DI MONTHLY #10: T3H EPIC VIDJA GAMEZZZ

*holds up devkit* rawr xD

hiiiiiiiiiiiiii evry1!!!!!!111 xD *wags tail* its mors again but today im feeling SOOOO RANDOM!!!!11 i guess its cuz we r getting ready 2 reveal stuff!!!! O_O can u believe it?!?!?! lolz! i have so much cool stuff to tell u that i might just explode!!!!! BOOM!!!! (jk im ok!!) anywayz hope u like gamer newz!!!!!111 cuz i got some!!! rawr!!!

waffles!!!!!!!1!!1 sry, being random again!!!!!11!!1

Data is Beautiful

Last month, we asked for your feedback on our future direction. The results were...quite interesting! We've read through every single response, and it's given us a lot to think about.

Let me break down some of the highlights!

• Age: The vast majority of you are between 20 and 27 years old. Considering I'm 27 myself, I guess I've officially reached “unc” status for most of our community. Please remember to use a respectful tone when responding to me.
• Location: 35% of you are from the chaotic hellscape that is the United States of “Freedom”. We also have a strong showing from Canada with 9%, Brazil with 7%, and the UK with also 7%. The EU, meanwhile, collectively makes up around 15% of the responses, lower than I expected!
• Gender: Damn, this place smells like a men's locker room. About 74% of you guys are male. Women make up only 17% of responses, and non-binary folks make up the remaining 9%. The non-binary part isn't actually very surprising, since a good portion of my Bluesky followers are also transgender for...some reason. I don't know what it is about my brand of “distressed indie dev” that resonates so hard with the trans community, but hell yeah, trans rights!
• Pricing: A disturbing amount of you told us we should charge more for our games. Who are you people? Do you actually hate money? In this economy? Fine, if you REALLY insist, our next game will cost a full fat $70. Fuck you.
• Scope: We asked if you wanted to see smaller or larger games from us, and 65% of you went with the middle option. 23% of you picked larger games, while smaller games only got 5%. So I guess that “sweet spot” approach is going to be our focus going forward.
• Localization: Most of you are either native English speakers or don't care too much about localization. Only 14% of you actually wanted us to localize our games. That's a significant portion of our audience, but since we're a tiny team without much budget, so it's not something we're going to prioritize right now.

What's Next?

Since the launch of Operius DX, we've been busy laying the groundwork for what's to come. And now, all that work is paying off. We're entering a new phase where everything we've been building toward is finally coming together.

Here's our roadmap for the next few months, project by project!

The Falling Block Puzzle Game

We've called this one Cascadence DX in the past, but that name doesn't really do it justice anymore, as it has sort of transformed into its own thing. While the core gameplay is staying mostly the same, we're reworking the art style, the music, and the whole vibe of the game into something that feels a bit more...special. You'll see what I mean very soon!

We're also working on expanding the game's content. The original game was made in a week, and was already quite content-rich, but we want to do a bit more with it. I'm talking about new themes, modes, and possibly even an online multiplayer mode!

See, online multiplayer is something I've been wanting to add to the game for a long time by now, but I was always afraid of the technical challenges involved. I even told Cato about this, and he spent 10 minutes writing an essay about how it was a bad idea and how it would be way too difficult for us (me) to implement.

The thing is… I actually told him about it after I had already implemented it. I knew very well that he'd try to convince me otherwise, so I had to try it before he could try to discourage me.

Behold: Fully functional online play with PC-to-Switch crossplay, with functional matchmaking and all. And it only took me a day! I am simply built different.

That said, I cannot actually promise that it'll make it into the final release. There are a lot of additional factors to consider with online multiplayer, and we'd be here all day if I tried to list them all.

As for when the game is going to come out, it's this year. Probably this fall. We're currently treating this project as more of an appetizer for the main course, so it all depends on how much time we can spare for it.

The 3D Precision Platformer

This is it, Luigi. This is our main project, our primary focus, and the overwhelming winner of the “What are you most hyped for?” question in our feedback survey form.

See, the scariest part of game development has always been the reveal. That moment when you finally show your work to the world and wait for the reactions. Will people care? Will it resonate with them? Or will it fade into obscurity? How will it stack up against all the amazing games our peers have been making? This is something I've been thinking about a lot, so I want to get this right.

Before you guys start having huge expectations, no, this reveal isn't going to be anything massive. It's just an engine test, with a character controller jumping around in a map with some obstacles. Not a full-on trailer with store pages like you'd expect.

Our plan is to document the entire development process, with regular devlogs, all the way up to a demo release later this year. And we want to give you guys the best first impression possible. Yes, it's an ambitious plan, but this is the best idea we've got with a marketing budget of zero, so please bear with us.

Radium

And then there's Radium, our custom game engine, designed for that crunchy, low-poly, 90s/00s aesthetic. Cato has spent years making it a masterpiece of technical elegance (this might be a slight exaggeration).

Our plans for Radium in 2026 are that...we will just continue working on it! Honestly, most of the basic parts of it are done anyway, so really, we will be just fine-tuning it as we keep working on our 3D platformer.

Really, the only major missing piece with it was the Switch support. But just a few days ago, I decided to spend two whole days, and ported the entire thing over. And you know what? It works flawlessly.

Now, don't get me wrong, this was no easy feat. Radium is already an incredibly complex engine, and a significant chunk of my time was spent wrangling Cato's “creative” interpretations of the C++ standard that flat-out refused to compile on anything outside MSVC. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. What came after involved so many platform-specific hurdles that I'm probably not even allowed to discuss them. Ugh.

But eventually, I got it working! The game now runs on the Switch at a rock-solid 60FPS, with no visible issues whatsoever. I'm genuinely amazed by how well the port turned out, and I couldn't be happier with the result.

So, if any of you are looking for a porting engineer, hit me up! My rates are reasonable and my methods are questionable. :D

The Forums

Don't worry about it. It's fine. Everything is fine. Stop asking about it. Shut up.

Procrustes

Yep, this thing is still alive and kicking too! It really turned out to be an invaluable tool for us, so I'm going to finish it up with an update that addresses all remaining issues, and even adds some new features. Expect that to drop within this month!

teh end xDDDD

And that's all we've got planned right now. It's hard operating in an industry that almost feels designed to keep us out, but we're doing our best to push through.

Next month, if everything goes according to this plan, we'll have some REALLY exciting stuff to show you guys. Stay tuned, and as always, never stop the grind!

Distant Illusions out!

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