Mar 22, 2026 09:20 pm

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I’m Back! / Travel Log(?)

Hello everyone! I’m… Jetlagged… But I’m back! Honestly, I’m feeling a bit rusty writing this up and don’t have too much to say regarding work as this is mostly just a general announcement of my return. I have not read any posts or responded to any messages for a while now. I plan on going through and reading messages and responding to all that I can. I apologize for the wait in that area.

For everyone who is not interested in what happened the past few weeks, I’ve been on holiday abroad and now I am back. I will get back to work on game dev after another week or so, as my birthday is coming up and I have some plans with family.

For people who are interested in a more detailed breakdown, let’s chat.

Japan

At the beginning of this month, I did something I don’t do… well at all, really. Normally when I take a break, it’s usually lined with other creative ventures. I can rarely just sit down and not do anything as I’d end up feeling restless.

This time, however, the break was a complete creative break, with no way of doing much of anything outside of walk around. And there are far worse places to walk around than Japan – a country well-known for safety and convenience.

I’ve been to Japan before and did all the typical tourist stuff on that last trip (10 years ago), but this time I really wanted to immerse myself in anime and gaming spaces, which are plentiful. Granted, you have your central hubs in places like Akihabara, but the cool thing about Japan is that there’s always something interesting somewhere. At least that’s how I typically view it. Not to mention, bars are also plentiful and (currently) drinks are cheap.

Some people might scoff at the fact that I paid for a ticket, got on a plane, and didn’t go see Shibuya Crossing or look at geishas in Kyoto or whatever it is tourists are meant to do. I stuck to my areas and bought a lot of figures and merchandise from franchises that I both love and ones I don’t really know that well but had cool-looking stuff.

It was quite fun to wander around and randomly find myself in adult sections of shops which, ultimately, weren’t dedicated adult stores. Just go on one floor – bunch of cool stuff but nothing outlandish – next floor: Porn. No, I didn’t buy anything from these places, but it was interesting to see a lot of games I know from the H-Game space actually on shelves. As to avoid the taste police coming after me, I won’t actually mention what I saw.

There was definitely a bigger influx of out-of-place tourists in these areas, however. People bringing their children into stores that have figures of naked women fully spreading behind glass cases, as well as people pointing and laughing anytime they saw a boob or risqué outfit in the more regular shops. I won’t lie, this frustrated the hell out of me.

While it was more of a problem on this visit, it didn’t ruin the experience and I still liked being around people who enjoyed these things rather than mocking them. I still had a great time and had a lot of great food. I do think I stayed a bit too long, though, and was very much looking forward to coming back home and getting back to work.

Getting Back to Work

So, as mentioned in my last post, I switched my plans around a bit with what I wanted to work on after Sin Spire. I basically said that I wasn’t in a rush to lock myself into another long dev cycle, so I would be doing a smaller project first. That smaller project obviously hasn’t had any work done on it yet, but I was able to slowly piece together what I wanted to do with it while I was on vacation.

I’ll keep details sparse for now, as my plan after this month is to quietly work on the project and then come back with a big announcement post with pictures and gameplay details – much like Sin Spire's announcement.

My general goals with this project are to try and make a tighter and punchier experience than what Sin Spire offers – something with more moment-to-moment replay value. I want to make it faster-paced and less “frustrating” to put it bluntly.

I’ll likely still stick with the retro style for this game. For my next big project, I wanted to switch things up, but for this smaller one, due to my intended turnaround/timeframe, I’ll probably stick with the low-poly style. That said, I’ll probably give myself a bit more flexibility with it and experiment.

I also want to make something that isn’t too dark in tone. The next big project I had planned is intended to have a dark story, so rather than jumping straight from Sin Spire into that, I figured I’d do something a bit lighter first.

Birthday

So, I’m not bringing this up to call attention to getting a year older, but more to point out that my break isn’t quite over. My birthday is coming up, and I’ll be away from my workstation again as a result. So my work schedule is realistically looking like April+ without much news or information for the rest of March.

In regards to what this means for the small project… I don’t know yet. I’m still thinking things through and won’t be able to provide timeframes until later. In regards to the next Sin Spire update, well...

