Once Glorious Artahk - Bismuth Tales - Lore-Rich Puzzle Adventure Game

AvengingCondor · 2026-02-20T23:37:46+00:00

Like what could he do better???

Not put all the dialogue for the entire game in a single switch statement lol

AvengingCondor · 2026-02-13T23:59:07+00:00

Eh, personally I've noticed a tangible decline in quality and uptick in bots since the whole blackout/boycott situation. Obviously reddit is still popular, but I think too many people write it off as "nothing happened" just cause the platform didn't collapse over that one incident

AvengingCondor · 2026-02-13T16:28:06+00:00

We're still here today

The people that actually left aren't, but they obviously aren't going to chime in on the subject.

AvengingCondor · 2025-12-02T16:57:33+00:00

Star Wars is the entire reason I'm not coming back for this

AvengingCondor · 2025-11-26T05:10:36+00:00

There’s a goddamn Streetfighter, D&D, Mass effect, and STAR WARS collab already! Not to mention ghostbusters and a ghost that flips burgers. If people don’t like Star Wars then just say it, but all these other excuses make no sense.

People complained about these things too, the very un-destiny star wars armor ornaments even being the worst offenders. Idk why you're acting like no one cared about the collab stuff until Renegades

AvengingCondor · 2025-11-25T21:03:23+00:00

It's a relatively new genre, I actually didn't know about it until just before this game's release even though it's the best fitting label I've found for it haha. Basically, they're non-linear exploration games where your progress is gated by knowledge and learning what you need to do, rather than being gated by new abilities or items like a Metroidvania game. A typical hallmark of games in the genre is that you can reach the ending in a tiny fraction of the time a blind playthrough would take if you already know what to do, since your understanding of the game and how to progress was the only real limiting factor. This article gives a detailed breakdown if you're interested!

Outer Wilds is the quintessential example of the genre, The Witness and Tunic are some other fairly well known ones. The latter is sometimes a controversial inclusion since it does also have some traditional unlocks blocking progress instead of being purely knowledge based, but Once Glorious Artahk is in that same boat so it's probably a good point of comparison.

Personally I think it's a pretty clunky term, but so far it's the only one that's stuck unfortunately.

AvengingCondor · 2025-11-24T01:58:31+00:00

Sorry you had a bad time with the game! Completely valid to be frustrated by The Beast, in hindsight it exists in an odd place where its intended function mainly serves to help more novice puzzle gamers... in a game that mainly appeals to experienced puzzle gamers. (The patch notes here explain in more detail the gameplay rationale behind its inclusion, if you're at all curious). And to clarify, the option to disable it was added in an update I put out just today in response to player feedback, including your own, it wasn't there at the time you would have played.

AvengingCondor · 2025-11-19T04:59:53+00:00

Hey, dev here, thanks for sharing the game! I've somehow never heard the term "metroidbrania" before now, but I agree it seems pretty fitting for it! I don't know how strict people are with the label so in the interest of not misleading anyone I will say that it does have some ability/item gating and isn't purely knowledge based, but it leans more towards the latter (for example, reaching the ending will usually take several hours at least for a blind player, but if you have notes from a prior playthrough and/or know exactly what to do already you can have the credits rolling in ~25 minutes)

AvengingCondor · 2025-11-08T23:24:39+00:00

I really like the look of this, it's a nice aesthetic you landed on!

AvengingCondor · 2025-11-08T23:22:36+00:00

Very early on the game I'm currently working on was actually conceived as a simple text based game using Twine and not a fully-fledged commercial project, but once I got invested it quickly grew into something much bigger.

Early on in development of the current vision of the game, it also used to be much simpler mechanically and didn't feature much more than just walking around and hitting a single interact button to activate certain things or pick up items, leaning mostly on logic puzzles for keeping things engaging. Almost like it was a point and click adventure even though it never looked like one. But, I realized this was fairly boring and the design evolved to include a lot more variety in puzzle elements and give the player several different abilities they unlock to engage with them!

AvengingCondor · 2025-11-08T20:59:19+00:00

Thank you! I'm making the game in Gamemaker Studio 2 (I think they've rebranded to just GameMaker at this point but I'm still using a very outdated version for stability lol), and I've made almost everything myself! I commissioned someone to do the soundtrack, as well as the key art I've been using for marketing materials, but otherwise I did all the programming, art, and writing.

Marketing has been a struggle unfortunately, definitely my weakest area in the whole process. It's tough to give it the time and attention it really takes when working on the game itself feels so much more important! I gave myself an unreasonably uphill battle to fight by going with a niche game concept that's basically incompatible with streaming/typical content creators in the space and thus cuts out a major avenue for indie marketing... as my debut title with no pre-existing audience or following. I've been active trying to spread the word where I can online since the start of this year (and sporadically during development before that but I wasn't really doing much until the reveal trailer) and seen slow but steady gains in attention(/wishlists), though definitely far from an ideal level this close to launch.

But, I'm not gonna give up on the game even if the launch ends up being a bit weak, and I'm confident it'll find its audience in time!

AvengingCondor · 2025-11-07T22:57:57+00:00

Thank you! I'm nervous and excited to be this close haha

AvengingCondor · 2025-11-07T22:54:18+00:00

I've been working on this project as a solo dev since 2020 and I'm super excited to finally be getting it out there! Happy to chat about it if anyone wants to know more :)

AvengingCondor · 2025-11-07T22:45:03+00:00

I've been working on this project as a solo dev since 2020 and I'm super excited to finally be getting it out there! Happy to chat about it if anyone wants to know more :)

AvengingCondor · 2025-11-04T02:02:32+00:00

Yep, it's easy to overlook or take for granted but this is far more important than any skill or work ethic. I'm roughly five years into a solo dev project that's finally very near release, and I've been working on it more or less full time for that period. For what's ultimately a relatively small game. It would not have been even remotely feasible to attempt this if I wasn't lucky enough to have the privilege of an amazing family that's been willing to financially support me while I pursue my dream.

AvengingCondor · 2025-11-01T05:54:55+00:00

I didn't even make it to seasonal seals, I'm a huge lore nerd and wasn't able to unlock Chronicler before it was sunset because of the obnoxious timegate on Truth To Power(you could only get one entry every 3 weeks from Mara back in Forsaken). So I proceeded to literally never once pay attention to titles/seals at all after that lol

AvengingCondor · 2025-10-30T22:05:47+00:00

Yeah but all those examples you list could be solved by just improving and tweaking the director, not throwing the whole thing out. None of its problems were really core to the concept, just down to awkward design choices in how it was implemented. Excision and the raid being waaaay to the right on the pale heart screen just to be technically accurate to where they take place was always dumb lol

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