July 2025: Preparing for the Moon

It’s not always obvious, but when you set sail on the thrilling adventure of making a personal game project, you’re signing up for way more than just the fun, creative stuff. There’s structure to build, processes to wrangle, and about a hundred hats to wear. In this month’s blog, I’ll pull back the curtain on how we keep Oliver’s Tale moving forward, share the process that keeps us sane, and give you a sparkle-filled peek at what we’ve been cooking up lately!

Here is a little eye candy for you that consists huge spoiler! 😱

Infrastructure - scary word right?

From day one of developing Oliver’s Tale, I decided to play it like the big studios… but on a tiny, indie scale (and preferably free). The idea was simple: set up solid foundations so the project wouldn’t collapse under its own weight later, but keep it lean enough for our small team to actually manage.

Element one: The server!

Sounds big and fancy, right? In reality… it’s a little guy with a big job. I’m running a Synology DS720+ beefed up with extra RAM and two 8TB hard drives in RAID1 (so all our data is safely mirrored). It’s small, quiet, and sits there faithfully holding our game’s lifeblood.

It makes sounds as it it was a living creature 😏

Element two: Perforce 💪

A server sitting in the cupboard is nice, but it’s not enough. We need to work on the game in parallel, track every change, and have a history of all our project files. Enter Perforce! I set up a fully fledged P4 repo, and here’s the best news for fellow indie devs 🥁 🥁 🥁

It’s free for up to three users plus an admin (so four in total). Perfectly matching the size of our little crew working on game files!

Element three: Miro!

I’m pretty sure that without Miro, Oliver’s Tale might never have gotten off the ground. Back in the early days, when we were just starting out, we spent hours in it — brainstorming the game world, sketching out factions, and weaving the first threads of the story. It was our our chaos wrangler, and our idea playground.

Now, Miro has grown into our main production hub. We’ve got a long-term roadmap mapped out, a kanban board tracking every task, and a weekly ritual of reviewing and updating it. It’s the glue that keeps the project organized, moving, and (mostly) keeping us sane.

If you zoom in, you might guess what future brings 😉

And with all that behind-the-scenes talk out of the way, it’s time to pull back the curtain and show you what’s new in Oliver’s Tale this month!

Oliver is learning to climb and fight!

This month we kept polishing the game feel, especially around combat. Daniil has officially taken over the “game feel” department and is bringing in three brand-new slash attack animations. His mission: make them snappy, responsive, and satisfying to use.

Notice how Oliver waiting for click to continue the combo.

We’re making a non-traditional ARPG... The one where the player isn’t just chasing enemies, but exploring the world and interacting with it like a giant playground. That’s why we’re introducing climbing as a traversal mechanic! It’ll complement exploration and add a fresh layer to puzzles, making the world feel more alive and full of possibilities.

Climbing lets us break free from purely horizontal level design, which fits perfectly with our floating sky islands universe.

New Texturing Pipeline stress tested!

While the updates above kept the rest of the team busy, I was deep in the trenches retexturing the Reincarnation Capsule using our brand‑new pipeline to see how far we could push quality and consistency. Here’s a before‑and‑after comparison to show just what this new setup can do:

Reincarnation capsules are ancient devices used by the Watchmen, in which their bodies are reborn as children.

Wraping it up

From servers humming quietly in the cupboard, to Perforce keeping our files in line, to Miro steering the ship, and finally to Oliver learning new tricks; it’s been a busy and exciting stretch.

Every month we’re chipping away at Oliver’s Tale, piece by piece, turning it from scattered ideas into a living, breathing world. Thanks for following along with our little indie adventure 💙

Your interest really keeps us going. Stay tuned, because next month we’ve got even more fun things to show (and maybe a surprise or two).