The serpent has been sealed, the screws are loose, and our website continues its rebellion. Join Risen Ancients for another fortnight of gothic game development, growing guides and questionable decisions.
There comes a point in every game developer's life when they look at their growing collection of unfinished projects and think, Perhaps I should finish something. A terrifying thought. Almost as frightening as opening Unity and discovering yesterday's perfectly functioning code has developed free will. Another fortnight has crawled out of the crypt, and against all reasonable expectations, things at Risen Ancients have actually moved forward. Our snake has been locked in its coffin, our screws have started multiplying, and the website has developed a taste for causing trouble. Grab a torch. Mind the skeletons.
After weeks of testing, rebuilding and questioning our life choices, Serpent's Path has reached its development freeze. One hundred handcrafted puzzles, procedural challenges beyond them, gothic artwork, mobile controls and enough automated tests to make a laboratory technician weep. The serpent refused to remain simple: it demanded cursed walls, better animation, performance improvements and a complete personality transplant. And we obliged. Does frozen mean released? Unfortunately not. Google Play still awaits its tribute: final physical-device checks, audio approval, store configuration and administrative sorcery. But we've stopped adding features simply because we can. The game is built. Getting it into people's hands is the next boss fight.
With the serpent entombed, attention has turned to Unthreaded, our mobile screw-removal and colour-matching puzzle game. Sounds peaceful, doesn't it? That's how they get you. It's now a functioning 3D prototype tested on a Samsung tablet: nine screws removed, three matching operations completed, and performance hovering around 60 updates per second. We've also built the first 20 campaign levels, backed by automated tests. The challenge now is making puzzles interesting without inspiring players to throw their phones into the nearest lake. We're aiming for 200 levels, because apparently a hundred snake puzzles weren't enough.
Every game needs saving, settings and input controls. Every new game seems determined to make us build those systems again. An excellent way to waste time, and we've become accomplished at it. So we've begun the Risen Ancients Unity Framework, a collection of reusable organs for our future creations. A little persistence here, input handling there, and preferably a settings system that doesn't freeze the entire game. The first four packages passed extensive automated tests in isolated Unity environments. They're not ready to be sewn into every monster yet, but the foundations are promising. Less rebuilding; more actual game-making. Revolutionary, apparently.
While the games occupy the dungeon, our guides have been multiplying upstairs. At this rate we'll need a larger library, preferably with secret passages and an undead librarian. V Rising has reached 47 published boss guides, though we've been correcting ordering and navigation so visitors can move between them without summoning a portal. Satisfactory and Alchemy Factory have gained published guides. Project Zomboid is waiting in the shadows with survival content in preparation, while Factorio, Raft and other guides remain in the pipeline. We're resisting the urge to release everything in one avalanche. Publishing fifty pages and discovering forty-nine problems isn't an enjoyable afternoon.
Our website has been demonstrating that the undead aren't the only things capable of returning from the grave. Broken navigation. Strange layouts. Pages that worked yesterday and suddenly decide they don't recognise you. Webflow even spent days refusing to create a blog post while happily reading the entire site. Impressive for a website builder. Still, risenancients.com continues growing. We're improving guide layouts, navigation and artwork, while working through privacy notices, analytics consent and preparation for advertising. Nothing says dark fantasy empire quite like cookie compliance. But these things matter if this is to become sustainable rather than an elaborate hobby that devours every spare evening.
The Media side hasn't been forgotten. It's lurking in the background, plotting. We've been looking at existing gameplay footage, including unused Voidtrain recordings, and considering how to turn it into entertaining videos. We're also exploring reusable production workflows for updates, trailers and future ScrollStory projects. The aim is for Media to support the wider Risen Ancients machine rather than become another hungry monster demanding attention. Nothing major has been released from this work yet, but the plans are taking shape.
For once, we're trying something unusual: restraint. Serpent's Path needs to escape the dungeon and reach Google Play. Unthreaded needs more levels, testing and a difficulty curve that's satisfyingly cruel rather than accidentally impossible. Our shared Unity framework needs further validation, and Game Guides needs to keep growing without the website collapsing beneath its ambition. Bloodhold, Heresy Falls and the other creatures in our vault? They're still there. Watching. Waiting. Probably judging us. But they can wait. Building a gaming empire is difficult enough without raising every monster in the graveyard at once. It's messy, occasionally ridiculous, slightly sleep-deprived progress. But progress nonetheless. Until next time, keep your torches lit, your swords sharp, and whatever you do, don't trust the snake.
The Risen Ancients Team
Enjoy watching our little empire rise from the crypt? You can help keep the candles burning by buying us a coffee. Every bit of support helps us continue building games, creating guides and giving perfectly innocent computers increasingly unreasonable instructions.