- The END of playtests?! - 4 September 2026
Hey there! thank you for clicking and reading this update. We have lots of changes to share with you, so let's get to it!Important playtest updateThe playtest will end on or around Monday, Sept 7th!But fear not, because we're promoting the playtest to a demo...and the demo will launch Friday, Sept 11th!Why a demo? Anything new?There are two reasons we're releasing a demo so suddenly: First is philosophical, we're at a point where the state of the game is fairly indicative of what the final game will look like when it's done. of course, there are still some placeholder assets and missing systems, but it feels pretty close. your feedback is still incredibly valuable. The second reason is games without demos get reduced visibility during steam events. and there's an event around the corner we're participating in. we'll take as much visibility as we can get!The content will be the same. but…
- Ameowzing Progress This Summer - 26 July 2026
Cover art by SaKoHello! Hope your summer has been good. Things have been hectic but I'm trying to make the most of it.Broadly, the past month and a half has focused on a healthy blend of writing, Act 2 revisions, battle system adjustments, and bugfixing/cleanup. We ran another successful playtest with plenty of great feedback.Revisions to Act 2The bulk of work the past month went into some behind-the-scenes changes and additions to Act 2 content.Added a new Clydan POV introRevised the mountains segment: split up the post-boss cutscenes a bit and added a new exploration segment to slow down the exposition dumpIncluded a new arkor “rescue” segmentBumped out a dungeon to Act 3, for the purposes of pacing.Into the wilderness. View mp4 here.I realize this means little since most of you haven’t played Act 2 (it’s not public) but the takeaway here is that despite Act 2 going thru some revision…
- BitSummit PUNCH Recap - 6 June 2026
Cover Art by まっさかさまHi there! Welcome to summer. As you might have known, we were selected for Bitsummit PUNCH last month in Kyoto, Japan. I wanted to share the experience with you and go over what's next.Lessons LearnedI made the decision to do a special convention-specific build variant (in steam, it's the bitsummit branch) which includes an attract mode, hardcodes a few shorter "scenarios", and introduces a few fun new bugs. I severely underestimated how long getting a build prepped would take. This was so close to the wire--I had to spend about two full days debugging (on the shinkansen no less!) last-minute issues prior to the event. I was also hotfixing things in between convention days. In hindsight I should have relaxed more.I knew this going into things, but for the goal of wishlists specifically, physical events aren't really worth the time and effort. But it's not all about wi…
- Brick-by-brick, this localization work is... - 21 April 2026
Cover art by FliphrrrWait where did March/April go? Somehow or another it's time for another update! Let's see... what's happened since last time?PlaytestingWe're opening up playtesting for another wave of feedback this Friday, April 24th. I hope you get a chance to play! Let us know what you think.Battle System ChangesThe battle system is going thru a bit of an identity crisis. Pardon the bugs if you've played recently. Normally I keep these things tucked away in experiments branches but I've slowly just kept things on the default branch so I can keep everything in one build. I touched on some ideas in the last update, but here's what's new:Reworked targeting system, less of a reliance on the cumbersome tab button to trigger thru targetsSP is a thing that's actually used in battles. It's a proper resource; skills will either generate it or consume it. Cooldowns are a lot more rare.Dodg…
- Playtest outcomes - 20 February 2026
Cover image by heycaaat, circa 2011 for SU2k3January came and went! Thanks for your patience as the monthly recap is a bit late. I finally have a process for exporting gifs (I think? are these gifs kinda slow to you?) so hopefully the next one will won't be as time-consuming.New TrailerYou might have seen it already, but it's worth a second watch, especially if you haven't watched with the volume on.PlaytestWe launched a playtest! The feedback has been so helpful. We'll let in another batch of folks soon, after the important changes from round 1 have been mostly addressed. More on that below.Game ChangesIn preparation for the playtest we swapped all of the game music. Check out the OST if you haven't heard yet. It's definitely worth a listen. Brandon pushed so hard to get this done in time for the playtest, and being able to work with him to create something so cohesive feels wonderful.…
- Playtesting Season - 16 January 2026
We're looking for some beta testers to give the most recent builds a shake. Here's the juicy details:SignupsThis playtest will be done through Steam. Sign up for the beta test by pressing the Request Access button on the store page.Important DatesThe first round of playtesting will be open from Jan 23rd to roughly Jan 30th.QuestionsI already played this before, what's new?The focus here is on cleaning up the game: both narratively and mechanically. This is still just an early slice of the game's story (Act I), so there won't be any additional content. There will be lots of polish: shiny new character graphics and faces, some gorgeous, original tracks, enhancements to the game's systems, proper tutorials, better controller support, improved character dialogue, and other goodies.If you've played before, there's some fun new ways to play, including free character stat allocation mode and b…
