When the game was first taking shape, the mechanics were already doing something really special. Drawing runes to summon creatures and hold off waves of villagers felt immediately different. Even in its earliest form, the tension between summoning and defending stood out. But visually, the game hadn’t quite caught up with the ideas behind it.

Early builds were stitched together with whatever we could find or make quickly, which was enough to prototype the gameplay but didn’t quite reflect the tone we were aiming for. So we started refining the art direction with three key ideas in mind: medieval, dark magic, and runes.

A big part of this process was rethinking how players take in the action. 

Originally, the screen was split across three different cameras, one for the castle, one for runes, and one for the villagers. It made sense at the time, but ended up being too busy. After a lot of iteration, we collapsed everything into a single view, which helped the whole game feel more cohesive and less overwhelming.

We also redesigned the spellbook and upgrade system to better fit the game’s tone and flow. What used to be a placeholder UI now feels real and solid.

Enemies went through their own transformation. 

They started off as simple pixel shadows, but have since evolved into more stylized, expressive characters that still feel like they’ve crawled out of some cursed forest. We're still learning and improving, especially when it comes to pixel art, but each iteration brings the world closer to what we imagined.

Since we're a very small team, a lot of the visual effects and animation are being developed in parallel with gameplay, like the rune effects, enemy spawns and upgrade selection visuals. It’s a lot, but watching it all start to click together has been incredibly motivating.

This project is constantly evolving. Every time we polish one piece, it opens up new ideas or possibilities elsewhere. We’re aiming to keep improving it across the board, and yes, that includes the full build currently in the works.

If you’re curious, we’re soon gonna be running a closed playtest through our Discord. We’d love to hear what you think!