- A Big Bounty - 1 September 2026
Greetings folks,there are a good number of updates for the month, but there's one that I don't want to be hidden. Steam stats.I bring this up because it is a form of data collection, so I want to be as transparent as possible with it.The stats will only be used to gauge falloff points in the demo (I've listed them at the bottom of this update).By gathering these, I can determine where friction points are in the demo and work to fix them, ultimately making the game better for you all.If you have any qualms with this, please let me know. I want to ensure Self Recurse is a wonderful experience and the last thing I want to worry players.I also want to note that Steam stats are essentially the demo's version of achievements (if you need something to compare it to). Tech updates> Feature workIcon UX UMG: this handy graphic will animate for effects that have confused players with the interacti…
- I want to show you... - 2 August 2026
Greetings folks,July contained 2 notable features worth mentioning: the interactive tutorial and status pop-stacks.One of the pieces that I'd been putting off was the onboarding experience. I hoped that having good UX throughout a run would be enough to teach the player how the game works. While I think that can happen in many games, it didn't with Self Recurse. No matter how many tooltips, guidance text popups, etc. that I added, I still got asked for a better way to illustrate the depth of the game starting with fundamentals. If I had to choose the biggest learning point, it'd be the energy system. Even veterans to the Score DBZ/GT card games (a large influence to the energy system) gave the feedback that they didn't understand how it worked in Self Recurse. The other feedback that I saw/heard is that players would bypass the old tutorial because, even though it was a video, they did…
- July Update - 3 July 2026
Greetings folks,during June I got a few changes surrounding projected damage completed but won't be pushing them until next month.This is because the largest change, that I'm currently in progress with, is a refined tutorial.The category that had the most feedback in the past 2 months was the onboarding and UX. After accomplishing the tutorial the game will be in much better place for new players to understand the basic mechanics and dive into a run.Other features have been listed below. Thank you all for the patience while the next month sets the stage for the big tutorial change! Tech updates> Feature work- the player's projected damage will now appear in the target selectors- enemy next actions now include projected damage- a total threat damage visual now appears over Phalaen's head, so that player's don't have to do a full set of calculations to determine the rough amount of damage…
- Save the Game - 2 June 2026
Greetings folks,May was one of the busiest months I've had in awhile. Deck Builders Fest kicked off the early month while it was incredibly humbling, I learned a lot and was given loads of feedback. During deck builders fest, I logged 23 items resolved in the span of a week. While I'd love to highlight those, previous updates have more details on those (and it felt like double-dipping).Outside of the fest tasks, the largest was implementing the save versioning feature (about 2.5w). The release list might look a little slim, but this change was a necessary one that I learned about from the folks at Sandfall Interactive and their work on Clair Obscure and the game would cause a lot of frustration if during each demo update I asked you all to delete your save files. Instead, the feature updates everything for you. The remainder of the items were implemented in the spirit of improving user…
- Deck Builders Fest Day 3 - 6 May 2026
Thank you all for the feedback during the past 2 days! I've been working on improving the user experience, fixing bugs, and feature requests that everyone has graciously notified me of. I have 2 intents with this update: I wanted to show that your feedback does matter. I created 34 tasks from the last 2 days. Some of them are larger projects that I'll need to take on after deck builders fest wraps up, but there were plenty of items I was able to complete in the 48h since receiving them. The only reason I didn't complete more is because I wanted to tackle the big ones before needing to pivot to some marketing strategies for the evening. The new build is live! When you next log into Steam, the update will download. You'll get access to the newest demo build.When I say I welcome feedback, I really mean it. Please download the newest demo build and give me your next round of comments. Below…
- Self Recurse Demo Stream - Day 2 - 4 May 2026
Catch me tomorrow at 8 PM MT for the second stream for deck builders fest!We'll do deep-dives into mechanics in bursts.You can access the stream on the page for Self Recurse
- Deck Builders Fest Stream Kickoff - 3 May 2026
Join me during the kick-off of Deck Builders Fest as we delve into the first act of gameplay in live-stream format. Everything you see will be available in the demo. I'll showoff gameplay while discuss the depth of mechanics ranging from their design to the art and trivia.I look forward to see you all there!
