It has been a little while since my last update, but if you were worried about Oliver’s Tale , take a deep breath. The project is safe and sound! I have just been so deep in the "making" mode that I haven't had a spare second to step away and write new post, sorry for that 😊 I have some incredible things to share with you today. We have a brand new set of gear for Oliver and a high resolution blockout of the ship. Breaking Free from Subscriptions Before I jump into the project updates, let me share an interesting journey I recently embarked on. I have decided to switch my entire workflow to free software or perpetual licenses. By moving away from monthly costs, I can save those funds and put them to much better use. This change allows me to pay the talented people helping me more generously, ensuring we have everything we need to bring this project to life. Here is a little cheat sheet for fellow devs: Photoshop → Photopea (Dektop app) or Affinity Maya/Houdini → Blender Jetbrains Rider  → Visual Studio Code + Intellij keybindings Substance Designer → Steam Perceptual license Substance Painter → Steam Perceptual license + Free DLC! 3DCoat - 3DCoat Textura Perceptual license A Flying Ship to Call Home I have been working to bring the main hub to a state where you will truly enjoy spending your time. Since this ship is the heart of the adventure, it needs a name that feels just right. I am looking for something that captures its spirit, perhaps something inspiring for an adventure, and I would love to hear what kind of name you think fits a home in the clouds. If you compare this version to my previous posts, you can really see how much the ship has evolved. The Workshop:  This is the cozy corner where Oliver will tinker with materials and craft his new gear for the journey ahead. The Captain’s Deck:  This area is the brain of the ship, featuring the captain’s wheel where you will take control and steer your way through the skies. The Kitchen:  Oliver is going to need his strength, so this kitchen is where he will cook up hearty meals to boost his stats. Tier 2 Set is Here! I am so excited to finally show off the Tier 2 gear. We worked hard to make sure this set reflects Oliver’s growth, showing him becoming more mature and serious while still keeping that fun, hard rock adventure energy. It is a big step up from his starting look and really shows how far he has come. We really wanted Oliver's new look to feel a bit more rebellious. As he matures, he is trading in his old gear for this leather jacket and heavy duty boots, giving him a bit of that hard rock edge he needs for the journey ahead. Listening to the World We also have some exciting updates about the audio side of the game. Sound is what truly breathes life into the environment, and we have been busy layering in the atmosphere to make every location feel real. Here is a little preview of how the adventure is starting to sound: This is a place where ancient powers once emerged, each corner of the temple is being built to make it one of the most mysterious and immersive locations in the game so far. It feels great to see all these pieces finally clicking into place as the world of Oliver’s Tale  grows. Thank you for following along and supporting this dream. I can't wait to show you what comes next as we get closer to the finish line.

Hey, friend! Thank you so much for following my blog. It's incredibly inspiring to see how many of you are interested in what I and my mini-crew are doing. Lately, I've been thinking about why I'm still doing this . Did it come from a need to prove something to myself, and probably to others? In the beginning, it was definitely like that. But now that initial motivation has faded, and what's left actually feels so much better. I keep working on this game because, for me, making it is like playing a game. Just like gaming, it lets me escape reality, find that perfect 'flow', and eventually, share what I've managed to create. It takes me right back to how I played with Lego as a kid: I'd sit on the carpet in front of huge pile of Lego bricks for hours, completely absorbed, just trying to build something that would make my mom smile. Fun fact: I spent so much time on that carpet that it completely shaved the hair off the front of my shins. Small price to pay for fun though 😊 Saying all that let's jump in to a showcase part! The world humanity have lost Like any piece of art, we hope our game tells a story. It all started in 1997. In our lore, this is the year the world was touched by The Strand of Magic , flipping the laws of physics as we know them. With this incredible new power, humanity built wonders: cities reached for the clouds, and shimmering silver towers rose on the surface of the moon. I'm so excited to show you. This stunning piece was brought to life by our incredibly talented artist, Margo , who perfectly captured the scale and feel of what we're imagining. That artwork is going to be used in our announcement trailer 😉 Reaching New Heights in the Temple Now that we've put the finishing touches on the base art for the Temple's interior, it's time to step outside