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!
Since the last update in July, I’ve had the honor on working on more background artwork pieces courtesy of sketches provided by Karl Dupere-Richer’s many sketches. Above are the colored versions That I completed and below you will see Karl’s sketches. I did my best to bring Karl’s wonderful drawings into the world of 16-color EGA vector art.
In August and September with the startup of school I took some time off the project to focus on getting my classroom up and running and working on establishing a new routine I could get comfortable with that would allow me time for my health/fitness goals.
At the tail end of September and now into October, I have started back on my daily work on the game. I am focused a lot on dialog creation and programming some puzzles of things I’d rather not show. With only a couple of months left in the 2025, I am a bit more doubtful of the full game being in alpha, as I need to update one particularly tricky puzzle area that got too big and convoluted and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Although it will take time to redo, it’ll be worth the work.
Ever heard of NaNoWriMo? It’s short for national novel writing month and people would try to write 50,000 words of a novel in a month. While the organization shut down earlier this year, it’s still something I have participated in the past. I’ve never been able to complete the insane 50,000 words, but it’s always fun to work on. This year, I’m going to go a bit easy on it and try to write a 7,000 to 10,000 word short story that will serve as the backstory introduction for the physical manual this time around. Book 1 also had a short story introduction, too, but it was only about 1,500 words – a VERY short story indeed!
I used my old notebook from NaNoWriMo 2014 and wrote some story planning notes for next month. As you can see, I was always a big nerd, even 11 years ago! Also, while I didn’t “win” NaNoWriMo, I did eventually finish the 2014 story and publish the work in April 2016. My slow work pace is also, it seems, a continuing facet of my personality! I hope to give you a sneak peak of some of the writing at year’s end!
Also, for the blessed and honored Patreon folks, who have supported me in this project, I will be sending out the greeting card very soon! I am saddened to say that while I themed it for Halloween and will get them in the mail this week, it’s looking less likely that they’ll get there before the day itself.
If you would also like to get a greeting card with a few kindly words in it, feel free to join also! These are the people who make it possible to work on a niche project like this!
I hope you look forward to the future update and I’m excited for what I hope to finish in Betrayed Alliance for 2026. But I don’t want to focus too much on the future, but on working on what’s in front of me now.
This July I had the pleasure of having Karl Dupéré-Richer spend a bit of time working on some artwork for the project. I gave him a handful of unfinished backgrounds and he set himself to working on some sketches based on the scratch pre-alpha “art” I had in the game.
Karl took these images with a small dose of direction and very quickly put together some sketches.
From these images I set myself to transposing them into EGA Vector graphics using SCI Companion.
Here are a few other backgrounds that were completed thanks to Karl’s help on the project. These 4 are parts of a log cabin area.
Karl is also responsible for about 2/3 of the updated Artwork in Book 1, so his work on Betrayed Alliance has been (and continues to be) inestimable! I’d recommend following his work and supporting him by checking out Amazing Fix, a game featuring his artwork.
Altogether, Karl has sketched out 11 backgrounds this July, and I’ve done my best to do them justice in the conversion process into vector EGA backgrounds.
After this most recent run of completing backgrounds, the total of completed backgrounds to use in the game is now around 130 or so. I estimate about 20 or so more backgrounds will be needed. To give a bit of scale, Book 1 has about 56 backgrounds.
What else is new?
You might recognize the following image from last update, where I was working on this puzzle:
The puzzle is now complete and the background has been redone.
I’ve also done some further work with a conversation between Leah and Jurgen, a character you run into in the demo who is on his own quest in Book 2. Here is the sketch and then the in-game conversion.
Bad News
Despite things getting done, not everything is going perfectly. This past month the Slattstudio discord server was deleted by its previous owner. I’ve put together a new onewhich you can join here. I am now the owner of the server, so that will not be happening again. I apologize for the inconvenience!
Also, the goal of this year was to get the game to alpha by year’s end. While this has been among the most productive years so far, each month’s goal is still falling behind schedule. That said, things are really starting to come together and it’s beginning to hit that transition point between feeling like a project and feeling like a game.