Sin Spire Update

As I said at the beginning of this post, I have not read any messages since I’ve been away. I plan on doing that soon-ish, but there are a lot of messages, and I apologize in advance for either delayed responses or missed ones. It’s easy to overlook things or simply not see them.

I mention messages because I’m assuming a lot of posts will be about Sin Spire and where the next update is. As of right now, there is no timeframe on the update. It is definitely still coming, as it’s partially complete, but I need to verify my fixes, make sure there are no new issues introduced, and not rush any big changes while I’m still not fully back in the zone.

Anyway, that’s all for today. I’ll try to get back to my usual schedule soon, but with no current active project outside of updates, I can’t promise that posts going forward will have much substance.

I hope you're all doing well and I'll see you all next time.

NonDev

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Krasue Games

Feb 22, 2026 06:16 pm

Public post

Sin Spire - One Month Later...

Hello everyone! It’s been a few weeks, and it’ll likely be a few more before we properly talk again. I wanted to touch base now that Sin Spire has been out for around a month. I’ve always tried to stay transparent about what’s going on in my life when it comes to development. The biggest thing I’ve been dealing with recently isn’t the game itself, but admin.

What do I mean by admin? The boring stuff. Sin Spire has been a relative success, far more than I anticipated, and that brings a wave of legal and financial nonsense that needs to be dealt with. Most of it is sorted now, but there are still a few things to finalize. It’s been surprisingly stressful. No beach parties or martinis for me.

Sin Spire has now reached 55,000 sales. As expected, sales tapered off after the initial launch, but that’s still a great number, way more than I was expecting. Some people have speculated about the game’s general revenue, and it’s not quite accurate, so I’ll clarify: 55,000 copies does not mean every copy sold at full price. Steam handles regional pricing, VAT, and local duties. Then there’s Steam’s 30% cut on top of that. After this, we deal with taxes. Adjusting to all of this has meant a few weeks of ups and downs. The game sold surprisingly well, but gross vs net vs actual take-home are all very different things. On top of everything else, I haven’t actually received any payout yet due to how Steam’s payment system works, so hopefully there are no issues there either.

Of course, the game selling this well is amazing. I just wasn’t prepared for the scale of it. If my tone comes off as complaining, that’s not the intention. I’m very happy with how things are going. It means I can put more money towards development, as well as potentially getting people to help out with certain things. That said, this was mostly just an explanation as to why I haven’t pushed out another update yet and why there may not be one until the end of March.

Vacation

I’ve been vague about this, but I’ll say it clearly now: I’m going to Japan at the beginning of March for a little over two weeks. After I return, it’ll be my birthday and I’ll be spending time with family. So, I’ll largely be offline for most of the month.

This trip was planned last year. Tickets were purchased long before Sin Spire released. Originally, Sin Spire’s release was going to be in 2025, but due to various reasons I had to delay it to January. I hadn’t expected to still be patching the game a month after launch, as I wanted to move on to the next project with this trip acting as a book-end of sorts.

My personal goal for this trip is to disconnect for a bit. I’ll still check in occasionally, but I need a refresher. After I return, I’ll release the last major update addressing several issues, and then shift focus toward the next project.

Sin Spire Update

The next update really just focuses on minor fixes. The reason it’s taken so long is a mixture of the above and some experimentation I did that sadly didn’t go anywhere. The next update will include fixes for clipping issues and will also introduce a set of hotkeys to switch between weapon types, avoiding the need to scroll through the entire weapon bar.

After this next update, I will prepare a non-DRM version of the game to release on alternative platforms. As most platforms don’t offer an automated update system, I want to make sure that what I upload is as close to the “final” version of the game as possible.

On the note of alternative platforms, I have one in mind and it isn’t Itch. I may put the game on Itch eventually, but after initiating a payout last month that still hasn’t arrived, I’m hesitant to rely on it for releases right now. Waiting a month for payment is less than ideal.

Whatever alternative store I use, I will make sure it operates in Germany and the UK, as that’s where most people are having trouble buying the game on Steam.

Next Game

The next project has been up in the air. I initially planned to start a new “big project” after my trip. I’ve been writing up GDDs, narrative documents, and even started drafting a script. But after finishing Sin Spire, I’m not sure I want to lock myself into another year-and-a-half (or potentially longer) development cycle right away.

