Devlog #1: Introducing Curse of Resthaven

Hi, I’m Scott Christian, game director (AKA wearer of many hats) for Curse of Resthaven.

My indie studio, Hilltop, shipped our first game, Lil’ Guardsman, about two years ago and since March of last year, our team has been hunkered down… wreathed in a mysterious fog for some reason… building something very different.

Announcing Curse of Resthaven and hitting “publish” on the Steam page was a surreal rush. I’m excited to launch our first dev diary, and begin our process of sharing what’s going on behind the scenes: how the concept came together, what we’re experimenting with, and what it’s really like building a gothic horror roguelite as a tiny studio here in Toronto, Canada.

Steam post image

What is Curse of Resthaven?

At its heart, CoR is a genre-bending gothic mystery. It blends investigation and exploration with trading, light colony management, deck-building elements, and a seven-day time loop.

You play as Ambrose (that's him above), the newly appointed governor of a failing island colony on the edge of the Empire. You’re there to stabilize Resthaven, but also to uncover what happened to your niece, Amalia, who vanished a year before your arrival. To find her, you’ll need to dig into the town’s secrets, push further into the island’s wilds, and ultimately break the curse trapping you in a seven-day loop.

The world and characters came first. The mechanics followed.

Steam post imageInterrogation draws inspiration from classic adventure games like Gabriel Knight and modern greats like Disco Elysium, but we introduced a puzzle-piece grid and limited questioning to make conversations more strategic and game-y. You can’t ask everything, so you have to choose your questions wisely.

Steam post imageTrading evolved through a lot of prototyping before landing on a “haggling sim” model inspired by games like Potionomics and Recettear. It’s expressive, tense, and surprisingly personal.

Steam post imageExpeditions are where things venture off the garden path. The core loop of the whole game takes cues from games like Dredge, Cult of the Lamb, Loop Hero, and Darkest Dungeon, but instead of fishing or combat, our ‘venture out and do X’ is unique. You gather resources and companions, study the known variables of the map’s encounter cards, and choose your loadout carefully. We’re aiming for that sweet spot between strategy and luck.

And then there’s the time loop. Every seven days, the world resets, but you don’t. You carry forward knowledge, unlock skills, and choose a blessing from the goddess that grants both a buff and a debuff for the next run. Want to dominate trade? You can, but maybe the drawback is that interrogations are harder. It’s not a pure strategy game, but we are asking players to think strategically in a narrative-forward space.

There are a lot of systems rubbing up against each other, so it’s been hard to describe. But increasingly, it feels cohesive. Familiar in places, strange in others. And, hopefully, something that feels like its own thing.

Why we’re making this game

Someone teased me at an industry party: “You indie devs are lucky if you make good game and get really good at something… and then if you do, you immediately do a 180.”

Fair. After two years in the bright, comedic fantasy world of Lil’ Guardsman, I was hungry for something darker. Stranger.

I read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi, especially ones labelled ‘weird fiction’ and ‘speculative fiction’. Writers like China Miéville and Robert Jackson Bennett were big touchstones. So was Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation and his Southern Reach trilogy, with that creeping sense of the unknown pressing on and infiltrating at the edge of civilization.

Early on, we locked onto the idea of a frontier colony.

That quickly became an island

isolated, self-contained, volatile.

From there, influences started to converge

the communal unease of Twin Peaks , and the idea that beneath a polite surface is something deeply off. Even a show like Lost (the first two seasons are still solid!): a place where miraculous, terrible, and mundane things coexist.

Lil’ Guardsman was a trial by fire. We learned a ton about character, branching narrative, and emotional payoff. And we also learned (sometimes painfully) that story has to meet mechanics halfway. With Curse of Resthaven, we’re aiming for a more even balance. Trading needs to be satisfying on its own. Expeditions and upgrading town businesses need to feel ‘clicky’ without the narrative that binds it all together.

Indie games get to be niche. That’s one of our strengths. But with Resthaven, we’re trying to build something that bridges niches. Narrative players. Systems players. Strategy-curious players. And we’re building it in a way that can grow over time, even after we launch the base game.

Once you get past the disappearances, grisly murders, and unexplainable phenomena… Resthaven’s quite charming. So maybe we won’t do a 180 after this one.

Thank you to everyone who’s watched the trailer and wishlisted already. It genuinely means the world. We’ll be sharing much more in the weeks ahead.

• Scott Christian, Hilltop Studios