- October Development Report - 11 October 2025
Eyes up, Steel Dragons!We know things have been quiet on our side for the past few months and we appreciate everyone who's been checking in, waiting, and wondering what's next. The good news is: yes, development is very much alive. Developing a game is tricky especially since we announced Project Haven very early on. Back then, we wanted to gauge how much interest there would be in a game like this. And honestly, we didn't really expect it to get this much attention! We've always loved tactical games and were set on making one no matter what, and we're truly grateful to everyone who's been part of the conversation since. However, showing our work so soon has brought extra challenges and expectations, which have sometimes been hard for us to fulfill.The truth is that it's been so many years that we've been through just about everything: from true excitement seeing players enjoy the game,…
- March Development Report - 28 February 2025
Hello, Steel Dragons! We know it's been a while since our last update, and we're truly grateful for your patience and dedication to Project Haven. We understand the silence has been frustrating – we've seen your comments and messages, and we genuinely appreciate those who have shared their thoughts and concerns constructively. As a tiny team, any personal commitments can significantly impact our development timeline. Recently, one of us faced circumstances that required their attention, affecting the team's progress. Despite this, development hasn't halted,—we've been steadily working, albeit at a slower pace, and we're excited to share some meaningful updates with you today. More Character Models As you may know we've recently hired a character artist to help us finish the last big ticket item remaining, and it has been progressing well! You'll be seeing a lot more variation of enemies…
- September Development Report - 16 September 2024
Hello, Steel Dragons! It's been a while since we last checked in. If you’ve been following us on Discord or the Steam discussion board, you might know that we've hit a delay with our intended release date. We're behind schedule due to setbacks with the character art. As a small team of just three, we've been doing everything ourselves up until now, and we believed we could complete the characters on time. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. To speed things up, we've recently brought on a dedicated character artist to help wrap up everything more efficiently. As some of you know, the character models you saw in previous demos were placeholders, but we now have their final versions! Here’s a sneak peek at Patches, Scarlett, and Altan, in that order: We’re thrilled with how they turned out! With these final models, we’ve now completed the starting cast for the game. Here are the full Stee…
- August Development Report - 28 August 2023
Greetings streetwise mercenaries! Welcome back to another Project Haven update report. We've been hard at work implementing changes based on your invaluable feedback and we're excited to unveil more updates, including a few that have been eagerly anticipated! Let's delve into the details of what's in store for you: Quality of Life Upgrades Prepare yourselves for a smoother, more immersive journey through the streets of Project Haven with a range of new quality of life improvements: Overall UX Improvements We've fine-tuned various elements to make navigation and interaction feel more intuitive. Features like double-clicking to sell or buy items, or having a dedicated key to cancel movement - we believe that these and other small changes will significantly improve the overall experience. Interruption smoothness We've changed how interrupts work. No more unintentional toggling of aiming mo…
- July Development Report - 23 July 2023
Hello mercenaries (and stealth enthusiasts)! We are happy to announce that Project Haven will be featured in the upcoming Steam Stealth Fest 2023 (from July 24th to 31th), and we will be releasing a new updated demo so that you all can enjoy the thrill of stealth gameplay like never before! Your feedback matters! But before we get started with the exciting updates, we want to express our sincere gratitude to everyone who took part in the previous event and provided us with invaluable feedback. We've been working hard to incorporate your ideas to make the game even more immersive and polished. Your insights have been crucial in shaping the game's direction. So, let's dive into the key points you've raised during the previous event. The things you loved the most!❤️ Multiple paths: We are happy to hear that you guys really enjoyed the freedom and flexibility of our level designs. The wide…
- May Development Report - 23 May 2023
Heads up, Steel Dragons! If you've been downrange in our Demo during Tacticon, we salute you. Your debriefs have been pouring in and we've been combing through every piece of intel. We've already started patching up a few weak spots based on your feedback. Now, let's bring you up to speed on the recent developments since our last devlog! Level Design: Crafting the Battlefield! When we embarked on the development of Project Haven, our initial plan was to use procedural generation for level design. We even posted some of the tech we’ve developed for it on this platform. However, as time went on and we further honed the game's storyline and gameplay, we realized that procedural level design wouldn't do justice to our vision. Despite the monumental task it posed for our small but dedicated team, we made the conscious decision to craft each of the 45 mission maps by hand. And now, having com…
