Hi everyone,
this is Riccardo (RiciRick). I want to finally give you an honest and complete update about Vorax, because you deserve clarity.

First of all, I owe you an apology for the long silence. Many of you bought Vorax in Early Access expecting regular updates, fixes and communication, and that didn’t happen in the way it should have.

What really happened

Vorax was developed over more than three years. During most of that time, I was also managing a completely separate real-world project: the full renovation and setup of our new company offices, partly rented to third parties.
This meant extremely heavy work weeks (often 60–70 hours) throughout 2023–2024.
The combination of both responsibilities eventually led to full burnout.

At the same time, the original team behind Vorax was far larger than what we can sustain today. Over the last two years the studio had to downsize significantly, and the development team is now much smaller.

That made it impossible to continue updating Vorax at the scale it required.

Just to clarify a common misconception:
Vorax has covered only a very small fraction of its development costs.
Continuing as if everything were fine — pushing rushed patches on top of a shaky base — would have only caused more problems and frustration for everyone.

A different approach

Instead of pretending everything was fine, I decided to step back and restart from something smaller, realistic and sustainable.

That smaller project is a new experimental game I’m currently working on, internally known as The Apartment (working title) from this experience came also the inspiration for NO CLEAN START. ( TBA 2026 ).

both are contained projects that I can handle almost entirely on my own, with limited external help.

I want to be very clear about this:

Working on it helped me regain energy, motivation, and the joy of being a game developer again.
It also allowed me to learn new technical solutions and workflows that I wish I had already had during Vorax.

This doesn’t erase the problems of the past, but it allowed me to rebuild my ability to develop games in a healthy and sustainable way.

So what does this mean for Vorax?

Updates and bug fixes have been paused.

Vorax is not forgotten, and I still care deeply about it.

The goal is not to abandon the project, but to return to it only when there is a realistic way to rebuild it properly instead of layering temporary fixes on top of existing issues.

I can’t give dates or promises yet. Any roadmap at this point would be unreliable.

About the new projects currently in development

Early alpha builds on IndieGala and itch.io will be free.
Anyone from the Vorax community will be welcome to try them.

Feedback from players will help shape both this new project and the future direction of Vorax.

For Vorax owners on Steam

We are currently evaluating different options together with Valve on how to best support players who purchased Vorax in Early Access.

One possibility is offering No Clean Start to Vorax owners ( The Apartment, instead will probably be free ). Another possibility is offering a future reworked version of Vorax instead.

Any such initiative would depend entirely on Valve’s approval, so I can’t make promises yet — but these are the directions we are actively exploring.

About community criticism

I’m not asking moderators to remove negative posts.
Players have every right to feel disappointed or frustrated.

All I ask is that discussions remain civil and respectful toward each other.

Closing words

The goal now is to rebuild sustainably, deliver upcoming projects properly, and — when the time is right — return to Vorax with the care and structure it truly deserves.

Thank you to everyone who supported and will support Die Young, Vorax, and everyone who took the time to give feedback.

— Riccardo