Update log
Full Servant of the Lake update
The complete published notes, normalized for clean reading and source attribution.
Extracted changes
- Gameplay
- UI and audio
- Events
The days are growing longer, the sun is slowly defrosting this long winter, and we are very excited to return with a fresh devlog for Servant of the Lake #SotLDevlog. And what better way to start than with a brief history of the project?! Let’s dive into some behind-the-scenes and share more about where we are now at the start of Spring!
Going back to our Roots We’ve always known we wanted to return to the Vanderboom house with a new game. The two brothers Aldous and William are an important part of the creation of the elixir, but their roles were never fully fleshed out (remember the secret achievements level in Roots?). Besides the two brothers, there was another mysterious character tied to the family that had yet to make an appearance in our games: their little sister Alexandra! After the release of Underground Blossom we finally had time to explore a prequel to Rusty Lake: Roots and the first step was to revisit the house and its background story. Several iterations and a first prototype later, we found the right angle to approach the story from the perspective of a new servant arriving at the house for the first time.
A very important step of the initial creation process was to brainstorm with Johan Scherft about the idea and reexamine his original paintings. He was very excited to create new visuals of the house, yard, surrounding vistas and of course the sibling portraits which will be an important part of the game as well (More on the game’s art in an upcoming #SotLDevlog)!
With Johan’s first paintings ready and creating a first prototype based around a full day working as a servant in the Vanderboom house, it was time to announce the title. And we did this in a special way; a hidden trailer among the achievements of our 10-year anniversary game, The Mr. Rabbit Magic Show, for our most dedicated fans to find!
After the whirlwind of our 10-year celebrations, we shifted our full focus to developing Servant of the Lake and putting together a first playable demo. Gamescom 2025 & World Premieres presented by Solid Snake and Lady D
We had the incredible opportunity to showcase it at the Indie Arena Booth during Gamescom in August - a perfect milestone to work towards. This opportunity got even better when the brilliant Atelier Clement sourced an actual vintage carriage to decorate our booth with. Everyone who came by our booth was able to step inside the carriage and play the demo, while our voice actor, Mike Wijdenbosch, was cosplaying the in-game coachman, welcoming everyone aboard. This carriage design can also be seen in the demo and will be part of the full version of Servant of the Lake!
While the news of Servant of the Lake was quietly announced inside our anniversary game, The Mr Rabbit Magic Show, the official, worldwide announcement came during the Gamescom Future Games Show! This marks the first time we’ve announced a game during such a huge gaming event! Which, of course, meant we needed to put in some work into a nice trailer! Luckily, we had the amazing Bob Rafferty to create a nice presentation and the talented Mike to add some extra voice lines to our favourite coachman! Hence we were able to put together the official Servant of the Lake announcement trailer:
[dynamiclink href="https://www.youtube.com/live/ZVRK-bSdkjo?si=ppoYiJYKpWuHuB3g&t=2289"]
It’s still surreal to know our game got announced to the world by David Hayter, aka Solid Snake / Big Boss, and Maggie Robertson,
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