and start climbing! Our very first task: building a fun climbing puzzle. Here is how raw idea looked like☝️ From there, it took a good bit of time to get things feeling just right . We tweaked our locomotion system, adjusted all the little settings, and after a lot of back-and-forth, here’s what we have to show for it! And here is what we managed to achieve for now 🙂 Home Oliver, is going to be exploring the vast Cloud Archipelago. With countless islands floating in the sky, he'll need a special way to get around. From the very beginning, this ship was a core part of the game's design. We wanted it to be more than a vehicle; we wanted it to be the player's mobile homestead. It's the safe haven you'll return to after an adventure, a place to tinker with your gear, cook a warm meal, and prepare to leap down to the next island. So, allow me to introduce the ship that Oliver will call home. We've named it the Arkenflight , and here's a little look at it's history. The Flying City:  Our early concepts were a bit too grand. The first ship was so massive it could have held a small village inside!😁 We loved the scale, but it didn't have that personal "home" feeling we wanted. Getting Cozy in 3D:  For our second attempt, we focused on creating a much smaller, cozier vibe. We also modeled it in 3D immediately, which let us test how it actually felt to be on board while playing. Refining the Details:  In current (not final) iteration is all about polishing that design. We opened up the deck for more room, tweaked the stern so it plays nicely with the game's camera, and shifted the aesthetic towards classic 19th-century vessels to nail down the final style. Bringing Oliver to Life As you may have heard in our previous posts, we're using performance capture to create our reveal trailer. I wanted to pull back the curtain and show you how we bring Oliver's movements to life. It all starts with our animator, Igor . He first records himself acting out the scenes. We then use a tool called Metahuman  to translate his real-world movements onto a 3D animated skeleton, which we can then bring into Unity. Interestingly, we tried using the same capture process for his facial animation, but the results were a little too unpredictable. To get the emotion just right, we decided to do it the old-fashioned way: every expression you'll see on Oliver's face has been meticulously hand-animated  by Igor. It's a true testament to his skill! Finding the Rhythm of Combat Here's a challenge we're constantly working on: how do you make combat feel  good? We've been iterating on it nonstop, and to be honest, it's a lot harder than we first anticipated. "Good feel" is a delicate dance between responsive controls, snappy animations, impactful VFX, and satisfying sounds. All those elements have to work together to create a unique rhythm. After a lot of experiments, we had a breakthrough: we decided to focus on the rhythm first . Our entire strategy now is to perfect that core beat and then make sure every other element follows it. See if you can feel what we mean. As you watch the GIF, try counting along: One... two... three...  😉 From figuring out the rhythm of a punch to designing a ship that truly feels like home, every step is a mix of big challenges and small victories. It really does feel like I'm a kid again with that giant pile of Lego bricks, slowly but surely, piece by piece, something we're incredibly proud of is starting to take shape. As always, thank you so much for following along on this journey. Your support and interest mean the world to our little crew. Talk to you in the next one!

Hello there! 👋 Yep, we’ve decided to shift our Steam page release date! Turns out making a trailer that truly shines needs a bit more polish (and, well… an actual UI on screen 😅). So we’re giving ourselves more time to get everything in place before we roll it out. Even though summer holidays slowed us down a bit, I’ve still got some cool things to share with you, my friend! We’ve added several shiny newthings, and something special.... Our trailer will feature music written by an actual rock band member! 🎸🔥 Cute & Cozy New Assets Let’s start with something warm and charming, the little props for our trailer where Oliver shares his story. No spoilers here, but yes… we absolutely needed a cup and a globe (don’t ask why 😄).   Oh, and check out the cup design! I drew the print myself in good old Photoshop. It felt like stepping back in time to when I used to doodle vectors for websites😊 such a fun throwback! Razorfang Got Upgrades If you’ve been following my earlier posts, you know we often save time by grabbing assets from the Unity Asset Store and then reshaping them to fit our world. That’s exactly what we did with Razorfang! 🐀⚔️ We started with the “ Rat Brute ” base and gave it a makeover, by adding custom elements that match the tone and style of Oliver’s Tale . Razorfang is one of the Ashborn - remnants of humanity left behind on an Earth devastated by the Last War. To survive, these people twisted their own genomes, becoming the half-humans we know as Ashborn. Breathing Life into Ancient Stones of Temple While the team is busy with characters, gameplay, and the trailer, I’ve been focusing on the environment art pipeline and putting it all to the test in our most polished level yet: the Temple of Five Magics. 