Hey folks, The After Light Fades demo is featuring in Steam Box Pushing Fest! We've been hard at work polishing it up to bring you a more wondrous and challenging experience, and we hope you'll be moved and inspired by what it has to offer Check it out here on Steam, and stay tuned for the full release in a few months, which will feature both an epic puzzle odyssey, and a Steam Workshop level editor where you can create and share your own puzzles. Get the demo here Check out all the games in the fest here

Hey folks, A significant graphical update today - I've transitioned the whole project to Unity's Universal Render Pipeline. Things should be looking more or less the same, but this will give me more scope in the future to optimize things, and it's allowed me to get more hands-on in developing some custom shaders in Shader Graph. More soon! AL

Hey folks! Some of you might have seen the platform in the overworld that requires you to collect eggs before you can enter. Well the first egg is finally in the game! Seems like a small step I know, but really the underlying code-structure was where all the hard work was, so the remaining eggs will start appearing in the game quite quickly over the next few months. The glyph puzzles that lead to each egg are intentionally mysterious. There's no in-game explanations for them so they'll take patience and cleverness, but once you understand the structure there's a clear pattern across all of them. There's a lot to unpack about why this layer of puzzles is so meaningful to me (and hopefully to you too) but perhaps the central thing is that it's an elegant solution to the age-old puzzle game issue of "go and find a code to open a door", or any similar mechanic where you just need to hunt around for some specific info, then trudge back and input it into a keypad etc. In those cases finding the code is minimally interesting, and then inputting it is just mindless busywork. So instead these glyph puzzles in Star Haven provide some information, but then actually executing that is a puzzle in itself (sounds a bit vague but I'm trying not to spoil anything). There's just one glyph puzzle in the game for now, in the overworld, so see how you go - looking forward to hearing about your experiences!

Hey folks! It's been a while but we're back with the first podcast video in the series for 2025 In this one I explore the idea of a unified theory a la Conways Game of Life, and the challenge of discovering something fundamental like this, verses the realities of game development that often require exception upon exception to be built into already complex systems [previewyoutube=F0AqnKhdEbg;full][/previewyoutube]

replaced body-part collectibles (hands, feet, eyes etc) with 3D models same with push-buttons in the sokobans replaced a skybox in one of the early-mid levels, and tweaked the level layout, to create more visual variation and clarity - I'm gradually working through this issue of variety overall, the visual similarity of all the early levels is one of the game's biggest challenges to overcome as a solo dev but it's getting much easier to give it attention now that most mechanics are complete

the main skybox was overwhelmingly white at the bottom which threw off the overall aesthetic when looking down, so I've mirrored a section of it a few visual tweaks to sokoban parts reverted the level-entry platforms to use 3D locks and stars as the vector images weren't working well for those. I'll continue to refine the game-wide balance between using 3D props vs 2D vector images

added collapsible blocks in a few sokobans added/updated some SFX made overworld airstream more visually prominent added message on Star Haven entrance that eggs arent yet accessible in early, access fixed some issues with the look ring if looked at from the wrong side Happy new year all!

Replaced most of the skyboxes with better looking ones Fixed a bug that was messing up the level Sun Dazed - sorry about that one!

Small patch to fix UIs in widescreen resolutions. I saw a streamer recently play the game on widescreen and lots of UI was out of whack, so it should be fixed now. If you're on widescreen and you're still seeing issues let me know! Also added a press-button prompt for the look-ring to make it easier to use. There's only one in the game at the moment anyway so no big deal Cheers, hope you all had a great Christmas/holidays!

crafted some better nuance to the first few metroidvania steps. It now leads you on more of an interesting journey to get the first few body parts. There's a bit more back and forth now, but hopefully in a way that encourages exploration and establishes more meaningful connections between levels and overworld

The game now has a light metroidvania structure! However, for people who already have save-games from before this patch, this structure is ignored. This is because, for first time players anytime after this patch, you need to find powerups before you can do things like triple jump, enter sokobans, do gravity flips, etc. For those of you with older save games however, that wouldn't make sense and/or would ruin you progression - so instead you now just have all those powerups already If you have an existing save but you still want to experience this metroidvania layer, you can start a new game and then you're free to discover the powerups from scratch. Hope that all makes sense! This is just first steps with the metroidvania aspect so it's pretty low-key for now - it'll take a little while to finesse it into something special Hope you enjoy!

