Catty & Batty: The Spirit Guide is part of the Cat Awareness Feline Sale and you can get it for 80% off right now.

I'm also excited to share that I will be at Gamescom in two weeks, showing off Faith in Despair. If you're there too and would like to meet me, let me know.

I've been looking for artists for a while and finally Faith in Despair has art now. First artist is Vergvoktre, who was already featured in the Halfquake Trilogy. Second is Marvin Blattert, who has provided art for blessings.

The cello track is also in the game now, and it plays in chapter 3. I worked together with Lou Dunand-Vincent again, who has worked with me previously.

And lastly, there's a new deck called Bloodsucker. I wanted a deck that focuses on "stealing HP" while having low HP. It needed special lacrima for an additional way to save Despair, and I think it works well. Lots of playtesting is still needed, but I think it's fun.

More decks are planned, of course, including a Mirage deck, which I'm very excited about.

It's always cool to see when a small change can lead to a different game feel.

This update represents kind of a milestone for me. It's still not feature or content complete, but I now see a game before me, which is always a special moment. Seeing chapter 3 with the new background and the new cello music feels like something the game has been leading me towards all this time. And I'm excited to see where it wants to go next.

I have one more big feature planned that I won't talk about just yet. It doesn't mean "big" in the sense of adding a completely new game mode, but "big" as in... it will add to the atmosphere of the game, and I think it will be focus of the next update. But we'll see.

Gamescom is coming closer, and I want to make sure the demo is as polished as possible, so I might not want to add anything "experimental" in the next few weeks.

Unless...?

The heat is also getting worse, so I have to carfully pick my battles. High temperatures are my Achilles heel.

Either way, dear reader, play the game and let me know what you think.

I've recently presented Faith in Despair to a feedback round for Content Vienna. The feedback I got was plentiful and helpful. I've already started implementing it with today's update.

The map is a big deal and it needs to be visually different from other views, previously it looked too much like the fight view and inventory. That was a problem, especially for screenshots.

More updates like this need to be made, but the biggest is yet to come.

I've been in talks with artists and I can say that there will be art on the cards, probably in the next update.

I'll also hopefully be able to finish the song for chapter three.

That's it for today. Go play Faith in Despair.

Faith in Despair has a new starter deck now and as you might have guessed from the title, it's called "Gravedigger".

It focuses on exhuming creatures from your graveyard, and creatures also don't automatically revive after fights.

Lots more starter decks are planned, and each one will have a unique rule.

I've been streaming game development on twitch recently and will continue to do so for a while. It helps me focus, even with chat being active. It makes certain tasks more fun as well.

Other than that, I've contacted artists for card art, which I think will help the game a lot.

August is coming up as well, and I'll be at Gamescom in Cologne to show off Faith in Despair. If you're there as well, let me know, maybe we can meet up.

Exciting times ahead!

🧙‍♂️ To be continued...

The new version of Faith in Despair now allows you to look into the past via the battle log.



The battle log was made possible by the "save & resume" feature, because it made it possible to save the state of a card as an in-memory class, so I could easily read it and render it again when hovering over any line in the battle log.

The battle log was suggested to me by multiple people pretty much from the beginning. It is needed to answer certain questions, such as why creatures died, why the player got damaged, or why a run ended. All of these should be possible to figure out now.

It also lets me see how the game operates. I already had a bunch of debug outputs, but the battle log makes things much clearer. So this will probably help with finding and fixing bugs as well.

I've also started working on a new music track, and I might just collaborate with a musician again for this one.

What's next? Something that I've wanted to do for a very long time: Adding a second deck.

You can play the current demo on Steam or in your browser on itch.io.

🧙‍♂️ To be continued...