Until next update, thank you all for your support and patience, especially those who have continued supporting me on patreon. You make it possible for me to work on this game!
What’s new in the Verlorn forest since the March? Let’s find out!
First (and please forgive the simplistic nature of the artwork – it’s not in final form) is a puzzle room that Leah finds herself in. This puzzle, like the cosmic maze area shown last update, takes place in a “space” a bit outside of the forest. More to share on this as it progresses. Right now it’s kind of like looking at scaffolding as opposed to seeing the complete building.
Speaking of things not in their final form, I’ve also been putting together a few basic blueprints for a handful of locations that have not been made yet. All in all, I’d say there are about 30 or so backgrounds that still need to be made (That’s on top of the around 120 unique backgrounds already completed!). Here is a cabin area which will house a few rooms:
In this cabin, you will meet an important character for Book 2’s story, Leonard, one of the few other characters capable of living in the cursed forest:
You will also see him featured in the new artwork I’ve just recently put together for the Betrayed Alliance: Book 2 Player’s Guide and Game Manual. Here’s a quick side by side with the Book 1 artwork and the new Book 2 artwork – you can see I wanted to go with a consistent theme (As anyone who collects items in the same collection will tell you, it’s nice when they fit together!)
Here’s a look at the process I used for creating the image:
Step 1 – I sketched out the artwork concept. Step 2 – I inked the sketch and erased the pencil. I then took a picture and inputted it into photoshop. (A lot of artists sketch and ink in photoshop itself, but I still prefer the tactile nature of paper.) Step 3 – I use a comic book style approach to coloring called “flatting” where you put down a base color for each part. This allows you to use the magic wand tool to select one area at a time to color.
Back to the game
But artwork isn’t everything I’ve been busy with. There are a number of areas I’ve been programming that aren’t easy to show without revealing puzzle spoilers and such, but two areas I’ve been busy with lately are:
I don’t want to show too much about these, however, I will say the frozen river here, for example will not always remain frozen. As the game progresses, you help effect certain changes.
Final Thoughts
So how’s the goal of reaching alpha by end of year? I must be honest here, it’s not looking too great, unfortunately. My life has just become so busy with three children (ranging from 5-12 y/o). I’m not trying to assign blame or anything, just observing that hobbies like game creation take backseat to real life. That being said, this is a marathon and I’m feeling like we’re in the last few miles. Yes, I’m tired and running low on gas, but just one step at a time and before you know it, it’ll be in alpha, then beta, then tested and released. So thanks for hanging in there with me.
For those of you interested, I’ve also put out a new shirt on my fourthwall page – this one features the cartoon version of adventurer Graham that I use in my comic series on my patreon. I really liked how he looks in this style and I wanted him on a shirt for myself. Pick one up if you like it too!
In 2023 the demo for Book 2 was made available, in 2024 the BIG update to Book 1 was finished, and I have an ambitious goal for 2025: I want to get Book 2 to a playable alpha state. I’ve started posting short (almost) daily updates on progress to the “Book 2 daily updates” channel of the Slattstudio discord. If you are wary of spoilers, however, probably best not to check that out as I cannot guarantee that daily work is spoiler free.
The Work This Month
So, here’s a brief summary (and some screenshots) of what’s been going on in January.
Random Battle Encounters in the Great Forest up and running
Cosmic Sidewalk Puzzle implemented
Backgrounds and Animations added
Cutscene dialog/stuff
It’s gonna be a lot of work, but so much is done and now it’s a matter of getting things tied together and implemented. I’m quite excited to be moving to what feels like the next stage of the game’s development!
Further Support
I’m also posting comics for those who pledge in the $3 tier on my patreon, if you’re interested in helping finance this passion project in a small, but helpful and appreciated, way. Here’s one of recent ones:
I’ll be working hard to reach the goal of the game being in alpha by year’s end. It’s ambitious, but I am hopeful that it is within reach.
With 1,459 downloads, I’ve received a lot of feedback about Book 1 of Betrayed Alliance, and mostly I’m happy to say the game is fundamentally stable! But there were some intrepid folks who joined us on Discord and shared some curiosities and anomalies!
