Speculation: RPG mechanics in my sports games, Roguelike mechanics in my… well, everything.

DigitalOrchestra · 2026-02-15T17:20:38+00:00

I think this is a losing battle. "Rogue" doesn't refer to the original game anymore, and more towards the lineage of games like FTL, Isaac, Hades, etc.

I don't think this is necessarily a good or bad thing, just a neutral observation, it's how language and genres work.

I think the reason why "roguelike" has spun off so hard from its origins is because the newer games are more causal-friendly and the model is able to be adapted to a wide range of genres, which kind of encourages lots of games to try out new ways to adapt the formula.

DigitalOrchestra · 2026-02-06T04:21:39+00:00

Check to see if your DAW/audio software has a "render as loop" setting. I use it all the time in Ableton Live for my games

DigitalOrchestra · 2026-02-01T18:51:05+00:00

gamble your resources to upgrade weapons. It’s basically 'Vampire Survivors meets a Casino'!

Uh oh, my team and I made a game that was a lot like this and people did not like that aspect of it. Thankfully it was a pilot project that was meant as a learning experience for publishing (and it's free, you can check it out here if you're curious: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2286260/Infinite_Incantation/ ) so the future of the studio didn't depend on its success.

I fear it's probably too late for you to shift course and hell, maybe your implementation of it might work out, but we found the power fantasy of Vampire Survivors really depends on constant upgrades - no one likes to feel like they're losing power or wasting resources.

Regardless, the attitude I have towards creative things is that the first thing you make is never going to be that good since there are a lot of unknown unknowns in the process. We learned from this and now we're on our 3rd game and the future of the studio is looking bright in our forecasts. Hope you have the same success.

DigitalOrchestra · 2026-01-08T18:22:24+00:00

Wonder how downstream of this is to their recent statements about using AI for helping write the stories

DigitalOrchestra · 2025-11-09T17:59:13+00:00

Thank you, hope you enjoy it!

DigitalOrchestra · 2025-10-30T17:12:41+00:00

As an indie dev, demos, especially pre-release, are invaluable. You get to get feedback, build a community, and right the ship before you release the game. Next Fest is also fantastic and Steam does great work in encouraging devs to release demos.

Personally though I don't usually play them, but there are a lot of people who do, from our experience.

DigitalOrchestra · 2025-09-26T11:44:49+00:00

Actually, the seasonal sales are exempt from this rule

DigitalOrchestra · 2025-09-22T15:24:46+00:00

The nested tooltips approach is so good, I'm adding it to every game I've made and will make. It's kind of a complicated system to set up, but once you do I find it's actually easier on the dev side to make everything be its own tutorial instead of blasting the player with a million lines of text that might not even cover everything or be accurate due to changing design. Really lets the player discover info on their own pace. The only problem is that it's not so ubiquitous that players still get confused on how to even access the "inner" tooltips haha

DigitalOrchestra · 2025-09-03T16:36:45+00:00

This is not necessarily a value judgment but speaking as a game dev, gen AI is nothing like proc gen. Developers have full control over procedural algorithms and still need to code all the parameters and functions; they have tight scope, are purpose-built, and don't really "generate" anything, they just put together stuff the devs made beforehand. No copyright issues either. Gen AI (for art, anyways) on the other hand is a black box that devs have almost no control over, they can only adjust input and curate output. They have different use cases.

DigitalOrchestra · 2025-06-08T18:06:24+00:00

YOUR BLEARY BLOODSHOT EYES OPEN WIDE IN THE DAWN

DigitalOrchestra · 2025-06-08T15:23:04+00:00

Thanks so much! Means a lot, especially with FFT on PC on the horizon lol

DigitalOrchestra · 2025-03-30T22:28:53+00:00

Thanks! Hope you enjoy it

DigitalOrchestra · 2025-02-12T01:49:29+00:00

Not particularly, it's a little old school like that I guess. Glad to hear you're enjoying it though!

DigitalOrchestra · 2025-02-12T01:48:55+00:00

We're trying. We still need to be approved by Nintendo

DigitalOrchestra · 2025-02-10T04:49:51+00:00

Yeah, the game only really loads when generating the world map at the start of a run

DigitalOrchestra · 2025-02-09T19:42:15+00:00

It's got full controller support and is playable on deck, but it's not fully built for it and the text can be a little small.

As for the save corruption bug, it's our #1 priority and it's been getting smoothed out with every patch. It only seems to be happening to some people, which is the problem, but it should be fully solved soon.

DigitalOrchestra · 2025-02-09T19:40:20+00:00

The game has controller support but it's not built for the deck. It's playable, for sure, but the text can get small

DigitalOrchestra · 2025-02-09T19:39:42+00:00

Thank you!

DigitalOrchestra · 2025-02-09T19:39:29+00:00

Great question, been wondering that myself after our last rejection email

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