- Are you ready to paint your adventure? - 9 March 2026
After a mysterious being from outer space crashes into Sylvia's tree-house and throws her into the vast cave system below she needs to experiment and explore a wide variety of items, spells, colors and caves to be able to climb her way back through her perilous adventure. Sylvia is ready for the challenge, are you?We are happy to announce that we have finally released Painted Peril to the world! We want to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has supported us to be able to complete our journey.We hope that you all will enjoy the game, and if you do we want to encourage you to leave a steam review, as that would help us out a lot! Do also feel free to join our discord server if you want to discuss the game further.We hope you have fun experimenting!//MP Team
- Dev Update 2025-06-06 - 6 June 2025
Recently we have made a few changes primarily focusing on beginner players. First of all we have updated the tutorial in many different ways. We have reworked what information the tutorial teaches to the player and made some changes to how that information is presented with the goal of making the initial learning of the game smoother. But that is not the only change to the tutorial. We have also aimed to make the tutorial more interesting with more things to find and explore as well as making a complete visual rework to the tutorial. That being said we still have some work left, especially in connection to the tutorial boss encounters and cutscenes. Another change that we have made is a rework of how the rainbow combo works. The core system of making a rainbow combo deals some extra damage and allows the player to get more paint, but it should now be clearer to the player how it works a…
- Dev Update 2025-05-23 - 23 May 2025
These past two weeks we have introduced a new NPC into the caves of Painted Peril! We hope everyone will enjoy the presence of Tizo the traveling trinket trader! Err… or at least his cart for now… In Tizo's cart Sylvia can find many of her precious items which Tizo has collected on his journeys through the caves. And as a trinket trader Tizo would be more than happy to trade his trinkets with yours as you find each other in the caves. Besides Tizo we have also had some major balance changes made to all spells in the game. Before spell power was calculated by “bottle power” + “color power”, this has now changed to “bottle power” x “color power”. This will help ensure stronger spells scale on a similar level as smaller spells that summon multiple projectiles but with lower power. We have also had a rebalance to yellow color to ensure that lower power spells feel overall more satisfying to…
- Dev Update 2025-05-09 - 9 May 2025
Tjena, during the last two weeks we have been busy with updating the level progression of the game. Meaning we have added and changed some routes of what level exit that leads to where to make the players decision on where to go more meaningful. An addition to this has been to rework the system of keys and locked doors by adding more locked regions and level exits as well as adding the potential to get more keys through the new Willow Crates that will spawn in the levels. Another feature that we have added is the ability to re-run and get more items instead of going directly to the final boss. This allows the player to get even stronger, but that being said it might not be the best decision to do as the enemies now also grow stronger. Especially when re-running. As a final gift for you we have also added a new spell to the game, Tinted Stones, which is based on a familiar enemy attack.…
- Dev Update 2025-04-25 - 25 April 2025
This week we have important news to share with you. We now have a publisher for the PC version of Painted Peril, Fennonauts Publishing. We have been in discussion with them for a while, and since last week it is official. This is good news for us because this allows us to focus more on the development itself and less on marketing, which we appreciate. I will leave a link to their website beneath, check it out if you are interested in seeing what other games they are working with. On the project itself we have also been hard working on adding an additional late game level to the game, the marble city. However, I won’t get into detail too much about this addition (even if it is a major one) as it is better for you to find and explore the area for yourself. Go check out Fennonauts. MP Team Fennonauts: https://www.fennonauts.com/
- Dev Update 2025-04-11 - 11 April 2025
Wow, yet another dev update with new stuff. What we present to you this time is a mixed bag of stuff. For a starter we have now updated the tutorial (again) to make it fit the new gameplay mechanics (introduced in the previous two dev updates). Our goal with the tutorial was to significantly scale it down, so we did just that. At the moment we are not sure if we removed too much, I guess we will figure it out after testing it a bit. In addition to changing the tutorial we did also update one of the cutscenes at the beginning of the game, as those are starting to be really out of date. We will return and touch up the cutscenes more in the future as well, so this isn’t the final result. Now to the most exciting part of this week's update, we have started to add some of the fantastic music made by the games composer Mikko Aaltio into the game itself. Only parts of the game have received ne…
- Dev Update 2025-03-28 - 28 March 2025