So why a patch so quickly?
The Kickstarter-funded update (v. 1.3.1) released just 3 weeks ago, so what did we find?
Just your typical spattering of game crashing scenarios, null textboxes, and priority drawing problems.
Not to mention more misspellings than a six year-old’s handmade birthday card:
So why a patch so quickly? Bottom line, I want people’s experience with the game to be as great as it can be, so the earlier the patch fixes a lot of the found issues, the better!
Important Notice about Save Files
Save games you made with version 1.3.1 will NOT work in 1.3.2. I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do about this, it’s just the nature of how saves work in SCI. It might load and look like it works, but in the end, the game will crash when you run into any of the changes that were made.
Other notable changes:
The 1-puzzle point tied to the dart board minigame no longer requires a game win, just challenging the sailor at all.
The circuit-board puzzle now gives feedback to the player when they place certain pieces next to each other.
“Searching” has been added to certain places where looking inside or through things is likely.
Auto-guided stairs and hills can now be reversed if triggered on accident.
Itinerary of Long-Term Fixes
There are some fixes/additions that will take some time to do and we’ll shoot for those at a later update. These are more ambitious goals that we couldn’t get out the door in just a few weeks:
Optimizing the game for era hardware
Creating a better darts minigame from the ground up
Making keyboard-only gameplay possible
Adding support for all additional sound drivers
Soundtrack News!
Also, Brandon Blume has put out the MT-32 soundtrack for Betrayed Alliance on his website. Check it out!
It’s been a week since Betrayed Alliance: Book 1 was released, open-source and for free. So how’s it going? Let’s find out!
Downloads:
A week into release and we’ve had just over 800 downloads! That’s a lot of people playing Betrayed Alliance, for which I am very thankful!
If you haven’t gotten your FREE download of the game yet, get it here!
Reception:
While we don’t have any proper reviews (yet!), I have had people reaching out and saying things like,
Just finished playing it. Very very fun. Took me back to the EGA days of QFG1, which is still my favorite of that series. I cannot wait to play the next chapter.
I know someone in this group was involved with the making of Betrayed Alliance and I just want to say thank you. I started playing it yesterday and really love it so far.
Speaking of reviews, if you purchased the physical game manual, please leave a short review! It only has ONE review so far, and those are rookie numbers!
Hint Guide & Walkthrough:
Yes, just like the old days, there is a physical game manual, but this one includes a hint guide and walkthrough in addition to a short story introduction to the game, some instructions about features, and artwork.
In case the PDF hint guide and walkthrough (included with the game files) isn’t quite enough for your needs, there is a video walkthrough you can watch courtesy of Streamer and YouTube guy, Jimni P:
Support:
Love what we’re doing and want to support? You have options!
Slattstudio is on Patreon which is a truly significant help in keeping a time-intensive hobby such as this sustainable. A huge and heartfelt “Thank You!!” to the wonderful and generous people who support me there!
You can also get some really cool items like the Game Night shirt and hoodie, a Slattstudio cap, or some stickers, all of which can be found at the Slattstudio Fourth Wall Page.
We’re currently collecting bugs and fixing them for a patch we anticipate putting out sometime in June. If you encounter any bugs in the game, feel free to join the discord where you will find a “Betrayed Alliance Book 1 Bugs” channel you can post them to (and we’ll get around to squashing them).
With the update to Book 1 completed, it’s time to turn our attention back to Book 2. There is a playable demo for Book 2 currently available, but lots of work to be done for the final product. The timeline for completion for Book 2 isn’t near enough to prognosticate with any reliability.
Thank you for playing, supporting, and enjoying our work!
Are you ready to experience the first part in a trilogy of EGA adventure? Well, it’s ready for you, too! The game is free to download and play, so get it here and have fun!
“I will never work on this again!” I said to myself.
