Development Diary: December 2025

Hello Reclaimers,

This month we’ve been focused on stabilizing and supporting the playtest, and getting ongoing projects in a good spot for when we take off for the holidays.

Here in December, as The Holiday Season descends upon us and the new year knocks on the door, you can’t help but get a little nostalgic. I can’t, at least. So for this month's dev diary we’re gonna take a little spelunk down memory cave, and look back at where we’ve come from with Rogue Core.

A good year for Rogue Core

This year was really important for Rogue Core. It’s felt like the year where the game has really come into its own, like we’ve found what we’ve been looking for.

One tricky part of game development is working through a long period where the game you’ve got doesn’t square up with the game you’re imagining in your head. You have this awesome vision, you’re excited about it, but the build you’re currently playing sort of sucks. It’s a feeling of unmet potential, and that can be pretty frustrating. You’ve probably written an essay for school before. It’s very similar to the feeling you get when you read through your first draft and think “okay, I got some good ideas in here, but man, this needs a lot of work”.

But over time, you go back and tweak the clunky parts and it starts to shine. You polish it up until it reflects the potential you’ve been hoping for. The fog lifts and sunlight breaks through, restoring confidence that it was, in fact, a good idea to make this game.

Some time earlier this year it felt like we really rounded that corner for good, and things finally clicked into place. In past years there were moments where it felt like we were lost in the woods. Now we’ve found the trail again, and we’re covering a lot of ground.

Especially the past couple of months, I’ve noticed our team here is getting more confident and enthusiastic about what we’ve got. It’s been great to get playtesters’ feedback too, both the good and the bad. All of it is useful. The Closed Alpha was something of an icebreaker for us, a baby step in putting the game out into the world and hearing what people think.

A year ago, the thought of launching Rogue Core would mostly just make us nervous. These days, it’s got us excited. And that’s a good place to be.

Concepts and sketches from 2025

I went back through our old files and dug up some work in progress stuff from earlier this year (and before that too). All this stuff is outdated concept art, so don't take it as any indication of what we're working on now. Just figured it’d be a fun way to round out the year. Hope you like it!

The RV-09 Ramrod

Here are a couple screengrabs of early blockouts of the Ramrod, before many textures or terminals or anything got put in. This was just to get an idea of how the space could be. This prototype is a lot closer to the Space Rig layout of DRG, as we naturally used that as a jumping-off point. It’s evolved a good bit since then.

What should Core Spawn look like?

Some of these sketches might be from before 2025, actually. But it was from when we were trying to figure out the Core Spawn’s look – what features, traits, color palettes might define them as a somewhat unified family of critters. I forgot why someone put a fish head on the Edgestalker but I thought it was funny and maybe you will too.

Back in March 2024 I wrote about the very early design process for the Core Spawn. You can read that here if you like. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2605790/view/5921742839597128717?l=english

End screen experimentations

The screenshot below from early 2025 was when we were trying to piece together Rogue Core’s UI, namely how the end-of-mission screen would look. You can see we didn’t have any Reclaimer costumes done here, so we just used DRG cosmetics on the characters.

Ultimately we went with a horizontal layout, as it gives us a lot more space to display each player’s statistics and run data. Also, more room for cool animations.

Hammer Caster first drafts

These draft sketches of the Hammer Caster show some early experimentation with how we might configure the gun. Ultimately we went with placing the magazine in front of the trigger (and visible in first person), because it’s cool to see the big ‘ol shells getting loaded in.

Want to read more about guns and concept art? Check below: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2605790/view/6563491834170706504

Early character concepts

Okay before we get into this one: The ‘Gorgon’ class you see below got cut because it wasn’t fun to play. No, we’re not planning on bringing it back. I repeat: No Gorgon in Rogue Core. Please do not run off and tell everyone “Gorgon in Rogue Core” because it’s not happening!

Anyway. These are some preliminary sketches, in 2D and 3D, at how the first five Reclaimers might look. We wanted to make them visually distinct, both from one another as well as the DRG miners, but still have some sort of unified Reclaimer feel.

Want more on creating “the Reclaimer look”? Got an article on that for you: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2605790/view/534345939582715197?l=english

A big thanks + much love to everybody

The team here at GSG is heading off for the holidays, so it’ll be pretty quiet from our end for the next few weeks. But before we sign off, I just wanted to say thanks on behalf of all of us.

Thank you for being interested in Rogue Core, and for sharing so much of your excitement and encouragement with us. Thanks for letting us know what you think, even if it’s stuff you don’t like. Thanks for your patience, thanks for watching trailers and telling your friends about the game, thanks for being hyped and hyping us up, thanks for reading this, thanks for supporting us in making games like this.

It means the world to us that we’re able to make a living making games. And that only happens because of people like you. So for one last good time, a big big big thanks from us to you.

Hoping you have a cozy restful holiday, wherever you are, and sending you loads of warmth and gratitude from the team over here. We’re glad you’re here, and we’re excited for what’s around the corner. 2026 is gonna be a fun one.

Rock and Stone, Reclaimer. See you next year. ːlunar2019piginablanketː

With love, -The Ghost Ship Crew