Devlog #8: The inverse combat creation – May 14th, 2026

Hi, Gamers!

RolldBox Games development team Today with Ferran, one of our Co-Founders, as well as the Game Designer and Creative Director of the studio at RolldBox Games 👋

We’ve been putting in some intense weeks of work to ensure Alex & Arty is as intuitive and self-explanatory as possible. We can assure you this is something we constantly focus on and care deeply about across all phases of development—but especially now in the final stretch, as our main goal is to deliver the absolute best user experience for you.

We’re keeping the exact details of this under wraps for now, but we wanted to let you know that we are working on it very hard!

Inside the Development Process

In our last devlog, we talked a bit about what 'Reverse Combat' means to us and how we implement it through the ionizer in Alex & Arty.

We’ve spent a long time figuring out how to create a shooter-like experience, but with a purely positive outcome. There have been countless iterations where we experimented with all sorts of approaches to finally reach the version we can all play today.

For the core combat concept, we drew inspiration from classics like Ratchet & Clank and Jak and Daxter. However, instead of traditional weapons and ammo, we decided to base our approach entirely on 'light'. This allowed us to integrate multiple 'shooting' styles, giving players a very wide range of ways to approach combat and handle any given situation.

The hardest part was finding the absolute sweet spot for the combat—making sure it had that action-adventure feel we all love, while preserving the uplifting, positive sensation of visually transforming the world once a battle is over.

User experience is key, which is why we’ve run a ton of playtests to gauge how it feels and figure out what we could improve. We are sure there's still room to grow. We'll let you share your thoughts and feelings on it!

Sneak Peek of Upcoming Content

Developing the AI that drives the creatures in the world of Alex & Arty has been a major priority for us. Finding the right balance to make the world feel alive and constantly in motion has been a continuous focus throughout development.

Since Gladness can eventually become crowded with a lot of creatures, the real challenge has been properly tuning and managing the number of AIs running simultaneously. We had to carefully control both the amount of AI agents and the types of actions they execute to ensure that bringing this world to life doesn't negatively impact the game's performance

More to share

Did you know you can pet the creatures in Gladness? 🐾 Cleanse them from the pollution to unlock their unique reactions! Let us know which one ends up being your favorite. Each one has been lovingly crafted to show off the gentle nature of Gladness!

See you in the next Devlog with more and better!

Don’t forget to join our Discord server. Let us know what you’d like us to talk about next from there!

See you in Gladness!