🏛️✨ This ancient sanctuary once safeguarded the Core of Five Magics, protecting humanity mystical power. That is… until the great magical surge erupted and changed everything forever. As you can see, the Temple isn’t completely abandoned… Stay tuned for the next post to discover who now inhabits it, after it was lifted into the skies as one of the floating islands of the Sky Archipelago. New material for the wood Our texturing pipeline is finally in place, which means I can keep adding new materials to the project. Today’s newcomer is wood! 🌲✨ Created in Substance Designer, it comes with height map, so it can naturally mix with moss, dirt, and other details, just like the rest of the temple’s materials. And here’s the magic it brings when applied to a more complex asset, like these stairs. Oliver’s Climbing Keeps Improving! This month, our gameplay designer Gleb has been hard at work refining the climbing system—so Oliver can gracefully scramble over obstacles instead of getting stuck in front of them. Step by step, he’s becoming a true adventurer! 🧗‍♂️✨ We’ve Got a Soundtrack for Our Trailer! This update is a special one, because for the very first time, I get to share a piece of our music with you! And what makes it even more exciting is that it was composed by a real rock star: Dmitrii Klochkov from the band Nervy! The composition was crafted to perfectly match the trailer’s voice acting and visuals, so don’t worry about the longer pauses, they’re all intentional. I also asked Dmitrii about his inspiration while working on the track, and he shared a story that feels a lot like Oliver’s own journey. Just like our hero, Dmitrii is in the middle of an adventure, moving to a new and unknown country, unsure what lies ahead, but certain that something exciting is waiting for him. That’s it for this month’s update, my friend! From cozy new props and upgraded creatures to temple, fresh materials, climbing adventures, and even a rock-star soundtrack! It’s been a busy (and exciting!) ride. Thank you for following along and cheering us on it really means the world. 💖 Stay tuned, because the next chapter is just around the corner, and I can’t wait to show you what’s coming next!

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) .

Hey there, friend! June may be a month for sun and relaxation, but behind the scenes, we've been deep in the code mines. 🌞🛠️ The Core of Five Magics just got a shiny new look! At last! The texturing pipeline is alive and kicking! I’ve officially textured the first in-game asset using our new Blender-to-Unity workflow. Now I can model and paint meshes directly in Blender using a synced material library, ensuring perfect 1:1 visual parity between what I see in Blender and what appears in Unity. No more surprises on import - what you see is truly what you get! Couldn’t find the right vertex paint addon for Blender... so I made one! 😎 Meet Tinker Vertex Paint Utilities , built to fit our exact needs. To capture this evolution, I whipped up a little script that snaps screenshots every time I save the scene. 📸 Razorfang and Stabber just got a new tricks! The heavy-hitter Razorfang just got even more dangerous - our gameplay designer gave him a ground slam attack. Dodge it, or brace for serious damage! Nevermind Oliver's white suite😊 It is little WIP accident On top of that, Razorfang is getting new gear and equipment pieces to better fit our post-apocalyptic fantasy world more rugged, more brutal, and more in line with the universe’s vibe. Jast look at those fancy googles! 😎 Stabber also got a major behavior upgrade — it now reacts faster, moves more unpredictably, and is much harder to outmaneuver in combat. Facelifting Oliver: From Hero to Trailer Superstar🤩 As you might remember from our previous dev blog posts, we’re fully committing to performance capture for our trailer - and that meant Oliver’s face had to level up in a big way. From improved facial topology to proper eye movement and, yes, even adding teeth 😅 We quickly realized that to get believable lip movement, the face sculpt’s rest pose had to include a slightly open mouth - which, at first, made Oliver look a bit like a confused zombie. 🧟‍♂️ But hey, it works! Karina, our 3D artist have been hard at work making sure he can express emotion naturally and believably on screen. It’s a big step forward for bringing our protagonist to life! First Look at the Reveal Trailer! And since we’re talking trailers - here’s a sneak peek at the opening shot! The basic lighting and composition are in place, and it’s already starting to feel just right. We’re definitely on the right track! Thank you! And beyond all that, we’ve made tons of small improvements across the board. Thanks for sticking with our little friends-and-family team of five, building this home-brewed project after hours. Your views and comments mean the world to us — they truly keep us going. 💙 Stay tuned for more!

