Game Updates: April

Greetings, everyone!

Hey everyone, welcome back to the monthly update. This one covers everything we worked on through April, and there's a lot to get through.

🎮 Gamescom LATAM & The Demo

First things first: Lorenz and I went to Gamescom Latam, and the five days there were honestly incredible. A massive thank you to everyone who stopped by the Venn Studios booth, took a photo with the dragon, and gave us feedback on the build. I'm not exaggerating when I say a lot of bugs got squashed thanks to that feedback — having hundreds of people put hands on the game in such a short window surfaced things we'd never have caught on our own.

So sincerely: thank you for showing up and being part of it.

The Dungeon — Five Stages

The big project this month was the dungeon I teased in last month's update. We originally planned four stages, but it ended up being five (these things happen). I won't spoil too much — I want you to actually experience it, but here's the shape of it: Steam post image

Stage 1 — The Cathedral (Tutorial)

You wake up in the Lost Cathedral of Zhyun, an abandoned church now used to house memory stones. This is where you learn the basics: rolling, running, and how to ride a dragon.

Stage 2 — The Dragon Zone

This stage introduces one of DIFM's signature mechanics: dragon mounting and flight. You'll take to the skies, ride the wind currents, and navigate your way to the correct landing spot.

Stage 3 — Transition Zone

Before the real challenge kicks in, we wanted to give you a chance to actually use what you've learned. The training wheels come off here — a few more learning stones to round out the tutorial, covering attacks, defending, and swapping equipment.

Stage 4 — Where Things Get Serious

You'll meet the first NPCs, find a small village, and finally start the dungeon proper. It's not too punishing for anyone already familiar with our combat, but the demo build hands out weapons that deal reduced damage on purpose, so there's still a real challenge.

Stage 5 — The Swamp & The Boss

After the temple, you'll cross the Swamp of Bones and reach the boss: Ithlum, the Ent — the demon-guardian of the goddess Amath. He was supposed to be her guardian, but for reasons you'll uncover, he's gone hostile, attacking anyone who comes for the Sword of Amath. As the player, your job is to put him out of his misery.

Smaller Changes

A bunch of smaller stuff also landed this month:

• Checkpoints. When you hit one, you'll see an effect confirming it. We're still deciding whether they'll be bonfire-style or something else. The Gamescom demo had a lot of checkpoints because we needed people to finish in 20–25 minutes given the line length — the full game won't be that generous.

• Weapon sets. We're rebranding and redesigning a lot of weapons. The approach is closer to Skyrim — not a huge quantity of weapons, but real variety. So instead of random one-off weapons getting added, you'll start seeing proper sets: crude, elven, and more. It's cleaner for us to develop, looks better in-game, and just makes more sense than throwing in random weapons with no shared style. (You can already see the ornamented set in the game)

• Placeholder UI. A new UI is in, but it's still a placeholder — we need to build our own version on top of it. The final direction is closer to Bloodborne's UI than what I showed in the earlier Patreon posts.

• More learning stones. A lot more. The next thing on that list is a dragon-riding tutorial, since that was the main thing players struggled with at Gamescom. That's a post-demo task — for now, the priority is shipping.

NPCs Are In (Sort Of)

We now have functional NPCs in the game. They don't have AI yet, so they won't fight you and you can't fight them — but dialogue is in. I'm writing them with a Dark Souls–inspired approach to lore: hints and fragments, never the full picture.

I've placed the first six NPCs around the main map, and you can hunt them down if you go exploring. I won't say where they are. The six are:

• Miquelis

• Kael Vharun

• The Trinith Priestess

• Cornelius

• Amora

• The Wandering Bard

What's Next

Once the demo is out, we go back to the main map — polishing, and finally placing the NPCs in their proper spots in the world. That'll be the focus of the next update.

That's it for April. Thanks for reading, and thanks for sticking with us.

— Garu