After an additional two weeks of development we are finally about done with the three step rework of the core mechanics. At the moment we are still playtesting and polishing the change, so do expect us to do additional changes to the system in the future. We have also not updated the tutorial to fit the new game rules yet, therefore we will only update the closed beta with the new game rules and wait with updating the open demo until that is addressed. If you are interested to see more details about the changes made to the core system I recommend reading our last dev update (2025-03-14). This is however not the only thing we have done these last 2 weeks. We have also been busy adding an additional 11 items, which includes 2 new mystic items (the purple ones that generally make a large impact on gameplay). A few items have however been taken out of the current spawn pool because they did…
- Dev Update 2025-03-14 - 14 March 2025
During the last two weeks we have been hard working in doing some major reworks of the core color system. Therefore, to start off we thought it would be interesting to discuss some of the underlying issues with the previous system which lead to making the reworks. First of all the game is a mechanically complicated game that requires new players to learn a lot in the beginning to be able to play the game at all. This often overwhelmed new players which understandably caused frustration. The second issue was that many of the mechanics felt clunky in practice, even though they could be interesting in theory. This was especially true in how the player casts spells and needs to pick up colors from enemies. The third issue is that the game is currently too difficult, especially in the beginning. The difficulty comes both from the scaling and placement of enemies but also from the core mechan…
- Dev Update 2025-02-28 - 1 March 2025
The last two weeks have been filled with doing administrative tasks, polishing and doing general cleanup. We have updated the tutorial areas, added level variation for a couple of levels and done a lot of polishing of the players movement. We have also done some significant updates to how the enemies interact with the player on a physical level, which should remove several bugs that could lead to the player getting stuck in walls. All these things are very important changes, however, they might not be the most exciting thing to write about in a dev update. However, what is exciting to write about is that we now can welcome Mikko Aaltio as the composer for Painted Peril! We are thrilled to have him with us. Stay tuned and keep eyes and ears open. MP Team
- Dev Update 2025-02-14 - 14 February 2025
Happy Valentines day, this dev log has many things to update you about. For a starter we have added 4 new movement based spells that allow you to play more aggressively by moving and attacking at the same time. This includes painted swords that activate when using movement abilities and a huge flail that deals more damage the faster you move. We have also updated several levels and reworked the ravine level completely. Almost all levels have received new special rooms and objectives and many of them have got an overhaul on enemy placement and traversal to make them less annoying and more interesting. We have also updated lighting and effects in the game to increase the final polish. Finally we have added a lot of long term progression goals with the player by making spells unlockable through special shrines that are spread out in the game. This should further increase motivation to expl…
- Dev Update 2025-01-31 - 31 January 2025
As January concludes it is time for a new dev update. And this time it is a large one. First of all we have added 8 new items and 2 new spells. This allows for several new combinations to be made and a lot more viable build options. Our goal has been to make each run feel more unique and give you more toys to experiment and play with. However, you are not the only one that has been given more toys, as we have also added 2 new late game enemies. This has allowed us to rework the enemy distribution of some later levels, hopefully making them feel more unique with new challenges. We have also worked on polishing some levels further, but more work here will be done. Finally, we have also given the player a new ability, the long awaited dash. Some minor changes have also been made to the player and camera movement. But that is all for this time. Go experiment with your new toys! MP Team Join…
- Dev Update 2025-01-17 - 17 January 2025
Hi everyone, hope you had a good holiday! To start this week off we want to announce that we will change the schedule for our weekly updates. Because we are moving closer to release we have started working more on aspects other than creating content for the game, such as polishing and marketing. Therefore, now and going forward we will release dev updates every other week. Therefore, this update contains all the content we have worked on as of the last two weeks (and during the holiday). First of all, we have reworked and updated several levels. The first level has now received a new area, The Keep, that the player needs to unlock before being accessible. We have also added several new environmental hazards to levels such as spikes, pits, and fog that also affect how you explore the levels. Two new spells have also been added, both with a new type of behaviour that lets them automatical…
- Dev Update 2024-12-21 - 21 December 2024