So, I’ve started drafting alternative plans for a smaller game that, if I still feel is a good idea, I’ll begin working on in April. Something tightly scoped, achievable, and hopefully more polished than previous works.

Sin Spire was built on top of HotPW and inherited some foundational issues. Those issues became amplified the larger Sin Spire grew, which is why some bugs persist. The next project will be built entirely from the ground up, with optimization and modularity as priorities. I’ll also be exploring mod support in future projects, though I can’t say for certain how achievable it will be for the next “small game.”

The larger project will still happen, just not immediately. I want to experiment first.

I tried to keep this post short because, as I said, I’m mostly just touching base. Thank you for the support as always, and I apologize for being quieter this past week. I’ll try to get around to responding to messages and comments soon.

In case anyone is alarmed by what I mentioned at the beginning or worried about my being stressed, it’s all good. I’m doing well and I’m looking forward to the vacation. This coming week will mostly be preparing for the Japan trip and handling some additional admin. When I return, we’ll get back to business.

See you all later.

SinSpire Retrospective

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Krasue Games

Feb 01, 2026 07:34 pm

Public post

Sin Spire - One Week Later...

Hello everyone! I hope you’ve all had an interesting week. I know I have.

Sin Spire released a little over a week ago, and the reception has been… good. Surprisingly good. I expected more pushback around difficulty, and while that feedback definitely showed up in reviews and discussions, the game also seems to have clicked with a much larger audience than anticipated.

Before getting into anything else, I want to share one important announcement:

Sin Spire has sold over 40,000 copies on Steam!

I won’t share revenue numbers, but just to clarify: due to refunds and regional pricing differences, it might not be as high as you’d expect. That said, it’s not low either.

To say the game broke containment would be an understatement. I was fully prepared to open this post with “We did it, 1,000 sales!” but despite fierce competition (which I wasn’t fully aware of at the time) and the game’s obtuse nature, it found an audience.

Whatever games I make next probably won’t be as difficult as Sin Spire. Despite some speculation, the difficulty here was a deliberate decision, though it looks like some people bounced off quite early. The one choice I genuinely regret, though, is setting the orb count to 4 for most dungeons. I’ll address that shortly, but first, let’s get the obvious out of the way.

Sin Spire Updates

I think it’s fair to call the game successful, relatively speaking. So, what does that mean going forward? Honestly, I’m not entirely sure yet.

I've already started planning for future projects and I had hoped that after release, Sin Spire wouldn’t demand too much attention. But I did say that if the game did well, I’d continue supporting it. 30,000 players later, here we are.

In the short term, updates will mostly focus on bug fixes and minor improvements, like yesterday’s patch. After that, I still plan to put the game to rest and shift focus to something new. I need both a general and creative break from Sin Spire, and the best way I've found to mentally reset is by working on something completely different.

That said, because of the overwhelming support, I do plan to add something more substantial in the future. So, to make a long story short, Sin Spire’s content update status has gone from “no” to “eventually.”

As a side note, one topic that keeps coming up is the orb count. As mentioned earlier, I actually agree that it’s too high and I don’t think there’s much reason to keep the requirement at 4 beyond not wanting to devalue existing playthroughs. Reducing it to 2 would still allow optional runs for players who want to get stronger, and make sure that players who don't want to deal with all that can move on at their own pace.

I’d genuinely like to hear what you think about this. It’d be a fairly big change and it's something I’ve been debating since the game’s alpha. In practice, it wouldn’t drastically alter the game beyond allowing some players to reach certain encounters a bit under-levelled.

Non-Steam Versions and Steam Keys

This has come up several times since release, so I want to address it clearly.

First, an important clarification: The Supporter tier has always provided early development builds. It has never included Steam keys for the final release. I understand that this may be disappointing to some, but that was never promised.

The original plan was simple:

Release the game on Steam
Offer a non-Steam version via Itch.io

However, in mid-2025, Itch.io de-indexed paid adult games. Free adult games were later re-indexed, but paid releases were not. On top of that, Itch’s payout system has reportedly been inconsistent, which I’m currently testing to see if it’s reliable again.

