July 2025

Where It All Began

REVOLITH started life as scribbles. Why? I've always loved real British pub fruit machines with actual spinning reels. Those machines are slowly being replaced by screens and touchscreens - and, ironically, my game is also on a screen with touch buttons. But I've made sure the reels actually spin properly. Don't get me wrong, there's some magic behind the scenes, but the reels maintain their order, so nudging one down shows you exactly what would genuinely be sitting there next in real life.

August 2025

Chasing the Right Engine

Before REVOLITH found its home, it bounced through a couple of other engines first. I gave Unity a go, but it felt like overkill for a project this size and slowed me right down. Next up was GDevelop, where I actually got a working spinning reel up and running - it was rough, and very time-consuming. In the end, I needed more control over the code, so I made the move to Godot, using my existing C# knowledge to build it.

September 2025

The First Spin

Once I'd properly settled into Godot, getting a reel to spin convincingly turned out to be a lot harder than it sounds. What I've ended up with works nicely. Could it be better? Probably - but I'm developing this solo.

October 2025

Building the Rig

This month was about turning a single reel into multiple spinning reels and building out the base of the game. I also added a shop between rounds where you spend your winnings on new symbols, upgrades, and features for your machine - that's where the deckbuilding side of REVOLITH really started to take shape.

I was also taking inspiration from games like Balatro and Luck be a Landlord, particularly the way they let relatively simple rules combine into increasingly ridiculous builds. I wanted to capture that feeling of finding a combination that suddenly makes your machine go completely off the rails, while keeping the actual spinning reels and physical machine behaviour at the heart of REVOLITH.

November 2025

Bosses Enter the Arena

Once the core loop felt solid, it also felt a bit too easy to break, so I started designing boss encounters whose whole job is to mess with the machine you've put together. Some hold the reels, some shrink your paylines, some just steal your cash - some even change how the machine works altogether.

December 2025

Taming the RNG

So much time was spent tweaking things because of the random number generation. The features and bosses you battle against had to be balanced carefully - challenging, but not impossible.

January 2026

Audio

Audio and sound effects: a lot of time went into finding SFX and music tracks that work throughout the game. This was harder and far more time-consuming than I expected. I settled on some amazing tracks by A. Cooper - check the credits for details!

February 2026

First Playtests

Handed the build over to a small group of friends and family. The feedback was a mix of encouraging and brutally honest. Big thanks to the playtesters and colleagues who kept suggesting features and bosses, and pointing out bugs I'd completely missed - a lot of what's good about this game exists because someone else spotted something I hadn't.

March 2026

Complete... But Too Easy

Completing the main mode, start to finish. The main feedback from testers? It was too easy - which, oddly, was still a good sign, since it meant the core loop clearly worked and just needed teeth. Interestingly, testers with more roguelike deckbuilder experience were completing the game fastest, while everyone else had a much harder time - which told me a lot about who I actually needed to balance for. Plenty of tweaks to rewards and features followed to balance the game further.

May 2026

All Modes Cleared

Big moment - playtester Dan became the first person to complete every included mode. It wasn't easy, but that's exactly the point of the harder modes.

July 2026

The Trailer

With the mechanics locked down, it was time to actually show people what REVOLITH looks like in motion. Editing really isn't my thing, so I hired someone through Fiverr to put a trailer together - handed over a pile of raw gameplay clips and got back something that actually captures how chaotic a good run can get. Steam capsule art was also commissioned, and although I liked it at the time, it was later changed.

August 2026

Getting Ready to Launch

More playtesting, more bug fixes, and lots more testing.

September 2026

Re-building the Logo

As mentioned, I'd paid for some store assets on Fiverr. But I decided the branding should feel as hand-made as the rest of the project. So I opened up FireAlpaca to start working on a new logo. Side note: FireAlpaca is genuinely an amazing image editor, closely resembling the very old Paint Shop Pro 8 (yes, I am that old). I drafted many ideas until colleague Ed suggested a Las Vegas-style sign to house the title. That clicked and worked nicely. From there it was a lot of layering, cleaning up, and playing with colours, saturation, and hue until the logo felt right.

Here's a screenshot showing FireAlpaca with the logo in progress:

If you'd like proof the logo was hand-drawn rather than AI-generated, you can grab the FireAlpaca project file below and load it up yourself using FireAlpaca, layers and all.

With the branding finally locked in, REVOLITH is on track to launch at the end of September 2026 - thanks for sticking with the journey this far.