Hey, friend! Thanks for stopping by our dev blog, I am glad to have you here! In this update, I’ll be sharing how we’re bringing Oliver’s expressions to life with facial animation, plus a peek into how we’re crafting textures and lighting to make our levels shine (sometimes literally). And that’s not all! There’s more behind-the-scenes goodness inside. Let’s dive in! Oliver is alive! Let me be completely honest with you...When our cinematic designer first pitched the idea of giving Oliver a full facial rig, I was very  skeptical. I mean - come on... a tiny team... working after hours, pulling off facial animation with actual acting? Yeah, right. But here we are! Thanks to a trusty phone camera and a bit of creative hacking, we’ve cobbled together our own homebrewed performance capture pipeline, and it’s actually working! This is first test of performance caprure for Oliver, our animator recorded himself and amanage to transfer theat to actual game rig! 🤯 Next level texturing! Last month, I mentioned we were switching our pipeline over to Blender... Well, good news: it’s working beautifully ! I’ve set up a seamless system where tweaks I make in Blender materials transfer straight into Unity with just one click. No more back-and-forth chaos.. just fast, smooth, gorgeous results for our level art! And it’s not just the pipeline that’s looking good — we’ve also cooked up three brand-new procedural materials  in Substance Designer! Rust, Moss, and Metal trim. Our master shader  got a serious upgrade too! It now supports height-based blending across three layers  and color remapping  for each one - giving us incredible flexibility to fine-tune the look of every surface in the world. Texturing our environments has never been this powerful (or fun)! Dont forget to click play ☝️ Meet Stabber! This little maniac is the newest recruit in the Ashborn faction - a fearless infiltrator with a wild streak and zero chill. Small in size, big on chaos. You’ll know when he’s around... Oh, and he’s not just for show — Stabber’s already got gameplay hooks! He’s aggressive, relentless, and has one goal: hunt down Oliver and take him out . Better keep your distance… or don’t. He loves  a chase. As a cherry on top we have the new model of the staff ofr Mithras, the guadian of Electrum. That’s it for this update - from facial animation breakthroughs to smarter shaders and a stabby little menace joining the chaos, we’ve been busy! Thanks for following our journey as we keep tinkering away on Oliver’s Tale . As always, your support means the world. More surprises coming soon, stay tuned!

We Blender! This moment has come, I decided to switch our 3D modeling pipelines to Blender, but do it in my own style... By RECREATING ALL MY MAYA SCRIPTS AND HOTKEYS ! 🤘 ☝️ This is how I felt doing all that, it was a lot of fun! That means more than just porting shortcuts — I’m recreating the feel  of Maya, the little behaviors I’ve come to expect. Modeling? Pretty smooth. My precious pie menus look even better in Blender! 😍 UVs though? Whole different beast. Blender’s got its own weird philosophy there, so I had to bend a little and make it work my way. Oliver is getting emotional! Our rigger’s making serious moves with Oliver’s facial rig.. and honestly, we’re getting more than we ever dreamed of. Nevermind lack of teeth, we have them somewhere! 😊 Looks like we’re about to have an emotional  Oliver lighting up our cutscenes! Explosives arrived! We have our first invironment gameplay object configured and ready to explode! We call them Chaore Crate . A reinforced transport crate housing unrefined Chaore - an unstable, mana-reactive mineral dredged from the deep rift veins. Though inert under controlled conditions, Chaore violently destabilizes when exposed to kinetic shock, heat, or concentrated magic. Highly unstable ore. Handle with care.. or don’t! Our Gameplay Ability System allows us creating rather complex gameplay behavior witout single line of code 😎 Robots on the move! Our robot faction’s getting serious upgrades, most of them are now strutting around with root motion-based locomotion. Smooth, synced, and just a bit terrifying. Sharpshooter Jumper According to the lore, these robots are ancient machines left to rust on Forge Island - a massive factory that once mass-produced them during so called Last War. Meet Gleb - New member of the team! We have Game designer now! Gleb is jumping in to help us craft, tweak, and fine-tune the gameplay mechanics. Hi, I’m Gleb! I’m a junior game designer working on implementing gameplay mechanics for the project. I love digging into how different systems interact with each other, plus, I’m a huge fan of immersive sims and good old boomer shooters. Basically, he’s here to make sure playing the game feels as awesome as it looks. The Chaore Create you saw above was already set up but Gleb🤩 Wrapping it up! That’s it for this update! Between Blender wizardry, emotional robots, and Gleb joining the squad, things are really starting to take shape. We’re pushing forward one system at a time — and honestly, it’s starting to feel real . By the way! Don’t forget to   Sign up for our Demo  if you didn't do it yet😉 And to get news ahead of time - subscribe for my socials: Threads , X , Bluesky Thanks for following along — more magic (and chaos) coming next month!

