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!
Last Update I mentioned that I was moving to a new stage of development with a goal to Alpha by the end of the year. I put pencil to paper and mapped out the work and it looks feasible (at least on paper!)
February was a busy month in my life and didn’t have a particular goal. During that time I was working on some miscellaneous things, like a vendor and some bracer upgrades for our hero:
The goal for March was to get a certain puzzle area up and running. Here are a few screenshots of this new area:
Puzzle elements are being worked on as we speak and things are coming along (roughly) on schedule.
As we move into April, I’ll be working on a new area with a different aesthetic than the greens of the Verlorn forest, which will be a nice change of pace (and scenery), and May will give me a chance to work on some areas associated with the General (as Leah’s been getting a lot of development attention so far).
I’m feeling quite a lot of enthusiasm for 2025 and the game reaching a new milestone. While I know that this feeling doesn’t last and there is a lot of nose-to-the-grindstone work on the game, I’m gonna ride that wave for as long as I can!
Support
If you like what I’m working on and would like to help, you can support by buying the awesome Game Night shirt or hoodie, perfect for Spring!
You can also support on patreon and if you’re in the $3 tier or higher, you’ll get a new monthly comic. I’m starting a new continuing series where classic Sierra characters will be going on a hunt for a magical feather.
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!
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!
Adventure gamers love point-and-click, but I do not.
I know it’s a minority opinion, but when command-typing was phased out of the adventure game genre, I fell off with them. With the type-parser, I felt like I had infinite possibilities always at my fingertips, whereas point-and-click felt more streamlined and controlled, like I was on rails. If point-and-click was a fun amusement park ride, the type-parser felt like I was let loose in the whole park itself.
Type: “Listen”Type: “Smell”
Handed-down versus Discovered
I admit the truth, however, type-parsers are not infinite, not even close. Oftentimes, they don’t even allow as many options as point-and-click! Point-and-click allows you to touch, talk to, look at, and use any item on any hotspot! And yet, it still feels like it was something handed to you, not something you discovered.
Nothing illustrates this lack of discovery as well as character-to-character dialogue. In point-and-click games, dialogue is almost always clicking down the branches of a dialogue tree. Everything is predetermined, packaged up nicely and neatly for you. Here’s all your hints, story, and exposition gift-wrapped for you, you’re very welcome!
The type parser, on the other hand, puts the player in an active role. They must determine which rabbit holes in the dialog to chase down. They get to play a bit of a detective game just discovering which topics to ask about. Speaking for myself, this small game-within-a-game keeps my attention so much more than clicking down the topics. This also allows the developer to drop extra little nuggets for intrepid players to discover that would otherwise bog down a dialogue tree with needless extras. The parser allows it, because the only ones who will find it, are those who are looking for it.
The Problem with Text-Parsers
That’s all well and good, you might say, but what about the big problem with type parsers that you’re clearly tiptoeing around?
Yes, I know, it is frustrating to type four or five different renditions of the same command only to get, “You can’t do that.” With point-and-click, you just grab the item and click it on the hotspot and, boom, puzzle solved! With the parser you type, “use item,” only to get, “how would you like to use that,” and a litany of reasonable commands that for no good reason don’t work at all.
We’ve all been there, myself no exception, and yes, it is frustrating to have to track down that exact right verb and noun combination. I grant that that is a proper problem with the type parser system. But I do not grant that it is inherent to the type parser and that playtesting and correct design can do a lot to fix that issue.
Oops, I Solved It!
I would also argue that point-and-click’s take item and press it on hotspot can also really streamline a puzzle in a way that removes the player’s delight in discovering a solution. How many times have you clicked an item on a hotspot only for the ensuing animation to solve the puzzle in a way you hadn’t even imagined yet. There is no “how would you like to use that” prompt possible. Clearly, there is no perfect system.
Superiority of Point-and-Click
At this point you’re likely to find yourself disagreeing with me and mounting multiple potential arguments in favor of the point-and-click formula. Don’t worry, you are almost certainly in the right, or at least in the majority. I am only describing why I personally lost a lot of interest in adventure games in the leap from the type-parser to the point-and-click era, and era that persists to this very day! There clearly must be a good reason for it, I sadly can only say, that it just doesn’t resonate with me.
In my final analysis it comes down to the feeling of discovery, which I feel the type parser achieves better than point-and-click.
I’d love to know your thoughts on this issue. Let me know what you think below!
Slattstudio 