The Steam Summer Sale has started and will last until July 10th! I am happy to share that you can purchase my games with discounts never seen before! This is the perfect opportunity to give them a try and have fun this summer!
Comet Force at -35%
Destroy The Monoliths at -50%
Skycliffs at -70%
Also, I would like to highlight that the demo of my upcoming game, My Tiny Landscape, is still available and just got an update. Don't hesitate to give it a shot, wishlist, and share your feedback!
I wish you all a great summer, and I'll see you next time!
-Radiant Sloth
Announcing My Tiny Landscape!
Hello everyone!
It has been a few weeks since the release of Comet Force, and I am happy to announce my new upcoming project!
After working mainly on twin-stick shooter roguelikes, I wanted to explore something a bit different. Namely I wanted to work on non-violent gameplay. I wanted a project that incorporates strategy but also provides a relaxing experience and inspires respect for nature. So what about making a minimalist landscape builder? Something that feels like a crossover between Islanders and Terra Nil? This idea tickled my brain for a few years, but I was unable to come up with a satisfying prototype at the time. And so my attention shifted to other projects. But with Comet Force done, I felt it was time to finally tackle this challenge and turn this idea into a real game.
And so, here we are today. I am so happy to present My Tiny Landscape, a minimalist colorful landscape builder! As you are presented with a procedurally generated barren archipelago, your goal is to regrow a vibrant landscape, tile by tile! Are you interested by the strategical aspect? Think carefully about every more and leverage placement rules to make the highest score! Or are you just looking for a relaxing and peaceful experience? Just unleash your creativity and watch your tiny landscape slowly getting back to life!
I'll dive more into the mechanics in future posts, so let's just watch a preview trailer for today! If you like what you see, please wishlist the game to support my work and not miss any important news! I plan to release a public demo in a couple weeks, so wishlisting is the best way to make sure Steam notifies you when it comes out!
As always, thanks for reading, and see you soon for more posts about My Tiny Landscape!
-Radiant Sloth
Happy Holidays!
Hello everyone,
It is this time of the year again! I wish you all a great holiday season, whether you spent it with friends, family or doing the things you love, and I hope great things await for all of you for the upcoming new year!
In 2024, I released a couple updates for Destroy The Monoliths (have you played the new mode Defend The Core yet?) and released a demo for Comet Force, the full game being planning for next year. So, this has been quite a productive year, I'm happy with the progress made. I look forward to releasing this project in 2025, and maybe prototype new ideas for the future.
It is currently the Steam Winter Sale, and all of Radiant Sloth games are in. You have a few days left to grab them!
I have made really good progress on my new upcoming game, and I'm so happy to announce that the Demo of Comet Force is now out on Steam! It's time to lead your own space troop and defend the galaxy against waves of invaders!
65 effects to upgrade the Captain and the troop classes
15 enemy modifiers to pick from to choose how the threat evolves
6 music tracks from the OST with synthwave beats
Some of this content needs to be unlocked by spending resources collected during boss fights. Alternatively, there is an option to disable the meta-progression and explore all the content right away.
I hope you will enjoy playing this Demo! Please feel free to share your feedback on the Comet Force forums, I will do my best to read and reply to every post. I have been working on this project for a year, and releasing this Demo is a great milestone reached, but there is still a long way to go before the full game is ready. So every suggestion or bug report really helps. Also, don't forget to wishlist the game and spread the word to whoever you think might enjoy it!
As always, thanks a lot for your support, and see you next time.
-Radiant Sloth
The Steam Summer Sale is here!
Hello everyone!
The Steam Summer Sale is here and will last until July 11!
It is the perfect time to discover new games! So... I'm glad to share that Destroy The Monoliths has a -30% discount, while Skycliffs is at -55%!
Also, I'm happy to recall that a beta branch is available for Destroy The Monoliths, where you can playtest the upcoming 1.3 update and give the new gamemode a try. Read the announcement here for more details! I'm looking forward to hearing your feedback!
I wish you all a great summer season!
-Radiant Sloth
Patch notes v0.9.6d
Early Access v0.9.6d
Small optimization fix with input events
Fixed shop panel showing in the HUB instead of only a message
Upgraded to Godot Engine 3.5.3
The Steam Spring Sale are here!
Hello everyone!
The Steam Spring Sale have started and I'm glad to share that Skycliffs is now at -50% during the whole event!
You can benefit from these discounts until the end of the Steam Spring Sale on March 23rd. This is a great opportunity to give the game a try. I hope you'll like it!
Wanna purchase both the game and the soundtrack? Don't forget to check out the permanent bundle that gives you an extra -15%!
DevLog #31 - Why Skycliffs development is on hold for now
Hello everyone!
