February 2026 update

Hi everyone,

It’s been a while since the last update. So here’s a proper one.

First of all, we’ve got a new team member on board.

The onboarding process has been full of hard mode challenges, but his stats are rising fast!

Human side covered. Back to the dystopia.

I finally sat down to untangle the chaotic animation graph that started as an experiment and eventually turned into a monster.

It’s now split into sub-state machines and layers, allowing smoother combinations of animation states. Not perfect yet, but much cleaner, and it made adding new attack types, reactions and death animations far easier.

Some levels needed subtle height variation, which meant revisiting core systems like the tile grid and reachable area contour generation in turn-based combat.

I also ran experiments with perspective vs pure isometric/orthographic cameras. Turns out some materials and shaders really don’t behave without perspective correction. I’ll see if it makes sense to keep both camera options switchable in the settings, but most likely perspective will become the default.

Combat received improvements too: better fight groups and clearer line of sight from NPCs actively involved in battle.

A basic looting system is now in place.

A broken bottle from a trash pile can now sharpen your arguments.

The first iteration of the regional map integration is complete.

Adaptive music integration has begun using FMOD, see it on Youtube (don’t read too much into the characters or dialogue; they are mainly placeholders, taken from test data and a very old version of the game). The soundtrack dynamically intensifies when combat begins. The adaptive track was composed by Madiax.

Another cool news is that Crux Diaries was accepted into #TurnBasedThursdayFest 2026!

See you soon and stay safe out there!