Devlog #4: Recent Curse of Resthaven Redesigns

Hi everyone, Scott here.

Earlier this week, after our new trailer dropped (check it out below if you haven't already!), our publisher Digital Bandidos asked if I wanted to take the old one down. A lot has changed since we first revealed Curse of Resthaven back in February.

I said no.

One of my favourite things on a Steam page is watching a game evolve publicly. If a project has multiple trailers, I’ll usually watch all of them. Together, they can tell a fascinating behind-the-scenes story of development.

Initial trailers are famously held together with thumbtacks and Elmer’s glue (the Firewatch reveal trailer is a classic example), and ours wasn’t much different. All of our core systems were playable, but we had to carefully cut around a lot of rough, unfinished assets. In that first trailer, you’re basically seeing the 10% of the game that wasn’t still in sketch form.

Four more months of production later and we have the luxury of more polished assets… though, to be honest, we’re still cutting around a few “construction zones.”

In the time between trailers, we also started playtesting.

I’m particularly proud of the team for getting a build into players’ hands while it was still profoundly janky. My natural instinct is to polish forever, show only the shiniest version, and then realize it’s too late to act on meaningful feedback. NOT TODAY, SATAN! We got a build out early, and the feedback has been invaluable.

This dev diary is a look at some of the biggest redesigns that came out of that process. Like a detective – or Governor Ambrose, Curse of Resthaven ’s playable protagonist – we’ll compare shots from both trailers and investigate the curious case of the Spring 2026 redesigns.

Exhibit A: Pick A Card, Any Card

One of the biggest challenges in Curse of Resthaven is getting players up and running. Once you understand how trading feeds expeditions, how expeditions feed the investigation, and how everything connects, the core loop flows naturally. Getting players to that point, however, is another story.

One source of friction was cards.

Curse of Resthaven has deckbuilder DNA, but it isn’t really a deckbuilder. We use a card-based visual language but in Version 1 of the game (and the first trailer), we weren’t using it consistently.

Steam post image Above: Trailer 1 (Old) Haggling Screen / Trailer 2 (New) Haggling Screen

As you can see in the screenshots between trailers, resources appeared as icons during trading and in your inventory. But the moment you entered an expedition, those same resources became cards. Players had to learn that a crate in the world represented a resource, that an icon represented it during trading, and that a card represented the exact same thing during expeditions.

Steam post image Above: Trailer 1 (Old) Stocking Screen / Trailer 2 (New) Stocking Screen

Players got it. Gamers are smart. But every translation between visual languages added friction, and we suspect it was one reason expeditions took longer to ‘click.’

So we made a decision: commit fully to cards.

We took the card UI and pushed it backward through the rest of the mechanics. I’ll admit, seeing cards appear in the trading and haggling screens initially felt a little strange because I’d gotten so used to something else. But the player testing results were immediate. Things that previously needed explanation felt more intuitive. By the time players embarked on an expedition, it made sense that the resource card they bought from a merchant captain was the same thing they were now carrying into the field.

Sometimes the best redesigns aren’t about adding something new, they’re about simplifying and consistently using what you’ve already got.

Exhibit B: Missing Evidence (Gameplay Footage)

There are several ways this second trailer better surfaces the core gameplay loop compared to the first. Exhibit B doesn’t have “before” shots for everything, because numerous elements were still too rough to show at the time.

Steam post image Above: Resthaven Island Map

A key addition is the island map. In the spirit of the redesigns above, it uses the same card-based language to represent expeditions beyond the safety of the walls. What you see on each expedition card isn’t just decoration, it’s a readable summary of what you know (and don’t yet know) about an expedition’s solution, expressed through icons and partial information.

We also show the town vender screen this time, which feeds into trading with ships as well as expeditions. Including this screen in the trailer helps make the gameloop more legible at a glance: you obtain resources, those resources become what you carry, and what you carry determines what you can attempt out on the island.

Steam post image Above: Shop Screen - Food Market

Compared to Trailer 1, which had some gameplay but less connective tissue, Trailer 2 does a much better job of showing how all the systems actually talk to each other.

In Conclusion: I Regret This Titling Convention

As I said up top, versioning always feels a bit like archaeology in hindsight, and I’m glad both Trailer 1 and Trailer 2 can serve as snapshots of where we were, and what we were wrestling with, at different points in development.

The next milestone is a big one: a demo. Coming soon. Very soon.

And like everything else, it’ll just be another moment in time. A more playable one, sure, and an exciting one because it finally brings more players into the loop. We’ll get to see what clicks, what doesn’t, what people bounce off, what they immediately latch onto. All of it is useful. All of it is welcome (even the painful bits).

We’re excited to have the conversation. Braced for it, anyway.

And after that, I’ll probably end up writing another one of these, potentially cross-referencing screen names to design changes in the next trailer or full release: “Wyld_Syren_47 was the brilliant mind behind giving the Governor a jetpack.”

We can’t wait. For the jetpack, I mean.

Thanks for reading.

• Scott, Game Director