Have you ever worked on something for so long it evolved into something else? I have! And that thing is “Betrayed Alliance”
Why am I writing something critiquing my own game series a mere 7 days before a release? Mainly I just wanted the information out there, so that people who were confused by the mess of the series, can understand why and how it got that way. And just why has “Book 1” been “released” three times?!
The Lost Demo for Betrayed Alliance
Betrayed Alliance “Book 1” starts in medias res having apparently just escaped from jail. Seems an odd place to start a game, especially since you could just as easily start the game “on the run” from the authorities. The reason for this oddity, which could have been a part of the game itself, is that once upon a time there was a demo for Betrayed Alliance called “Knight’s Quest,” where you play the character from Betrayed Alliance and you do mount a daring escape. That demo, while surely still exists somewhere, now has other plot elements that are not part of Betrayed Alliance.
Now you see what a mess I’ve really made of this whole thing!
There was never intended to be “Books” in this trilogy! It wasn’t supposed to be a trilogy at all! It was just supposed to be one big game. But, due to the fact that by 2013, I had worked on the project for almost seven years – of very sporadic and unfocused time – and completed only the first 1/3 of the game, I thought I would just finish that 1/3, call it “Book 1,” and never touch the damned thing again. After all, in that time, three large life-changes had happened:
I got a full-time job
I got married
I had just had my first child
Silly things like working truly countless hours on a game that probably no one would ever even play, and likely wouldn’t even be good, seemed like a thing of the past. Lot’s of negative self-talk in my old mindset!
Book 1 being released apart from the rest of the game limited its features, especially combat, which would play a bigger role in the entire game, but only plays a small role in the first part. Because of this, combat in Book 1 feels tacked-on and unimportant. I decided to make combat completely optional because it seemed just so unnecessary.
The release of Betrayed Alliance Book 1
Kidney stones, running 5ks, and being a dad for the first time. There was plenty on my plate already in 2013, but just before fall I made an announcement, that I would wrap development on Book 1 of Betrayed Alliance and release it to the small SCICommunity. Six months of crunching and a mad dash of bug fixes and I release on Christmas of 2013, just as a really early trailer had announced.
That was that. I released a free game to the world, but almost no one knew about it, and even less people cared! But I was proud of my little accomplishment, and there were a few people who enjoyed the game and let me know. After a while, I put together a walkthrough at the request of a few people who had gotten stuck, and after a couple of years I patched the game to fix some of the biggest bugs – one of which made the game nearly incompletable!
Six Years of Distance
Every once in a while someone would ask how Book 2 was coming for Betrayed Alliance. And I’d always reply with the same response: “Sorry, I’m not working on it anymore.”
From 2013 to 2019 I had found a new hobby, writing fiction. After I self-published a couple of young adult/middle grade stories, I set out to write something bigger and something a bit deeper. I had an idea for a pirate story featuring mystical islands with a lot more depth than a typical swashbuckling adventure. I set out to write this book year after year, each time ending in shipwreck. In the meantime, every time someone would ask about Betrayed Alliance, a new spark of excitement would ignite within me.
I also caught sight of a little indie project called The Crimson Diamond, by Julia Minamata and was blown away by the beautiful artwork she had created with the same colors and resolution I had been working with. I was greatly inspired by Julia to level up my artwork, which would lead to the creation of new backgrounds for Betrayed Alliance Book 2. In 2019, I had decided I was back on board the ol’ project.
The Attack Plan
At the outset, brimming with new project enthusiasm and stupidity, I thought I would complete both Books 2 and 3 together. After all, I completed Book 1, so I have the experience and know-how to sidestep many of the issues. This idea was short-lived, however, as the reality of the work set in.
So I formulated a new plan, one that would justify the Book division of the game. Each Book would have it’s own unique gameplay focus. Book 2 would feature a two-playable character system and Book 3 would feature a time-based day/night cycle and the ability to revisit the areas of Book 1 with new quests and things to find (in addition to a fully explorable new area of comparable size).
One major concern about the game was its lack of sound support. It was a DOS game, but used a Windows program to play music and sound. This needed to be fixed, but I wasn’t competent enough to solve it. Luckily, I knew someone who was. That’s where Brandon Blume comes into the mix. His knowledge of the hardware and sound drivers are making it possible for Betrayed Alliance to be truly DOS and truly retro in all aspects.