- Self Recurse Demo is Live! - 2 May 2026
Evening folks,April was a milestone month - the demo was released and is available for everyone to play.There is a Discord link on the start screen that I'll be fielding feedback with and I'm really excited to hear from all of you.I've also entered the Steam Deckbuilder's Fest. It starts next Monday and I'm excited to have Self Recurse presented alongside the greats.You might've noticed some of the art assets have changed. Those have been in anticipation for the festival with the intent to make the art more readable. > What's next?I've determined that I need a more robust prioritization list for handling feedback.- save corruption > game breaking > game disrupting > visual bug > balance- feature requests are balanced into all of this and have their own priorities of: increases adoption > increases engagement > nice-to-have- all of the above are balanced by effort needing to add/fix.- if…
- Game Re-focus - 2 April 2026
Hello folks,March was ultimately a month of an emphasis in marketing and a little bit of feature work, most of which was user experience related.On the marketing front, I decided to scale this down. Marketing research is showing that festival involvement, having a demo, and just making a good game (shocker, I know) are the best ways to get your game in front of people. I was doing miniscule amounts of those in March and felt a pivot was needed. What I love most is making the game, not trying to sell it. The reasons above might paint me as biased, but they do align with what I ultimately wanted to do with Self Recurse - get the game in the hands of people and share what is hopefully considered art (even if that art is fun).April will be a month of features with the goal of a demo release to a wider audience.Tech updates> Feature work- screens have a fading transition- decks, the exclusio…
- Soul searching, Tutorial rework, Map Redux - 2 March 2026
Hello folks,February was a soul-searching month that resulted in some good outcomes.The first thing I want to address is AI tool usage in the creation of the game. As a civilization, we're at an interesting point where people can crank out games with the assistance of AI. I had a friend do so in January when he created a Flappy-bird-like (genre?) in a month, assets and all. It made me do some reflection to determine if I should short-circuit the development of Self Recurse using AI. I, like many others when they feel conflicted, will turn to their friends and the internet.After some good conversations and viewing of keynotes, I came to a realization of my own opinion - *art is incited through human struggle*. AI would help me build a product faster, but Self Recurse has always been meant to be an artistic expression. Earning money would only serve as a nice side-effect, but was not the…
- Dice UX, Steam cloud saves, and more! - 3 February 2026
Hello folks!January felt like little process was made until I see the bullet list of what was worked on:Feature work- FPS improvement is substantial (when testing on the devices I own, it was ~33% better)- Steam cloud saves are working- the dice UI has been condensed to help with an understanding of the "board state"- I've lengthened the floating text time to 2s after getting feedback that 1s was too short- I've included damage numbers for ED/HD (in that order). This should also help with understanding the board state better enemy UI now appears during dice roll phaseBug fixes- auto-detect visual settings were not persisting correctly (they are now)- customized visual setting UI was not persisting under certain conditions (they are now)- fixed having to click once on the start screen to give the app focus (it has it from the beginning) On the business side, I organized as a business. Th…
- January 2026 Update - 2 January 2026
Happy new year, folks!December was filled with some behemoths that were tackled: the engine was upgraded from UE 5.0 to 5.7. This undertaking involved changing a lot of UI and going through some arduous learning experiences with how the game is packaged differently from any of the other versions.reworked the credits screen so that it would show during the demo as well as updating everyone who has helped me get this far.the current theme is now showing, which should aid players in their choices for any items they earn during a run.more balance was added to the first waltz act so that the demo could be more difficult. Ideally, this will be challenging but not impossible.curation of assets, data tables, items, and probably a whole bunch of other areas I haven't mentioned so that the demo is well-confined to scope of the game players can access.created 6 events for the demo.removed unused p…
- Welcome! - 2 December 2025
Welcome folks, I'm thrilled that you're here! Thank you for checking out Self Recurse!Self Recurse is a Card-battler at its core, with roguelite elements meaning permanent progression in between a run and no run is the same.I'm Will - the solo dev behind the project. I grew up with card games and have always loved game design. I've also spent some time in life working as a: software engineer, Soldier, psychology researcher, and social worker. Each of these experiences have given me a myriad of perspectives that I hope to distill into the stories of my games. Self Recurse will be the first.You can expect me to post monthly updates that will inform you of the progress I'm making, key events, or gathering feedback that will ultimately shape the final result of the game. I'll typically highlight more features in future posts. This one is a bit light as I've poured my current resources into…
