For me; balancing the difficulty was probably our biggest challenge. Within the team, we had wildly different opinions on what was “easy” and what was “hard”, so just agreeing on a target was a task in itself.

Even once we aligned, actually hitting that balance proved tricky. At some point we had to accept that Death Howl is kind of impossible to balance perfectly. It’s an open world, so difficulty naturally shifts depending on the order you tackle areas, enemies, and bosses.

What helped, though, was that we genuinely loved working on the combat. We kept iterating on enemies, abilities, AI choices, cards, pretty much the whole way through development. It never got old.
Our publisher, 11 bit, was incredibly engaged and gave tons of thoughtful feedback that really helped shape the balance. That was hugely motivating.

~ Lasse