In addition to Brandon Blume, a second talented Canadian also found his way to help on the project. A fellow named Karl Dupéré-Richer. At first, he was eager to create some creatures and goblins for the game, many of which are featured in Book 2. But when the Kickstarter stretch goal of overhauling Book 1’s artwork and music was hit, he offered to help with the recreation of those backgrounds as well. A good 2/3 of the background artwork in Book 1 are now creations by the hand of Karl, who even learned to use SCI Companion, the program used to create the vector-based artwork necessary for these style of games.
Needless to say there is no comparison between the old artwork and Karl’s updates. It’s like when an artist takes a child’s drawing and makes something intricate and beautiful out of the basic design.
The Third Release?
Yes, it’s true, albeit unfortunate! In 2023, I had released a demo for Betrayed Alliance Book 2 eager to share with the Kickstarter backers and legendary folks who support me on Patreon the fruits of their generosity and the outcome of my work for the last few years.
Then the obvious happened. People downloaded not the demo for Book 2, but rather Book 1, naturally! And while Book 1 has a certain charm to it, at this point I was embarrassed by the artwork, most of which was done over a decade ago at that point. And the fact that there was a game-ending bug that effected a non-zero percentage of runs irked at me. It needed addressing and fast!
I had released Book 1 in 2013, did a major update in 2019, but the Kickstarter stretch goal to update the artwork and music had not been completed. I became afraid to promote the demo for Book 2 as it would lead people back to Book 1, so I decided to shift focus from Book 2 to completing the Book 1 update, which has been a lot more work than simply switching out backgrounds and music tracks!
Where Things Now Stand
Book 1 now stands ready to launch in May of 2024. The first “launch” was in 2013, and went hidden and unpublicized. It was made for a small community and it didn’t reach far beyond it. I spent a year fixing bugs and adding quality of life features and re-released it in 2020, now with a bit more reach. I say “a bit” in that I didn’t really ask any personalities/reviewers to talk about it. But there were a few people who streamed it on Twitch and a handful of YouTube videos of people playing the game.
The third release, however, feels like a whole different animal. The game is now quite beautiful and much more polished, and best of all, doesn’t have a “heap space” error that crashes the game on at least 10% of playthroughs! Yes, the game is still free and always will be. The whole thing started because when I was 20 I found a program that could make games like I loved when I was a kid. It all comes down to that creative impulse. I just wanted to do it!
So What Now?
Get the game! It’s free! Play it, share it, do whatever with it. Have some old-school fun!
If you want to support me in finishing the series, know this, I am slow! I have a fulltime job and three dependent children! But I work on the project little by little, every day. You can support me via Patreon if this is the kind of stuff you love and you are in a position to.
You can also support the project and get really cool stuff, like the Player’s Guide!
Finally, there are beautiful shirts and hoodies you can get from Fourth Wall:
In the two weeks running up to the release of Betrayed Alliance Book 1, we’re running a sale for the Player’s Guide. Get it now to ship to you in time for the release. This offer ends May 2nd.
Contents of the Manual
Short Introduction Story
This little book includes a short story introduction to the events of the game.
Illustrated Map
It also features the an illustrated map of the game area courtesy of Karl Dupéré-Richer:
Combined Hint Guide and Walkthrough
Perhaps most importantly, taking up the majority of the book is the player’s guide with a combined hint-guide and walkthrough:
With this, the player can choose to look at extra hints to solve a particular puzzle. Each background that has puzzle elements is pictured with a number of hints that escalate from general hints to more specific.
If the player chooses, they can simply flip the manual over for the walkthrough that is provided in upside-down text. This way the reader will not easily spoiler themselves on accident, but will also have all the information in an easy to find place.
Get the Game for Free
The game itself is free, but I wanted to offer something cool for those who like the physical aspect of retro games in addition to the software itself. If that’s you, we’d love your support and hope you take advantage of the limited time special sale price!
Slattstudio 