Oliver Moves Better! I’ve implemented a system that lets Oliver adjust his strafe direction based on pelvis rotation, inspired by an 80lvl article by Albin Thunström . The real challenge was getting it to work with Malber’s Animal controller , which powers Oliver and all our other characters. Here’s how it works: Masked Animator Layer for the upper body, handling everything above the pelvis. Pelvis Proxy Animator Layer to control pelvis rotation. A custom script that “freezes” pelvis movement from the strafe animation. It’s up and running, but still needs polishing and tweaking animations, timings, and fixing foot clipping. That led to our next feature: Runtime Feet IK I added a script that keeps Oliver’s feet firmly on the ground, making his movement feel more grounded and realistic. Oliver's Tale intro cutscene - first look Our animator, Igor Cheltsov , has started work on the intro cutscene. Here’s a quick peek! We’re aiming to capture a sense of adventure, mystery, and fantasy all at once. We want to convey spirit of adventure, mystery and fantasy in as condensed way as possible We also took a leap of faith with facial animations  for Mithras and Oliver. They look promising so far, thanks to Carrie (our 3D artist) who added extra details to bring those faces to life. Isn't he cute?! High-Poly Staff for Mithras Finally, we have a high-poly version of Mithras’s staff; he’s an older character who could use a little support. It’s a small detail, but we hope it adds depth to his persona Rat Brute is getting smart! We haven't forgotten about our Rat Brute! You might not realize it from a single snapshot, but we've pulled off a complex blend of pathfinding, AI behavior, and Root Motion animations. It’s so clever, it can even hop between platforms if it decides to chase Oliver! Stay tuned for more updates soon! 👍👍

Hello, friend! Let's look together at how Oliver's Tale progressed this month! Telegraphs! If you've played action RPGs, you've probably seen glowing circles, flashing lines, or ominous red zones appear on the ground during combat. These are called telegraphs - visual indicators that warn players about incoming danger. Think of telegraphs as a game’s way of saying, “Hey, something bad is about to happen here - maybe move?”  They give players a chance to react, dodge, or prepare for an attack. Fully parametrized, no textures, pure Math & Magic 🪄 In short, telegraphs are an essential part of making combat feel fair, and satisfying. So next time you see a glowing pattern appear under your character’s feet… run! Telegraph Circle shader A Game-Changer for Tail Movement Tails are extremely hard to animate so they look natural, and in our game you Animating tails in games is no easy feat. Traditional animation methods can make tails feel stiff or out of place, especially when you have a lot of creatures or characters with tails. We knew that Oliver's Tale is going to have a lot of tails.🤓 - Sorry, Couldn't resist Instead of manually animating each tail frame by frame, we calculate tail animations procedurally  in real-time. This means the tails move and react dynamically, adjusting to the character's motions as they walk, run, or jump. New set of equipment for Oliver is almost there! Let me introduce you the high-poly model of Oliver's second-tier armor! It is designed to reflect intricate flame motifs, sharp lines, and fire accents that make it feel both intense and fierce. It’s not just about looking cool, though; every detail reflects Oliver’s character. I practiced my vector graphics drawing skills a bit 😇 Wait for next month post to see what we are preparing as a head piece😉 Immersive Combat Experience We’ve just introduced a new set of damage reactions to make combat feel even more immersive and dynamic. Here’s what we've added: Animation Reactions  – When a character takes damage, they’ll react with specific animations considering attack direction. Flash Highlight  – To give even more feedback, we’ve introduced a flash highlight  that briefly lights up the character when they take damage. Orientation Towards Attacker  – Now, characters will orient themselves towards the attacker after taking damage. On top of having those reactions we have Death state utilizing Ragdoll physics now! These reactions are designed to add a layer of realism, making each hit and attack feel impactful. Wrapping Up for Now This is just a glimpse of what we’ve managed to accomplish this month. Behind the scenes, we've started crafting the intro cinematic for the game, started shifting all our characters to use root motion by default, and rolled out a bunch of important fixes to smooth things out. I am thrilled with the progress so far and can’t wait to share even more updates with you soon. And if you haven’t already, don’t forget to Sign up for our Demo  if you didn't do it yet😉 And to get news ahead of time - subscribe for my socials: Threads , X , Bluesky Thank you for reading!