Let’s talk today about Skycliffs. It is an action shooter roguelike with the unique hook of mixing top-down dungeon-crawling and verticality mechanics. The game has been out in Early Access on Steam for a couple months now. So I feel this is a good time to assess what happened and clarify what to expect for the future of the game.
Development on hold
I want to be honest and transparent: Skycliffs sales have been very disappointing so far. The Winter Steam sales and the recent week-long deal did not change the situation much. The sad truth is that, as a solo developer having already spent 18+ months on this project, I cannot afford to keep working on it. I am of course quite sad about this. I was hoping to add more game content during the Early Access phase, as well as refine the difficulty balance and continue polishing the existing. But making and marketing games is hard and time consuming, and it can result in very little payoff. It is sometimes best to let go of a project and move on, although it is a tough decision.
Hence I am not planning any more content update and v1.0 release for Skycliffs for now and I hope for your understanding. Still, I am very happy of the current state of the game. It fits what I had envisioned and I’m proud to have released it commercially. I also believe the current version contains enough content and replayability to allow for 10+ hours of entertainment. More if you like secret quests and seek 100% completion. So, if you enjoy this kind of game, please do give it a try, you may like it! Also, I am NOT dropping support for the game. I will continue to fix bugs. So please do report any issue you encounter and I will do my best to patch them.
Marketing a game is as hard as making it
You may wonder what hindered sales and so did I. This is a good question and it is difficult to pinpoint a single root cause. I could write an entire analysis devlog but this is not the point of this post so let’s simply mention a few elements. The market is quite saturated with dozens of games coming out each week, making it hard to stand out. Journalists, streamers and youtubers have to be picky as they do not have enough time to feature everything. Shooter dungeon-crawlers are also not very popular anymore, the current trends encourage arena survivors-like gameplay. Maybe mixing top-down fast-paced action and verticality platforming only appeal to a niche audience.
I also probably didn’t spent enough effort on marketing as I was mainly focusing on learning how to make a good game. Contrary to what highly publicized success stories would want us to believe, success doesn’t happen overnight and the early stages of any creative career almost always yield mixed results. We have to accept external factors out of our control and continue to work on what we can control and improve for the future.
If you have Skycliffs in your wishlist but have not bought it yet, I would be very curious to know your reasons. So please do not hesitate to reach out if you feel like sharing your take on this. It is always super valuable for a solo dev to read community feedback 🙂
Thanks
To end this post, I would like to thank everyone who played Skycliffs and supported its development in any way, shape or form. Making a video game fully alone, from programming and art to music and writing, is a lot of work and takes a lot of time. The process can even feel a bit lonely every now and then. So thank your for being part of this journey, I appreciate your support and it was a great experience.
Releasing my first game was indeed a dream come true. I enjoyed it a lot and learnt so much. I can’t wait to use this knowledge to keep making games. Actually, I am already working on a new project… It is called Destroy The Monoliths and it is a real-time strategy tower offense roguelike. There is no Steam page yet (I will create one later), but for now you can play the free alpha version here! Please share your feedback if you give it a shot!
See you next time 😉
-Radiant Sloth
Patch notes v0.9.6c
Hello everyone,
It has been a while since the last post, and I'm sorry for that. I've been quite busy with life and other projects, and as a solo developer it is sometimes a bit hard to keep up with everything. However, I am glad to share with you a little update! It brings no new content, but I did some welcome optimization improvements. The overall frame rate is now better, and also the game launches faster. I hope you will find these changes valuable, especially in late runs where there are often a lot of bullets everywhere.
Also, let's be honest: the classic twin-stick shooter dungeon-crawler formula that Skycliffs follows is clearly not very popular anymore. People seem to be more attracted to survivors-like (also known as bullet heavens) or arena shooters. Since the game is still in Early Access phase, I'm starting to think about a few changes I could make to push the game a bit more into this genre direction while leaving its core hook (i.e. a roguelike shooter with verticality) untouched. If you enjoy Skycliffs, please tell me in the comments your opinion about this. I'm very curious to read your thoughts and I'd like to take them into account before making significant reworks.
Thanks for playing Skycliffs and your support, and see you next time! -Radiant Sloth
Early Access v0.9.6c
FIXES
More optimization to rendering and bullets
Patch notes v0.9.6b
Early Access v0.9.6b
QUALITY OF LIFE
The map in the quick menu now centers on the island where the player currently is
BALANCING
Mystery bullets: reduced the number of random effects from 1/3/6/10/15 to 1/2/4/6/9
Reduced the challenges money rewards in the later zones
FIXES
Fixed issue with the player keeping shooting after winning the best tier of the lunar balls challenge
Player orbitals no longer hurt enemies before they are entirely spawned
Tweaked all enemies shapes so that they are less likely to get stuck against obstacles (which should prevent some lags with the physics engine)
Fixed memory leak affecting performances during long play sessions
