bi-weekly) progress and will run some playtests soon.

Here are some screenshots:

Latest update

As a starting point here's an update to game's combat and visual effects I did last week (unfortunately I can't upload the GIF here as it's too big).

People commented before how visual effects were not visible enough and the feel of impact wasn't there, so we worked a lot on that in the past few weeks, these are the results. #gaming #indiegames #gamedev #madewithunity [image or embed]
— Aleksandar from Downtown (@b-aleksandar.bsky.social) March 13, 2026 at 5:14 PM

Moving forward

I hope you find this interesting and will join us on our journey. Our next milestone is adding a ranged enemy, doing some major improvements to combat, and then finally releasing a demo in a couple of months (and hopefully squeezing in a few playtests before that). As I said, for now, you can follow me here on Itch and you'll be notified once I set up the page for the game.

I had a similar question way back although I phrased it a bit differently. Check out the discussion: https://itch.io/t/4008965/will-in-development-game-get-visibility-boost-when-it-...

Music is very well done. From the visual perspective, the game is a bit rough around the edges but I'd say still has a pretty unique style so the quality of certain things is not that noticeable.

Some parts of the game are a bit unpolished. Jumping feels unresponsive (ie. certain tricks like coyote time would be a nice addition) and it feels a bit frustrating to place something then immediately get a fail state because you got stuck.

It's definitely an interesting concept though, I like how things scale along with you when you hold them and you can use things you placed in a previous run to finish a level (the concept of having to die sometimes to reset to starting size is interesting).

This is why I like GMTK jam XD

Once you get into a rhythm it's super fun. 

Very satisfying game and the graphics are nice.

I'd agree with Diamond32 about the building mechanic. It's unfitting for you to gave to think about building and erasing walls while trying to avoid your untimely demise.

Couldn't figure out the moving block level but this game is very good overall.

In particular, I really like the movie studio-like environment, has a very nice atmosphere.

Simple, yet interesting idea. Collision detection for stomping is not always as expected but other than that it's good.

This concept could be combined with controls of Octodad (in 3D) or  even with QWOP for something more dynamic.

Really good game! I'd just like to be able to have a more explicit way of rotating blocks (like using keys to rotate left/right, or maybe even by using right click or mouse wheel for fine-tuning)

I saw the game on Twitter and thought that it looks amazing, but unfortunately controls just spoiled the fun for me.

It's a bit confusing to have to to switch between moving blocks and your character, I think that both could've been done simultaneously (eg. WASD for block + EQ for rotation, arrow keys for character).

Also, being able to jump on up arrow key instead of needing to use space would make controls a bit more flexible and intuitive for me personally.

Anyhow, good job for 2 days of work. :D

Thanks a lot of that info! Will keep that in mind.

I don't agree with the notion that it doesn't matter because of limited effectiveness but I get what you're saying and thanks a lot of the tips.

I haven't published any larger project on Itch in a while so it's good to get as many insights as possible in advance.

Agreed! Every feature has it's purpose and should follow that purpose regardless of how ineffective it seams to many people.

Thanks for sharing this information. It's a very good observation. It's always good to know how these thing work.

To me it would make sense that games that are marked as "In Development" don't appear in Game but that their devlogs still appear in designated places for that.

And then to start counting the game as released and show it on "Most Recent" when it goes to "Released", "Prototype" or any other stage where you have something playable.

Maybe the current implementation was just easier/faster and given that effects of "Most Recent" tab are limited they just didn't bother doing it any other way. But yeah, I'd prefer to have more info on that, like how Steam does it. I don't think knowing such things would make the system easy to abuse or something, it would just give more clarity to developers who are putting a lot of effort into their games and expect at least a little push from the platform.

I mean game dev scene is competitive and if you're trying to make a game seriously you need to take ever avenue that you get. Of course this won't be my only marketing channel. Just a central place where people can track how the project is going.

Thanks for devlog tip! I'll check it out.

"... pages in prototype/without downloads will not get added into the search results"
- Good to know. Thanks about that info!

"I guess one way of seeing is that if you would know it too exactly it may be abused? "
- Not sure if it would because Steam also has uncovered a lot about their algorithm and I guess it could be misused bit it's still very limited. Like games that are of very low quality will not get very many players even if they stay in "Popular" tab for weeks (at least that's my theory). You still need some substance to attract and retain players, good thumbnail, reasonably well crafted page to let the players know that you took effort into making this.

If I publish a game page as "In Development", just to gather followers and post devlogs, ie. to be able to promote my game more easily. Will my game still get a visibility boost when I switch to "Released"?

As I understand, games usually get pushed more by the algorithm when they are released (New and Popular, Recently Released tab) so I'd like to know if this happens only when my game gets into a "Released" or "Prototype" phase, only when my page gets initially published, or whenever it goes to a next phase (ie. all of the previously mentioned)?

