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Steam News8 January 20265mo ago

Planning for 2026!

Hello everyone! I wanted to pass by to let you know what we have been doing in the first days of 2026: PLANNING!

Full notes

Full Kalyskah update

Read the full published notes in a cleaner layout. The original post stays linked below.

Repeated intro

Hello everyone!

What changed

1 fix7 additions3 changes0 removals
  • Gameplay
  • UI and audio
changedWe have gone through our project documents, and we are writing an extensive timeline of what our year will look like. In many areas, with a Plan A and a Plan B, plus a few other possible improvements.
changedNPC and World Manager: How we handle the spawn and despawn of actors in the open world, both in cutscenes and in their general behaviour and daily schedule.
addedQuest and Cutscenes: The time for pausing the progress of the story to refactor the game is over. We had a difficult year back in 2024 and a hellish start in 2025, but by the end of the year we managed to get things on track again and now we have no intention to stop. You can expect us to continue introducing new content and lore until it's time for the Early Access! A couple of months ago, it was the Forgotten Smith quest; last month, it was the negotiation system (which still needs to be reviewed before we release it on Steam); and now, as I mentioned before, we are fully focused on completing the prologue main story. With small exceptions such as Nemesis’ quest that you voted for.
addedLevel Design: This is the first time where we have to talk about Plan A and Plan B. Right now, we cannot afford to have a dedicated level designer working every month for us. We did have Upsurge Studio to boost our game and they did that marvellous Goblin Dungeon, but since then we have had to allocate the budget to programming and it was worth it. Our game settings are now much more consistent. We are adding cheat codes and working on combat, and we will soon start the world and NPC manager. So our Plan A is that, in case our budget does not increase, our lead programmer, who is also an artist, will bounce back and forth when needed to add the minimum necessary for the quest areas to be presentable, but not deep enough to take them out of their main focus for too long. Then our Plan B is, in case our budget increases, which I am optimistic about considering that we have had a good start to the year thanks to all the new supporters our project have been gathering, we would hire someone new to improve the level design so the lead programmer can solely focus on improving the World Manager.
addedCombat Rework: This plan would not change too much, since the programmer working on this is the same person we have recently hired to help us. But we could potentially get an animator to help him and thus either introduce more weapons or improve the fighting styles of the game. Maybe then Laver will finally be able to teach new fighting techniques, as the placeholder dialogue mentions!
changedNPC and World Manager: The lead programmer is the person working on this. If we expand the team so he does not need to tweak the level design, it is possible that this manager would get to a point where the NPC schedules have more depth before the middle of the year.

Kalyskah changes

changedWe have gone through our project documents, and we are writing an extensive timeline of what our year will look like. In many areas, with a Plan A and a Plan B, plus a few other possible improvements.
changedNPC and World Manager: How we handle the spawn and despawn of actors in the open world, both in cutscenes and in their general behaviour and daily schedule.
addedQuest and Cutscenes: The time for pausing the progress of the story to refactor the game is over. We had a difficult year back in 2024 and a hellish start in 2025, but by the end of the year we managed to get things on track again and now we have no intention to stop. You can expect us to continue introducing new content and lore until it's time for the Early Access! A couple of months ago, it was the Forgotten Smith quest; last month, it was the negotiation system (which still needs to be reviewed before we release it on Steam); and now, as I mentioned before, we are fully focused on completing the prologue main story. With small exceptions such as Nemesis’ quest that you voted for.
addedLevel Design: This is the first time where we have to talk about Plan A and Plan B. Right now, we cannot afford to have a dedicated level designer working every month for us. We did have Upsurge Studio to boost our game and they did that marvellous Goblin Dungeon, but since then we have had to allocate the budget to programming and it was worth it. Our game settings are now much more consistent. We are adding cheat codes and working on combat, and we will soon start the world and NPC manager. So our Plan A is that, in case our budget does not increase, our lead programmer, who is also an artist, will bounce back and forth when needed to add the minimum necessary for the quest areas to be presentable, but not deep enough to take them out of their main focus for too long. Then our Plan B is, in case our budget increases, which I am optimistic about considering that we have had a good start to the year thanks to all the new supporters our project have been gathering, we would hire someone new to improve the level design so the lead programmer can solely focus on improving the World Manager.
addedCombat Rework: This plan would not change too much, since the programmer working on this is the same person we have recently hired to help us. But we could potentially get an animator to help him and thus either introduce more weapons or improve the fighting styles of the game. Maybe then Laver will finally be able to teach new fighting techniques, as the placeholder dialogue mentions!