More items have fallen down into the caves. However, a local worm has so generously offered her services to clean up in our caves and make it less cluttered. She says: “There is no trouble at all to help clean up in these caves. In fact, this has made me so inspired so I have decided to sell new trinkets in my shop and all sales of these items will go to further cleaning. So please come by to support our caves.”. This is truly inspirational to see her so engaged in the community. Further work that has been done this week is to the pebble areas where we have a new tileset and generation to spice up these old caverns. However, be careful where you step or risk falling back down. There have also been a few balance changes to different items. Lastly, as it is the holiday we will be going on break for christmas and new years so this will be the last update for this year. However, we will be…
- Dev Update 2024-12-13 - 13 December 2024
This week has been highly condensed on overhauling the final boss. The boss has been given several new attacks, the boss arena has changed shape and layout, and we have spiced up the different phases of the boss. However, even though the boss has seen significant improvements this will not be its final shape as we are looking to clean things up and add some final spice to it at a later point We have also been working on some new tiles and decorations that will surely spice up your adventures in the future! Go defeat that boss! E&M Painted Peril Playtesting: https://forms.gle/RhDEf7uFmzJB2nKz5 Discord Server: https://discord.gg/XetedhPSDn YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MessagePhoton Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/message_photo
- Dev Update 2024-12-06 - 6 December 2024
This week's update will be a bit shorter as we have mostly been doing a lot of preparation work for content that will be added at a later date. This includes a boss rework and an additional. More information regarding that will come in the future. Other than this we have also added a new permanent shop and shopkeeper. We have also fixed several bugs regarding saving and loading savefiles in the game. Oh well, this is all the information we give you at this time. Go defeat the tutorial boss! E&M
- Dev Update 2024-11-29 - 29 November 2024
This week we have gone over a few balancing changes. The most significant buff is to red where you now get to keep some of your shield instead of it all draining. Sylvia has also received a generous donation from Willow and now gets to start each run with some colors in each of her bottles. On the other hand both purple and orange have been slightly nerfed along with the wind bag. Today we will also revoke all beta tester keys that have been given out so far. But fear not, we have updated the demo to better reflect the current state of the game so if you want to dive in and try out some features you may have missed out on you can do so in the beta. Or if you want to test the whole game you can always sign up for another round of playtesting! Lastly, we have also done a lot of administrative and behind the scenes work this week. Not much to see here yet at least. Go and shop from Willow!…
- Dev Update 2024-11-22 - 22 November 2024
Our quest for adding more content to the game continues even this week. As we mentioned last week we had started working on a new level, well now it is complete. In addition to adding a new level we have also added a new enemy, added more items, and made some major reworks to spells. We will not go into too much detail regarding what has been added, but we will add some images. Also, we have reworked the item Pipette. Go pick mushrooms! E&M Painted Peril Playtesting: https://forms.gle/RhDEf7uFmzJB2nKz5 Discord Server: https://discord.gg/XetedhPSDn
- Dev Update 2024-11-15 - 15 November 2024
This week we have focused on balancing health, adding items, and fixing color balancing and smaller issues. We have also been working in the background on adding more levels and updating NPCs, but those are updates for a later date. Our goal with adding more items has partly been to diversify the item pool, and to add items that significantly change how you play the game. We have for example added an item that lets you gamble with your colorpower. In total five new items have been added, and more is coming. We have also updated how healing is granted to the player during a run. Instead of having an item that can be bought once per level we have added a shrine that lets you gift astral pigments (coins) in the exchange of health. This action can be done as many times as you fancy, but each time it is bought the price will increase. Our goal with this change is to allow the player to get m…
- Dev Update 2024-11-08 - 8 November 2024
As promised last week, this week has even more updated levels. This time we have updated both the in between runs level and the first level. Our aim has been to make them feel a bit more colorful and have some more interesting level generation for level 1. So let me present Cave Town and Cave Town Outskirts. In addition to this we have also made some significant background changes to the npc system. Not too much is changed in the game at the moment, but this allows us to add more interesting storylines and NPCs. A shop system for permanent upgrades has also been added, with our first shop being a permanent health upgrade shop. This allows you to go and spend those petrified pigments somewhere. We also want to remind you all that if you want temporary access to the closed beta of the game then you can sign up to the Painted Peril Playtesting linked below. You will then get access from th…
- Dev Update 2024-11-01 - 1 November 2024
Content has been added. More is coming. Exploration will be needed… E&M Also, did you know that you can get temporary access to the game by joining a playtest: https://forms.gle/RhDEf7uFmzJB2nKz5 Discord Server: https://discord.gg/XetedhPSDn