If payouts do in fact work, I plan to use Itch.io as the non-Steam option for Sin Spire. It likely won’t be discoverable through the site's search, but I can directly link it via SubscribeStar, Discord, and other channels for people who can’t purchase the game on Steam.

That said, I strongly prefer Steam due to its automated updates. A non-Steam version requires manual updates, which makes releasing things like hotfixes difficult. Because of that, I plan to wait until Sin Spire is mostly stable and past major updates before releasing an Itch version.

I’ve also seen suggestions like “just hand out keys” or “give keys to anyone who paid more than the game costs.” Unfortunately, it isn’t that simple:

Patreon support was not a purchase of the final game
Steam key requests are reviewed by Valve
Large external key distribution can affect future key requests

If I hand out keys to a few people, many more would understandably ask. From Valve’s perspective, widespread key distribution can look like bypassing the storefront entirely, and I don’t want to risk complications there. I’d rather explore a proper non-Steam option for people who are region-locked.

For now, I’ll continue testing Itch.io’s payout system. If it ends up working, I’ll prepare a build as soon as possible. Apologies for the delay. In the future, I’ll try to plan better for situations like this ahead of time.

A Week Concluded

This week wasn’t the rest I hoped it would be. Instead of Sin Spire slowly exiting my life, it’s consumed it. Reading reviews, watching videos, responding on Discord, handling partnerships, and dealing with endless key requests. Balancing friendly and firm responses is exhausting. My brain is fried.

I can’t promise a regular posting or update schedule for a bit. You’ll probably see less of me once I finally take a break. I still have a lot of non-game-dev admin to deal with before I can get back to doing what I actually love.

Thank you all, genuinely. This has been life-changing in ways that are both good and complicated.

See you later.

SinSpire Retrospective

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Krasue Games

Jan 23, 2026 07:00 pm

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Get it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3221770/Sin_Spire/

Hello everyone! Back in 2024, I was fresh out of a job, and all I really knew was that I wanted to make games. I tried a few different ideas, but nothing truly materialized until Halls of the Pale Widow. That game ended up setting the tone and direction for what came next.

After what I’d consider the success of HotPW, I moved on to Sin Spire as a direct continuation and expansion of those ideas.

Sin Spire was no small undertaking. It’s a much larger game, with multiple characters, voiced dialogue, weapons, combat, a variety of enemies (even if the roster is still fairly small), branching dialogue, cutscenes, and plenty of other systems I’m probably forgetting to list. It was a huge step up. It was difficult, and I definitely drifted at points, but I’m glad I stuck with it. Despite the rough edges, I’m proud of what I managed to achieve.

Thanks to your support, encouragement, and feedback, I was able to push through and actually finish something of this scale. I’m genuinely thankful to every one of you, including those who offered more criticism than praise. Having an audience I could engage and make the game with, made a huge difference. Even something as small as a comment or a reaction might seem insignificant, but to me it really matters. Thank you.

Before this gets too sentimental, I do want to acknowledge a few things. There are still issues in the current build, with the dungeon generation bug being the most notable. The Twisted animation set was also never fully finished, mostly due to running out of time and ideas. If I do add any small content updates in the future, that’s likely where I’d start.

That said, I need a break.

More information on known issues and future plans can be found in previous dev logs and in the Steam release announcement here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3221770/view/505099815104809693

That’s all for now. Outside of small additions and updates, the Sin Spire chapter of my game development career is now closed. I hope you enjoy the game. I’m going to go have a drink and take a walk.

See you all later.

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Krasue Games

Jan 11, 2026 06:26 pm

Public post

Sin Spire - Dev Log 42

Hello everyone! I hope the new year has treated you all well so far. I’ve been… not-so-busy. At least not with game development. Mostly getting over a bit of the seasonal blues and the post-new year hangover. That said, I feel like I can afford the luxury, as the game doesn’t have much left to do (famous last words).

I’ve now been given all the translation files for Chinese and Russian, and I’ll be getting those implemented this coming week. There are still some other bits and pieces to touch up, but that kind of thing is endless. Generally speaking, the game is more-or-less in the state it will ship in.

Which brings me to my big announcement.