I wanted to pass by to let you know what we have been doing in the first days of 2026: PLANNING!

We have gone through our project documents, and we are writing an extensive timeline of what our year will look like. In many areas, with a Plan A and a Plan B, plus a few other possible improvements.

The general idea is that we are splitting the game development into 5 main “trees”:

  • Combat Rework: What people have asked us for the most. Improving the general style of how the game plays, and how coherently Kalyskah behaves. Starting by making an MVP (Minimal Viable Product) and then reintroducing the weapons.

  • NPC and World Manager: How we handle the spawn and despawn of actors in the open world, both in cutscenes and in their general behaviour and daily schedule.

  • Quest and CutscenesThe time for pausing the progress of the story to refactor the game is over. We had a difficult year back in 2024 and a hellish start in 2025, but by the end of the year we managed to get things on track again and now we have no intention to stop. You can expect us to continue introducing new content and lore until it's time for the Early Access! A couple of months ago, it was the Forgotten Smith quest; last month, it was the negotiation system (which still needs to be reviewed before we release it on Steam); and now, as I mentioned before, we are fully focused on completing the prologue main story. With small exceptions such as Nemesis’ quest that you voted for.
  • Level DesignThis is the first time where we have to talk about Plan A and Plan B. Right now, we cannot afford to have a dedicated level designer working every month for us. We did have Upsurge Studio to boost our game and they did that marvellous Goblin Dungeon, but since then we have had to allocate the budget to programming and it was worth it. Our game settings are now much more consistent. We are adding cheat codes and working on combat, and we will soon start the world and NPC manager. So our Plan A is that, in case our budget does not increase, our lead programmer, who is also an artist, will bounce back and forth when needed to add the minimum necessary for the quest areas to be presentable, but not deep enough to take them out of their main focus for too long. Then our Plan B is, in case our budget increases, which I am optimistic about considering that we have had a good start to the year thanks to all the new supporters our project have been gathering, we would hire someone new to improve the level design so the lead programmer can solely focus on improving the World Manager.

  • Marketing: We have been holding back in this area, and it is visible if you see our Instagram and Facebook page. But as we approach the Early Access release, and as we get the game to a point where things will be more stable and polished, we will also invest more on this. The goal is to increase awareness of our project and, ideally, encourage more people to join us on this journey.

As I started to talk about for Level design, here comes the remaining part of the Plan B, which is, in case our budget increases as the year goes by:

  • Combat ReworkThis plan would not change too much, since the programmer working on this is the same person we have recently hired to help us. But we could potentially get an animator to help him and thus either introduce more weapons or improve the fighting styles of the game. Maybe then Laver will finally be able to teach new fighting techniques, as the placeholder dialogue mentions!

  • NPC and World Manager: The lead programmer is the person working on this. If we expand the team so he does not need to tweak the level design, it is possible that this manager would get to a point where the NPC schedules have more depth before the middle of the year.

  • Level Design: As mentioned above, having someone dedicated to this will not only help us finish the prologue quickly, but also allow us to bring back the legacy content much earlier than we plan to do it later this year, since at the moment the plan is to start it roughly around November.

  • Marketing: Stays the same, but more budget to inject into marketing means more eyes on our game, which directly affects all the other areas.

  • Character ArtA higher budget would allow us to have someone in house to create new clothes, hairstyles, and things of the sort, without us needing to do what we currently do, which is hiring freelancers whenever we have some budget to spare. This will help us greatly to, once the legacy content is back, ensure that not only the world, but also people from before and after the time skip, look different.
  • AudioRight now we have Archie to make new music for us and he is amazing. But I believe we can all agree that the experience while moving around in the world, or during cutscenes, could use some improvement. So our Plan B includes getting someone dedicated to enhancing the audio experience in the game as a whole, not just soundtracks.
  • QA and PolishAt the moment, this has been hard to handle, as many times we rely on player feedback to gather what is needed for a hotfix. If we are able to expand our team, we could get someone in-house to handle testing the game thoroughly and mitigate any issues that go to the main release. Which would be much better for everyone!

As for the other areas, such as animations, voice acting, writing (side quests), etc, they are really important, and we will always find a way to introduce more to the game. But if last year our goal was to get out of the loop of refactoring the game to Unreal Engine 5 and reintroducing new content, this year we want to focus on polishing the game so your experience is as flawless as we can deliver.

It will be a monumental load of work in 2026, but I am extremely optimistic because this year every release will not only have new things to see, but it should also transition into playing much better than the previous one.

I hope you have a great day and let’s gooooOooooooOOoo!!!

Source

Steam News / 8 January 2026

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