Thanks! Yeah, I should've added some proper tutorial or something :D

Hahaha definitely! Thanks! :)

Thanks! :)

Thanks! I plan on improving it further so it's good that people see some potential at least :D

You can actually fly up by holding both left and right, but yeah, the game is long way off from being stable :D

yeah, I realized way to late that there's a bug that let's you just fly off uncontrollably
yikes! XD

My intention was to make it a bit less stable to control but I agree that it's not as polished as it should be.
Played your game, it looks good, but honestly it's sometimes difficult to distinguish between background and foreground elements. More contrast would make it a bit more obvious.

Thanks! Yeah, I definitely should've explained all of the mechanics a bit more.

Thanks! Yeah, I definitely should've added more explanation to all of the indicators.

Nice game! Visually it looks good, controls are mostly good and responsive.

My only complaint is with wall jumping. It just feels a bit too punishing, like it sometimes doesn't detect that you're next to the wall.

Nice game but I honestly initially didn't get when does the hookshot overheat and how to cool it down. I think that you should signal this somehow within the game instead of having it on the 2nd page of the instructions.

In terms of some quality of life improvements, I think that switching which side you're shooting from should be automatic, it feels a bit unnecessary to do it manually. Also, the ball can sometimes get "stuck" and then hookshot needs to be canceled (manually) to proceed, and shoot it again. I think that you should just make it that if the ball can't go any further and it's already next to the wall hook just resets automatically and you can continue.

These are some small details but could make the game a lot easier to play.

Pretty brutal game :D the first thing I saw when I loaded it up was fail screen XD

However I generally like the idea + how you combined it with the theme of the jam.

Controls are a bit too sensitive and I also think that tutorial level or at least having a bit easier beginning on the first level would have helped a lot with getting used to the controls.

That's the weird that I'm going for :D
Thanks!

Hahaha, yeah, this bear hasn't been exercising in a long time :D

The game is a bit on the difficult side but also movement feels slow. You could make jumping more responsive by for example making the fall faster. Just search on YouTube "How to make any platformer better?" or "super mario jump" + engine of choice.

Also, for me, it was weird that you need to press Shift, then A or D to dash, I'd expect that you can do the reverse as well, like if I'm holding A or D, pressing Shift should also cause dash, but it doesn't.

The game is a bit on the difficult side but also movement feels slow. You could make jumping more responsive by for example making the fall faster. Just search on YouTube "How to make any platformer better?" or "super mario jump" + engine of choice.

Also, for me, it was weird that you need to press Shift, then A or D to dash, I'd expect that you can do the reverse as well, like if I'm holding A or D, pressing Shift should also cause dash, but it doesn't.

I like how you combined multiple mechanics for such a small game to effectively separate level into multiple stages. Like when you first pick up the upgrade, it feels very impactful, also, when you get out of the ship and just continue using your jetpack part was a bit unexpected but very interesting.

Also, it's amazing how music slowly ramps up to follow the gamepley.

My main issue is with the controls. Having steering on A/D and then moving forward with Shift, shooting on Enter?! :D idk it just felt very weird. I liked weird controls sometimes just for the sake of weirdness but for this game it felt out of place for me.

Thanks! :)

hahah yeah, I was wondering why is everything going so bad when I'm accepting positive changes.
I guess it makes sense that red button with skull would mean "action" or "aggressive action on something" but it has another meaning that overlaps that first one.

Very interesting way to use 2 buttons! Great job!

It's a bit frustrating though when the tower misses the enemy by very small distance, so timing would be something that needs a bit of improvement.

Also, I'd suggest that you make initial enemies really easy, like 1 shot = kill just to hook us in basically :D it would be way more satisfying, give you nice and easy intro to how towers shoot and would give you motivation for the next round when harder enemies come at you.

But all in all, great job as I said! :)

My high score was 17.

Pretty nice game! My only complaint is that jump indicator is not really aligned to how the frog will actually jump, like you have to aim a bit farther away.

Nice game! Ambiance, surroundings, and animations are very good.

Some issues that I had with the game are below:

- Intro is a bit too long and unskippable from what I've seen.

- Colors of the two buttons are a bit confusing. You use the red one to accept the proposal and yellow one to ignore it, while the icon on the yellow one is pretty clear, icon and the color of the right one are not.

- I probably missed the meaning the top-left number on the screen, so it was very unclear to me how that number will be affected by my decisions.

Overall, I love all of the visuals and sounds although I think gameplay has its flaws.

Coming from someone who really liked original Flappy Bird :D this game is very good!!

Controls are snappy, art style is nice.

Only negative thing that I have to say is that it's not always completely obvious which objects are in background and which are obstacles, but I guess that's part of figuring out some levels.

Also, having some wind animation / effect next to fans showing their range would be nice piece of polish as well.

Great work!

Thank you very much! :D