I said in my last post that the game would release in January of this year. Well, now I have an exact date: January 23rd, 2026. That’s right – a little under two weeks away. For good or ill, the game will release on that date regardless of its state. Undoubtedly there will be things that need fixing or adjusting post-launch, but I’ll most likely be taking a break from Sin Spire once it releases.

Alongside this, I’m planning to release a demo over on Itch.io, and I’ll also be looking into potential ways of getting the game to people who can’t access it through Steam. That’s a trickier conversation overall, as I’m not entirely sure who does or doesn’t have access – I know that Germany is restricted, but beyond that things get a bit murky. People have mentioned GOG as a good option, though I haven’t pursued it yet. There are also newer storefronts that cater to adult games, though I don’t yet know how reliable they are.

I’ve also briefly touched on whether the game will receive post-launch content beyond fixes. To reiterate what I wrote in the New Year’s post: if Sin Spire is successful, then absolutely – just not straight away. There are other things I want to work on, some big and some small, and I’ll probably get started on those as soon as I have the energy to do so. As nice as it’d be to make promises or provide a roadmap, none of my ideas are concrete yet – some are just more developed than others.

What I do want to work on in the immediate future is something either very cheap or completely free – a short experimental project, acting as an in-between for my bigger ones. There are a couple of ideas I have in mind already; I just need to decide which one to tackle first.

Finally, as this will likely be my last Dev Log before Sin Spire’s release, I’ll soon be updating my socials with new images and information, as well as revisiting my subscriber tiers. I don’t plan on overhauling the existing tiers beyond giving more concrete descriptions of what they are – just adding new ones with additional benefits. I’m also likely going to put together an updated Q&A / FAQ to address some of the more common and important questions I see pop up. If there’s anything you’d like answered now, feel free to ask – anything I think is important enough will be added to the FAQ.

Anyway, that’s about it. There isn’t much left to discuss as we’re really in the final week of actual development, followed by another week of preparation and extras. Thank you all, as always, for the continued support – and I’ll see you all when Sin Spire releases!

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Krasue Games

Dec 28, 2025 07:56 pm

Public post

Merry Newyear! (2025)

Hello everyone! Merry Christmas/Happy New Year! As promised, this is the Christmas post that doubles as a bit of a yearly retrospective. This post marks my first full year working under the Krasue name, making games. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get to it.

Cutscenes, Animations, and “Finishing Up”

started the year fairly strong by tackling the game’s introductory sequence. At the time, I didn’t have much experience with Unreal’s Sequencer, especially when it came to stitching together multiple scenes across different locations. Because of that, I ended up pre-rendering the entire intro. This came with some pretty clear upsides and downsides.

The biggest downside was file size. To avoid heavy gradient banding at 1920×1080 with dark lighting, I needed a very high bitrate, and even then, I wasn’t able to eliminate all the artifacts. The other issue was flexibility: because the cutscene was pre-rendered, going back to fix or tweak things later became extremely difficult. You’ll probably still notice some visual glitches, artifacts, and audio issues even now.

All that said, for a first real attempt at something like this, I don’t think it turned out that badly. I went through several iterations before I was comfortable bundling it into the release builds.

Around the same time, I started breathing more life into Savina and Ophelia by giving them unique reactions to being hit, etc. I’ve always loved it in games when NPCs react to the player doing weird or unexpected things, and I really felt that adding this helped capture some additional personality from the characters.

By April, I had finished most of the bosses and dungeons and felt confident enough to start work on the game’s finale. My original target release was October, and at the time it felt achievable.

What I wasn’t fully aware of yet was how burned out I was slowly becoming.

Burnout, and the Oblivion Detour

The Female Locomotion Replacer mod for Oblivion Remastered

I got a lot done in the first half of the year, but I wasn’t firing on all cylinders like I was back in 2024. Some of the later enemy designs suffered, and for a long time many of the newer enemies were still using placeholder purification animations borrowed from the Witness.

The Girlfriend boss fight in particular didn’t suffer from a lack of ideas – it suffered from a lack of energy. I was simply burned out on Sin Spire at that point.

Then something completely unrelated happened: Oblivion Remastered released.

I’ve always loved Bethesda’s earlier open-world games, so I picked it up instantly. What I didn’t expect was a strange, unfriendly Frankenstein’s monster of Gamebryo and Unreal that was actively hostile to traditional modding (and my eyes). That, naturally, made me want to try my hand at fixing it.

