Sealing the Solitomb - project update

It's been a long prototyping process, filled with endless iteration, numerous redesigns and long nights struggling with the scope, the structure and the overarching story of the game. My notebook is littered with notes, half-baked sketches and angry scrawls, and if you imagined my office during that time as the stereotypical writer's room filled to the brim with balls of crumpled-up paper, you wouldn't be far off. In my darkest moments, I wasn't even sure I could pull the project off.

But that's all behind me now. The iterations have been iterated, the designs re-re-redesigned, the world imagined and reimagined, the code rewritten again and again. The game is now 95% prototyped, fully functional, and it got to be so fun that I keep accidentally playing it instead of working on it. The remaining work is more a matter of time and effort, not grappling with the spectre of failure at night. Working on it is really exciting for all of us, and I can finally share some of that excitement with all of you.

I'm saying us because there is now a team helping with me on the project, helping me get that quality I mentioned. Edu Rovira Casanova is now in charge of the 2D graphics, Chris Donnelly returns to do music and sound design, and yours truly, Jakub Wasilewski, is still here to do... well, everything else!

What you see above are two locales that you get to visit in the new version of the game: The Weyrwood and The Temple of the Five Folds. Every location comes with its own suite of elite monsters and an appropriately themed demon to serve as the final challenge - you can see Weyrwood's overlord below in all his work-in-progress glory.

There is a lot more to the game that's still waiting for that nice coat of paint: we haven't even talked about the demon-hunting guild, the Master Seal that you get to complete over many runs, the unlockable campaign map or the cast of not-entirely-willing adventurers that you get to use as proxies in exploring the world. I'll share all that with you as we replace my development sketches with real artwork.

This will all take some time still - so you'll have to let us cook for a little longer! I'm targeting end of this year for some way to get the game into your hands - but whether that's going to be a full release, an early access one or some form of a closed beta, I can't tell you just yet.

If you're interested in seeing updates on that and other Solitomb-related topics, follow the project here on Steam. I'll strive to post updates regularly from now on - the dev work itself takes 120% of my time these days, but I'm happy to push that to 130% to share some of the day-to-day excitement with all of you :)

Thanks for reading and see you in the dungeons!