Right then, settle in. This one’s a bit of a mix, and there’s news at the end.
Teaching people to carve
There’s a lot to learn in this game. Striking, weight, angle, changing tools, splitting a block, reading the map, taking a commission, the guide colours, finishing. Throwing all of that at someone in a menu would be horrible, so the tutorial is told as a little story instead. Matteo has just arrived at the studio, there’s a storm, and Rosa the baker needs a doorstop.
It’s split into short lessons, twenty-two of them, each one a slip of paper pinned to the corner of the screen with a title, a line or two, the buttons you need and a list of steps that tick off as you do them. Every lesson also gets written into Matteo’s notebook, so you can look back at anything you’ve forgotten.
A couple of weeks ago was the first time we played the whole thing start to finish from a fresh game. It went… fine? Mostly. Some lowlights:
- The in-game clock kept running during the lessons. About a month of game time went by, and at one point Matteo collapsed from exhaustion halfway through a lesson, got packed off to bed and lost a day. Relatable, but not ideal in a tutorial.
- “New commission available!” popups kept turning up in the middle of lessons about something else entirely.
- The splitting lesson asked you to click on the far end of a chalk line that didn’t really have a far end you could click.
- Rosa’s block refused to go on the pedestal because the game was convinced you’d already started carving it. You hadn’t.
All being fixed. That’s exactly what a first full play-through is for.
A quick engine upgrade
This week we also moved the project up to Unity 6.6. Engine upgrades are never completely painless, but it’s done, and it means we’re on a solid footing for the demo and release builds.
Ten capsules later
If you’ve ever looked at a Steam page, the capsule is the main picture at the top, and it’s the thing most people judge a game by before they read a single word. So it matters. Ours has been through about ten versions over the last month or so.
Early versions were warm golden hour with a classic serif title on a slab of marble. It looked serious and grand. Too serious, honestly. It said “historical drama” more than “cosy carving game”. We tried dawn, dusk, golden hour and midday, and midday won by a mile: bright, clear and cheerful, and the town reads properly behind Matteo. The title went from that classical serif to something much rounder and friendlier on a little terracotta ribbon.
And here’s where it ended up:
The news
Which brings us to why the capsule matters right now.
- December: the Steam “Coming Soon” page goes up, which means you’ll be able to wishlist it. (Please do. It genuinely makes a huge difference for small studios.)
- February 2027: a playable demo, as part of Steam Next Fest.
- April 2027: release, on Windows.
It’s quite strange writing that down. Eight months ago this was a block on a turntable and a menu with a snowman in it.
If you’ve read this far, thank you. Really. We’ll put the Steam link here and on the game page the moment it’s live, and the game will be getting its own social accounts soon too.
Cheers,
Alistair
Acryptum Games Founder