-sunlight now rotates to always be shining down from above you, matching the current gravity direction. This ensures environments are always well lit no matter your rotation! -finished setting up all vector icons for all scannable objects -improved vector icons for collectibles -polished title screen UI

updated most scanner symbols to flat 2D vector style

updated the UI, collectibles and some other indicators and interactibles to a more colourful and playful flat-vector style

Hey folks, We've just added 3 Orchid of Redemption games to Lurkit the content creator platform. If you are, or you know, content creators who'd like a key to any/all of our titles, check out the links below After Light Fades Dream of the Star Haven Joon Shining Cheers!

changed starbursts to a flat 2D style - just something I'm playing with to make the collectibles feel more gamey! sokobans - tweaked movement to make it smoother and fixed a few issues with gravity where you could get temporarily suspended in the air while holding a direction

Fixed a UI issue with starburst objective icons, and did some visual polish on them

basic UI polish and some minor bug fixes

Hey folks! It's been a while but we're back with a new video in the series In this one I look into the idea of using a narrative ambient undercurrent as a potential solution to ludonarrative dissonance [previewyoutube=CUE-1eiRht8;full][/previewyoutube]

It's been a while but we're finally back with some small updates. We'll aim to make it more regular from here on out Polished up starburst quests UI a bunch of small environment updates including better trees and ground plants

Hey folks Our puzzler After Light Fades has a new trailer and a much more polished demo up on its Steam page Check out the trailer here [previewyoutube=bbElbULQO8E;full][/previewyoutube] We're a while away from release so it's still all WIP, but as always we'd love to hear your impressions Cheers!

Hi folks! We've entered our sokoban puzzler After Light Fades into the DevGAMM Awards and we'd love your support! Its easy to vote for us: 1 Head to https://form.fillout.com/t/hZWP7Kgy7Aus and log in with your email. 2 Find our game in the list and submit your vote! Feel free to share the link with your friends to spread the word! Remember, its one vote per email, and the last day to vote is October 27. Check out the free demo here, and remember to wishlist! Thanks for your support!

added a new sokoban level in the overworld fixed a bug where the Camera Sensitivity slider in options menu wasn't save/loading (thanks to Scumbag Nordavind in the Steam Community for letting me know about that one!) increased max level of that Cam Sensitivity slider as per a community request

A new Game Dev Journeys Video is up! In this one I show you around inside Dream of the Star Haven's Unity project, create a new sokoban minigame level (mostly in real time), and show a bit of how sokoban puzzles are integrated into the game under the hood. So if you're a game developer or are just interested to see how this stuff gets made, check it out! [previewyoutube=cLrWynaho88;full][/previewyoutube]

Hey folks! I've started a YT series / podcast where I have casual chats about game design concepts and structures like metroidvanias, player-driven puzzle solving, worlds-within-worlds and more So far I've been chatting about game design ideas at large, but I'll also be doing some deep dives into Dream of the Star Haven's development. So if there's anything you'd like to see or know about it then let me know! Check out the YT series here

Hey folks! Just saying hi to let you know we're transitioning Dream of the Star Haven from a free to a paid (premium) game If you already have the game in your library you're all good, you still get to keep it forever for free It'll still be in early access for a while, and even at its final release we're aiming to keep it a short(ish) and sweet experience, so it wont cost a bunch In a nutshell the decision has come out of how happy we are with how the new sokoban layer of the game! We can see a lot of depth continuing to emerge from it and these puzzles will add plenty of extra gameplay hours to sink your teeth into. In a larger sense we also believe in the principle that everyone should honour the value of their work! If you (or your friends) haven't got it already you can still snag it for free for the next few days, then after that it'll be premium (ie one up-front payment, no in-game purchases etc) Hope you're enjoying your time in the haven! Cheers Al Thumm from Orchid of Redemption

Added a couple more new sokobans. They're hidden around the place and generally replace some of the starburst challenges that were previously just "find a key". We're cruising now! Lots puzzles to come :) Come say hi in the Discord if want to chat and share your experiences! https://discord.gg/rNJ7hpSWus

This is the first look at the new sokobans that'll become a large part of the game moving forward. For now there's just a couple of basic ones in the overworld, and in the coming months we'll add more throughout the levels We've had a shot of inspiration, so we now have a master plan for how these puzzles are going to round out the game to completion More soon!

Fixed mouse-look for Linux

Added mouse support in all menus

added new level "Sun Dazed" - it's a standalone regular level (ie not a challenge level), and will eventually lead on to other levels in the same (desert) biome polished title screen various small UI polishes tweaked the timing of the laser statue-heads so you have more time to attack them and hide, before they attack you

fixed a bug on the title screen - this may have been preventing the mouse from working on Linux/Steam Deck. This also fixes the issue of the "WASD" UI on the title screen not changing to controller icons when any controller input is pressed updated the level "Reorientations" after player feedback, to make it more unique, and to provide more beginners-context for gravity-flipping interactions to come in later levels updated all menu UIs with a first pass of visual polish