- Starless Umbra Wrapped 2025 - 2 January 2026
Thanks a bunch for your attention and interest this past year! I wanted to take a moment to quickly recap what happened and what's coming. Some highlights for me though:The team has grown - SaKo has been helping for a few years but we've collaborated closely beyond portraits to enhance the battle system, improve the game HUD, and more. FJLink joined to help with that next level of polish to the sprites and long-time collaborator Brandon M. (Trepang2, Heroes of Umbra) returns to help out with providing original music to the game.427 code commits across the year - It was a bit of a slow start, but I feel like I'm making decent, steady progress (again, I only really have time to work on this nights and some weekends as I have full-time work/family commitments.)Full localization support - I want the game to reach a wide audience, so building tools and infrastructure that work seamlessly wit…
- The most frustrating dev update (so far) - 2 December 2025
Hello and welcome to December!Last month holiday and work obligations kept me away from game development for a bit of time. (Plug for Deluge, I met up with the author, Riggy2k3, and he's a real one.) When not traveling, I spent a good deal of time (whatever three+ weeks of late nights amounts to) troubleshooting suspicious and random crashes surrounding Starless Umbra's cutscene system. I won't go into details in this update because there's already a lengthy issue on github I've created, but the result of this ultimately resulted in a rewrite of some of this cutscene system, and a meticulous revert of the gamemaker update interspersed with other things I was working on.I'm tired so let's talk about those other things.LocalizationMy focus skewed a bit more towards localization as I attempted to release a trailer in Japanese for Tokyo Indie Games Summit. Because of the issue mentioned, it…
- Travel logistics with a noxious fog - 3 November 2025
Back again with another update. This marks 5-month streak, woohoo!!Last month I mentioned my focus was cleaning up maps, improving the game "feel" (polishing sounds, lighting, ambience, and more.), and making a few UI changes. All those are knocked out!I did not start on steamworks integration or Act 3 writing I had mentioned. In hindsight, something else took priority. More on that later. Let's dive in.Audio + Visual UpdatesThis is a lot of small things: improving sound variety for skills (the rabbit attacks now make a cute chomp sound) and giving each enemy type distinct sounds when encountering, damaging, or defeating them. I've also added varying footstep sounds (and tools to make defining those sounds very easy.)On the visual side, I've cleaned up the lighting, updated some maps to use the new shader style water effects, and added just a bit of bloom for style.Fran has also been ve…
- Moving Literal Mountains - 2 October 2025
Hi there! September seemed to just fly by. My focus continues to be on getting things ready for a steam demo and trying to release a highly-polished version of the game’s first act by the end of the year. Here’s what’s done, and whats left.U L T R A W I D EInstead of constraining the game to 16:9 and just stretching things awkwardly for all other resolutions, I’ve added support for other screen sizes. The viewport and UI is all responsive now, with sensible minimums in place. If the width of the game extends past the width of a map, things letterbox, but I may widen maps later on.Soon you’ll be able to play SU on that vertical monitor if you really want.Dynamic GamespeedThis is a fun one, but the speed of the game can now be adjusted globally. This even affects things like music/sound playback speed. Why? Primarily to support proper pausing during takeover tutorials and correctly implem…
- Designing Dreams & Discovering Ancient Artifacts - 29 August 2025
Hello! As August comes to a close, I wanted to update you on Starless Umbra. In this update I’ll share more details around the creation of a scene I teased earlier this month, announce some team updates, and reveal the discovery of ancient artifacts with you. ✨The DreamCheck out a longer version on the blog.Act 2 expands on our protagonist’s past a bit through a few flashbacks and dream sequences. For one such dream I sat out to create a less comfy, darker, colder version some of my favorite JRPG forests (Phantom Forest from FF6, the Campfire Scene from Chrono Trigger). This scene received some great reception. I wanted to share it here and give you some insight into how I built it.This is a compilation of a few different assets. The background and foreground parallax layers (trees and fog) I sprited for Heroes of Umbra some 12 years ago (wow!). The map layer trees are heavy edits to Se…
