Merry Christmas everyone!

Let’s start off with some new artwork from the game!

It’s been a busy year (in a good way). I started off hoping to get the game to alpha by this year’s end, and while I didn’t hit the goal, it was so lofty that even in its failure, the work done on the game this year has been truly substantial.

I took a complete break from game dev this November to work solely on the short story for the game manual. I finished “Icon Mortis” during Thanksgiving break and I am very proud of the story. It will be available in the Betrayed Alliance Book 2 Player’s Guide and Game Manual (for which it was written), but also currently to my Patreon subscribers.

After finishing “Icon Mortis,” my enthusiasm for the game was reinvigorated and I set to work again on artwork, animations, writing, and puzzle-programming.

As we push into 2026, I am filled with optimism for great things for the game. I can’t predict a final date yet, and there are a lot of pieces that need to come together, not to mention playtesting and polishing, but it’s really taking shape!

2025 Recap!

The physical manual received 2 of its main pieces – the cover art and the short story, “Icon Mortis,” which is ~7,600 words (significantly more robust than the 1,500 Book 1 Intro).

The work on the game itself started the year with rigging up a puzzle on the cosmic walkway:

After that, I moved on to another puzzle zone and some random non-related elements:

In the Spring I started working on the artwork for the cover as well as a dialog scene with Leonart, and started wiring up his cabin:

In the summer months, Karl Dupere-Richer returned to help me with some sketches for the cabin area. I set myself to EGA-ify those sketches also finished a strange cave puzzle area with Leah:

Before the start of Fall, Karl had provided me with many more beautiful sketches based on some ideas I had for backgrounds. I took a lot of time to translate them into EGA pixel art, but loved every second of it!

Once Fall started and I returned to my full-time work, attention to the game fell off quite a bit, I am sad to admit. It was a hectic start to a new school year, both with my classes, but also my children’s classes. After about a month or so of neglect, I found my way back to working on the game, focusing a lot of time on programming rooms and writing dialog for cutscenes (and other interactions), as well as putting together the Patreon “Thank you card” for the year.

That brings us to today and the images you saw at the beginning of the update represent the work at the end of the Fall.

Final Thoughts

It was never supposed to take this long! So I appreciate the patience, especially from those who have supported me on Kickstarter all those years ago, and for those who currently support me on Patreon.

I hope you can hold out a bit longer. As much as I love working on the game, the intensity of focus I can exert on it varies from time to time. This year I had huge waves of energy and got a lot of work done, but there were 2 months where life got busy and the game took the back seat, or even left unconscious in the trunk!

Overall, despite missing my goal of “alpha by year’s end,” I am very happy with the progress, and hope 2026 can have as much energy.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years! Here’s to 2026!

Ryan