- Project Haven featured at Tacticon - 11 May 2023
Greetings Steel Dragons! We are excited to announce that Project Haven will be showcased at Tacticon! Tacticon is a digital convention dedicated to strategy and tactical games that takes place from May 11th to May 15th. This year, brings together over 106 hand-picked recent and unique strategy games by long-established studios to solo indie game developers. But that's not all! We are also delighted to announce that a new demo is now available for players to try out during the event. This demo features significant improvements from the last one, including the full initial campaign roster to choose from, enhanced level design and art, new weapons, new items and a totally new mission! We are confident that these enhancements will make the game even more enjoyable. We can't wait for you to try it out! Also stay tuned for a development update coming up in the next few days where we’ll detail…
- September Development Report - 23 September 2022
Hello Steel Dragons! You heard right! Project Haven's Demo is now available to download and play until the 3rd of October as part of the TactiCon event! It's been a long time coming, but it's now possible to test out all the new features we're been working on these past months. We'd be super grateful if you could play it and gives us feedback on what you like, what you don't like and how we could make it better! So what's new since our last update? We're glad you asked! We've continued with backend updates we've mentioned in the previous update, this time focused on AI and the perception system (hearing and visibility). We've also done some art and animation updates, and finally a new Skill system. Let's break it down! AI Our main goal with a new AI system was to make it more dynamic and better behaved in a range of situations, after careful planning we decided to change from using Beha…
- July Development Report - 22 July 2022
Hello Steel Dragons! Welcome to another Project Haven development update! This time we have quite a few gameplay additions to show you, some art updates and more, so let’s get straight into it. Gameplay One major task we’ve finished since the last update was reworking the whole action system backend. While it’s not particularly visual or exciting, it allows us to more easily add complex gameplay systems. It was also designed with modding in mind. In fact, every action in the game is done with the exact same tools and system modders will have available to them! We hope to see some really cool things from the community! After finishing the system we quickly recreated all existing actions iterating and implementing a few new actions to help flesh out the gameplay: MOVABLE OBJECTS: Characters with enough Strength are now able to push some objects to gain access to otherwise unavailable path…
- April Development Report - 10 April 2022
Hello Steel Dragons! We’re alive! Yeah, it’s been a bit since our last dev update. Months, even, but don’t mistake the radio silence for inactivity. We’ve just been down in the code-mines, working intently on Project Haven to the exclusion of everything else. We probably should have come up for air a few times, but we’ve got SO much we want to show you now. A lot of our work has been on finalizing late-game content that we want to keep under wraps until launch, but there’s still plenty more we can show you. Let’s dive in! Level Design Game design is an iterative, experimental process, and we’re constantly learning new tricks and skills along the way. So that we’re not saving all the best for last, we’ve been revisiting some of our earlier missions, making visual and mechanical improvements to better match the quality of the later maps. Check out the before/after comparison below! If you…
- October Development Report - 8 November 2021
Hey Steel Dragons! At the end of August we debuted our Gamescom 2021 trailer, and since that time, we’ve been hard at work on not only refining the game, but also looking closely at many of the common issues you’ve encountered. Before we get onto those, we thought we’d point out a few things that have been happening since Gamescom. A Little Bit Of Our Development Process First up, we’ve continued trickling out some small videos showcasing our development process. You might have missed a couple of the last from “Camera Control” that lets you use the middle-mouse button for far more flexibility. We also showcased “Floor Visibility Control” to manually toggle between visible floors, along with more UI Updates. A few days ago we released “Continue Move”, a long anticipated feature to continue your movement after a mercenary stops, if they detect a new enemy midway, allowing you to re-evalua…
- New Trailer Live Debut - 26 August 2021
Hello again Steel Dragons! Join us August 27th 8pm CET/11am PT as we watch our brand new trailer debut live during IGN's Gamescom Studio! As always we'll be live answering your questions, hope to see you there! Edit: And here it is, now live on IGN!