I started by fixing what I personally found most egregious: the hunchback walk cycle – at least for female NPCs. From there I moved on to bodies, because the MetaHuman-based bodies, frankly, needed an overhaul. Having a body mod would also help with designing outfits and lay the foundation for certain kinds of future mods.

NBO female body mod with realtime body morphing

That became the NBO body mod, which ended up being surprisingly fun to work on. I met new people – such as the creator of Baking for Mara – and got to be creative without being responsible for every system in a game. I very much enjoyed the lower-pressure environment. NBO, to this day, is still on the front page of the most downloaded / endorsed mods on the Oblivion Remastered Nexus.

Unfortunately, updates to Oblivion Remastered repeatedly broke my mods – again and again. Female Locomotion broke with no easy fix. NBO’s real-time body morphing broke, was fixed, and then broke again. At a certain point it just wasn’t sustainable, and I took a step back (sorry NBO users).

I never accepted donations for those mods – they were done for fun – but Sin Spire is something people are supporting financially, and I needed to refocus. As enjoyable as the detour was, it had to end.

Computer Problems

Somewhat overlapping with all of this, I started experiencing full system crashes when playing intensive games – not regular game crashes, but total PC lockups. Eventually this escalated into a full blue screen and a machine that simply refused to boot.

Long story short: I ended up replacing several components before everything was stable again. The silver lining is that I removed a major performance bottleneck in the process, and my system has been solid ever since. Another silver lining is that this happened before the recent RAM shortage that hit the market and sent prices through the roof.

Still – not ideal timing. I even saw one person who was sceptical that my PC had broken down at all and suggested I was using it as an excuse to avoid working. Other than rolling my eyes, I don’t really have a response to that. That said, me dragging my feet and not working to the same standard would be a valid criticism – if that was actually what they were saying instead.

Dev logs started to slow down, and I did miss some self-imposed deadlines. Anyway, after fixing my PC, it was time to get back to business.

Approaching the End (and Missing It)

The second half of the year was meant to be focused almost entirely on finishing the game. October was still the intended release window and, on paper at least, I was more or less on track – or so I thought.

After finishing Savina’s relationship animations, I jumped straight into working on the pre-finale and finale sections of the game. In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have done that considering Ophelia’s relationship animations still weren’t finished, but at the time I was very much in “just get to the end” mode.

The pre-finale came together without too much trouble. The actual finale, however, was a different story.

Sin Spire’s script – including its endings – was written back in 2024. When I started properly implementing the first ending and saw it come together as an actual cutscene, I realized how much I liked it. The more work I did on it, the more excited I got, and for a while it felt like everything was finally clicking.

Then I started working on the “good ending”… and things fell apart.

Darkened Starting Hall from later in the game

Savina is voiced by my good friend XeraphinaVA, who I have a very easy time working with. Ophelia, on the other hand, is voiced by someone I don’t know particularly well. She’s good as Ophelia, but communication was slower, and recordings usually came as a single take.

When I finally sat down and listened to the full recordings for the good ending, a few problems became immediately obvious:

The good ending itself was badly written.
It assumes you’ve already seen the neutral ending and leaves out a lot of crucial context.
The recordings didn’t really work.
Ophelia’s delivery was bizarre in places, and Xeraphina’s lines were noticeably flatter than usual.
I wanted people to see the neutral ending.
I didn’t like the idea of spending so much time animating, compositing, and scripting it, only for a large portion of players to potentially never see it – not the most flattering of reasons, but it did play a factor.

I could have asked Xeraphina to re-record her lines quite easily, but there was still the issue of Ophelia’s VA and the fact that I didn’t like the actual script for the good ending. Rewriting it would have meant:

new recordings
new animations
a reworked boss fight
and all of that discovered in late September

At that point, regardless of the state of the good ending, it became pretty obvious that an October release wasn’t happening. I set my sights on November and made the call to cut the good ending entirely so I could focus on polishing and actually finishing the rest of the game.

Beta Release

On October 1st, I released the beta build that allowed players to play Sin Spire from start to finish.