Hello dear friend, and welcome! I have so many things to share with you! Soon you will learn how did we decide to flip the game upside down, so Oliver’s story will never be the same! Let's make friends! In January we decided to go social and share our game updates on X , BlueSky and Threads , and I can tell you I am not the best at it, got around 30 subscribers in a month 🤓 ... At the same time Karina started her Threads about Oliver's Tale and got 120 subscribers over first day! 🤯 Now we make our first steps at building connections with people and talking about our game, and actually.. both of enjoy it a lot! Think Tetris, But with Swords & Gems! 🔷🗡️ In Oliver’s Tale, character progression isn’t just about leveling up - it’s about strategically arranging your inventory. Picture Tetris, but instead of clearing lines, you’re creating powerful synergies: place a gem next to a sword, and it grants +10 Damage. Sword receives 3⚡Electrum damage after Crystal is placed next to it Every item’s position matters, turning your inventory into a puzzle where the right combinations unlock powerful boosts. It’s not just collecting gear it’s engineering your build! 💪 We flipped the table… Yes! We’ve overhauled Oliver’s Tale’s demo to drop players straight into the heart of its perilous world. From the first minutes, you’ll battle the threats of fractured sky islands. Forge Island is long forgotten and overgrown factory of military robots where ancient menace seems to be revived. Concept art by Anna Kulakovskaia ( Art station ) The demo throws players into chaos immediately: after a mid-air ambush, you crash-land on Forge Island, a storm-battered land overrun by hostile machines. No slow introductions, just relentless exploration, combat, and unraveling the mysteries of this world. BTW Sign up for our Demo if you didn't do it yet😉 First of the Ashborn is here! The first mini-boss in Oliver’s Tale’s demo: Razorfang, a twisted fusion of human and rat. Once a man, he’s now a harbinger of the Ashborn - a faction that embraced brutal mutations to endure Earth’s collapse. Meanwhile Oliver is dressing up with T2 set of gear! Here is the sneak pick on T2 set for Oliver that he would obtain on Forge island. On behalf of whole mini-team of Oliver's tale, thank you for you interest in our game. 💖

Hi fellows! Welcome to the first dev blog from the Tinkers team! Yes, that's what we call ourselves because "tinkering" perfectly captures the spirit of what we do - crafting, tweaking, and bringing imaginative worlds to life. But let's cut to the chase - you’re here for the juicy behind-the-scenes scoop on what we’re cooking up! Mithras Has Entered the Game! Our first NPC character is officially rigged and live in the game engine. Say hello to Mithras , the Watchman of Electrum , a timeless guardian and embodiment of order. Mithras concept art Mithras character in game It is still WIP, in the future we are going to improve shader effects and add procedural tail animation. Robots learned how to navigate! Our ancient military robots, the first hostile faction in Oliver's Tale , have mastered navigation! They can now patrol levels, chase Oliver, and avoid obstacles. We are polishing paper design of that faction now, their abilities and synergies. Spinner abilities design implies that robot making bullet hell on distance and deadly on short range, at the same time it becomes vulnerable after using melee ability Brace yourselves, these relentless adversaries are almost ready to bring the challenge! Itemization and ability systems are coming together! While the robots are learning to chase, I’m focused on connecting Items with Abilities. Equipment will now define both passive and active abilities, allowing players to customize their playstyle. By tinkering with gear, you'll be able to forge a unique approach to every challenge. Here I am equipping swords to first and second slots, then activating second slot that shows that I have ability for Left mouse button Stay tuned as we bring this exciting feature to life! Wishing you all a joyful and magical Christmas holiday! 🎄