- Project Haven - Dev Livestream - 26 August 2021
Hey Steel Dragons! As part of the Gamescom 2021 and Indie Arena Booth we're hosting a livestream tomorrow the August the 26th at 7pm CET/10am PT where we will be playing and talking about our updated Demo and chatting with you all. Come join us and ask any questions you may have! Don't forget to set a reminder! See you there! ːsteamhappyː
- Project Haven infiltrates the Indie Arena Booth at gamescom 2021 - 23 August 2021
Greetings Steel Dragons! It’s showtime again! This time we’re bringing Project Haven to Germany (and beyond - it’s a largely digital event) at gamescom as a featured title in their surprisingly exclusive Indie Arena Booth. It’s not just show-and-tell time, either. We’ll have a spot on gamescom’s digital show-floor for you to visit, a fresh new trailer and (most importantly) an updated demo featuring an all-new mission. Join us at gamescom! From August 25h to the 29th, all you aspiring mercenary commanders will be able to visit our digital home-away-from-home in the Indie Arena Booth. Check out the Power Plant zone and make sure to swing by our familiar little corner in the South-east corner of it. We hope you’ll all have a great time there. Hang out, take some photos (screenshots?), and say hello to our booth attendant NPC - they’ve got a few interesting things to say about the game. Th…
- Big Tactics by a Tiny Team - 7 August 2021
Greetings Steel Dragons! We’re just days past our last big show appearance at Dreamhack Beyond, and we’re already diving straight into another - The Yogscast Tiny Teams festival! Can anything stop us? The answer is obviously no. We’ll be part of the Yogscast celebrations from August 7th -14th, and you’ll be able to see the game in their opening ceremony stream at 5pm BST on Twitch. Not all of you have been following us and the game since the start, though, so we’re here to introduce ourselves for anyone who might have found us through Tiny Teams, but first answer a frequent question: Where’s my demo!? Well, that’s what a lot of you are asking. It’s a reasonable assumption, as we’ve rolled out new demo builds for our last two show appearances. Sadly, we won’t be deploying yet another build for the Tiny Teams showcase for one simple reason - we need time to finish our biggest and best pub…
- July Development Update - 20 July 2021
Greetings Steel Dragons! It has been a few weeks since the Steam Next Fest, and we hope you’ve had fun playing the Project Haven demo. While still relatively early in development (we’re officially still in alpha and almost everything is still subject to change), we feel it represents our vision for the game going forward, and we’ve been overjoyed with the positive response to it so far. We’ve been relatively quiet since the festival, as we’ve returned to our natural, subterranean home in the Code Mines, slowly excavating the bits and bytes required to construct the final game. You talkin’ to me? From the feedback we received on the demo, we’ve identified and squashed a lot of the biggest issues with the game already. Check out our Twitter feed to see some of our smaller updates. Still, one element clearly stood out as especially divisive among players - our combat bark system. While it’…
- Tune in for our PvP and Skirmish Dev Livestream this Saturday! - 18 June 2021
Greetings, Steel Dragons! Welcome to the party! First of all, a huge thank you to everyone who tuned in for our development stream on Wednesday. If you missed it, we recorded the whole thing and put it on YouTube, too. Secondly, a huge shout-out to each and every player who downloaded and played our demo. We put our heart and souls into it and have been overjoyed with the positive response. A PvP Skirmish mode showcase! Because you all seem hungry for more, we’re still hard at work improving the demo. Expect some additional voicework and character animation coming in the next few days. We’ve also got another dev stream planned, this time showing off the Skirmish side of the game, and its PvE, Co-op and PvP sides, all played out on procedurally generated maps. Come and watch Code Three Fifty One take on Project Haven’s procedurally generated skirmish mode, live on Steam at 5pm BST/Noon E…
- Play the Demo and watch the Dev Livestream! - 15 June 2021
Greetings, Steel Dragons! The contract is signed, the intel is verified - it’s time to lock, load and earn your slice of the pie in the Project Haven demo, available from June 16th. Let’s see what you’ve got. What's in the demo? Launching as part of the Steam Next Fest, the demo represents an early (Alpha stage) slice of what you can expect from the full game. You’ll be able to enjoy some basic merc training, three hand-crafted story missions (playable solo or co-op) and really dive deep into our advanced combat engine in Skirmish mode. What about Skirmish Mode? Yep, we’re letting you loose on the procedurally generated streets of Haven city. Playable solo, co-op or in PvP, Skirmish mode will provide you with near-infinite combat scenarios featuring four of our starting mercs and no shortage of Brotherhood goons to ventilate. What's different from previous demo? For those of you who pla…
- June Development Update - 9 June 2021
Greetings Steel Dragons! It’s been a while since we’ve given you a peek at development on Project Haven on Steam but if you’ve been following us on social media or our Discord then you may have already seen some of these exciting details. We’ve been hard at work making sure that this gritty dystopian story is as fun, immersive and nerve-wracking as it can be. Project Haven is our attempt to fill a niche that has gone unfilled for decades now - a story-rich, immersive squad tactics game with co-op, PvP and all the simulation-style details you’d expect of the classics. If you’re dying to dive into the world for a closer look, there will be a playable demo available from June 16th to June 22nd during the Steam Game Festival Summer Edition. We are also honored to have discovered that our game Project Haven has been featured in the Strategy game section by Steam! Watch the Feature on Youtube…
- Project Haven x Digital Dragons Indie Showcase - 15 September 2020
Hello Steel Dragon! Project Haven has been selected for the Digital Dragons 2020 Indie Showcase! As part of the event there's a 'Community Vote' award, for the best game chosen by you! If you'd like to help us out vote in Project Haven at: https://i.imgur.com/t78Ma41.gif Also, don't forget to try out Project Haven's alpha demo, that is available for download until the Digital Dragons event ends! You will be able to play 3 Campaign missions in Single Player (Co-op campaign will be available in the full release) and Skirmish procedural generation maps in Single Player, Co-op or PvP! As always, if you have any comments or suggestions, we’d be very interested in hearing from you! So join us on our Discord server, where we will be available to answer any questions you may have and chat with you. We hope to see you there!