That was a massive milestone for me. After years of trying (and failing), I had finally completed a game with a full narrative, cutscenes, and endings – even if one of them had been cut.

With November as the new target, I shifted into bug fixing, finishing Ophelia’s animations, improving Steam integration, and generally trying to tighten everything up. That said, there was still a lot of missing content that needed my attention – content that I’m still actively adding to the game.

I polished a build for Steam review so that, if approved, I could finalize the release date, make a trailer, and wrap things up properly.

Once I felt the build was stable enough, I submitted the Steam review build in early November.

And then… I waited.

About Difficulty

A small diversion, but let’s talk about difficulty. Difficulty has been one of the most stressful topics throughout Sin Spire’s development.

The game was always meant to be challenging. I wanted players to experiment, to find strange solutions, to slowly unravel systems and make the game easier through understanding. Some of my favourite gaming memories (especially H-games) come from exactly that kind of experience.

Sin Spire was designed to drip-feed enemies, mechanics, and animations in a way that encouraged that mindset. That approach… hasn’t landed for everyone.

Some players have outright dropped the game because of the difficulty, and honestly, I don’t blame them. When I added difficulty settings, I hoped that would somewhat alleviate the issue – but in practice it kind of made things worse. “Easy” wasn’t easy enough for what some people wanted.

What many players were asking for seemingly wasn’t an easier version of Sin Spire – it was a version without struggle at all. And while I completely understand the appeal of that, it’s not the kind of game I set out to make.

At this point, I’m likely to leave the difficulty mostly as-is, with some tweaks to reduce grind (such as higher purification payouts). Whenever I consider bigger changes, I think about the players who have enjoyed the game as intended – the ones who found the challenge engaging and rewarding.

Sin Spire, for better or worse, committed to a specific design philosophy very early on.

That said, I’ve learned from this – and when I work on my next game, I’ll ease up on the bullshit a bit.

Steam Review Anxiety

Back to the Steam Review: in early November, I submitted the Steam review build and waited… and waited.

This happened during a pretty chaotic period where Steam was delisting adult games, Itch.io was removing huge portions of its catalogue, and misinformation about what was or wasn’t allowed was everywhere. The idea of submitting the game was nerve-wracking enough when I first put the page up in 2024 – now it was genuinely terrifying.

Sin Spire’s success matters a lot for my ability to move forward, and while alternative platforms exist, Steam is the PC platform, whether we like it or not.

Eventually, Steam got back to me – and the build was denied.

Headlines regarding the delisting of games

Not for the reasons I was expecting, thankfully. The main issues were controller navigation (specifically social links on the menu) and some missing content warnings. Once those were fixed and resubmitted, the build was approved, which was a massive relief.

The waiting period was extremely anxiety-inducing, and to distract myself from said anxiety, I did what I apparently always do. I got distracted.

These distractions persisted even past the build approval – I was laying the foundation for my next project (good) and also got roped back in to an old project I used to work on with no financial incentive (bad).

But I’ve since managed to pull myself back on track. Most bugs are fixed, performance is mostly optimized, and there are only a handful of animations left to implement. I think the game is in a good state now and I’m happy to say that Sin Spire will release in late January 2026.

What I’ve Learned

Working solo is hard.

I tend to work in intense bursts, burn out, and then drift toward other creative projects before returning. I’ve known this about myself for years but this was the first time I really felt how much it affects long-term development.

Going forward, I want to work within that tendency rather than fight it: one long-term project, alongside smaller side projects.

After release, I’ll be taking a short break before starting the next big thing. I’ll try to keep up general communication up, but I won’t be posting many progress reports while I’m still in the “tinkering” pre-production phase of my next project.

As for post-launch content for Sin Spire, that’s a definite maybe. If the game does well and some time is allowed to pass, I’d love to expand it. If not, I’ll need to reassess and move forward differently.

Obviously, a lot more happened this year, but this post is long enough already and this is the sixth draft I’ve written, with plenty cut out along the way.

Thank you, genuinely, for sticking with me through the year. Your support is what has made it possible to even attempt something like this in the first place. I know I’ve said it a few times now, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Here’s to finally crossing the finish line. I hope you’ve all had a Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year. See you all in January!

SinSpire Christmas NewYear Modding

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