Welcome to TEAM HORAY's Sephiria Devlog! ːdungreedogː
Haven't played Sephiria yet? Let me give you a light introduction to the game.
Sephiria is an action roguelite with an inventory building system. In a small rabbit village perched atop a doomed tower, you must descend to escape impending destruction. You can become stronger by cleverly placing artifacts with various effects. Enjoy the meticulously crafted pixel art, encounter unique characters in each region, and defeat the enemies before you as you make your way down!
The topic of our first development journal is "The Journey to Developing Sephiria". As this is our first entry, we wanted to share our experiences from various project development processes and the journey to creating Sephiria, rather than focusing on the game's content. From the next development journal onwards, we'll bring you Sephiria's in-game systems and our development challenges. Stay tuned!
The Team's First Release, Dungreed
We released Dungreed, our first game, in 2018. ːdungreedː
It was the first release by complete novices, and our inexperience was quite evident. Nevertheless, we received love and support far beyond our expectations after the release.
Driven by a desire to repay this love, we consistently worked on patches. As a result, Dungreed was continually improved and expanded with various content from its release in 2018 to 2023.
New Game Development, First Failure
After releasing several updates for Dungreed, we decided to create a new game and pondered deeply about what kind of game to make.
During this process, we developed an action adventure game called Fairylights, but due to numerous internal issues, we ultimately abandoned the project.
(I've brought a short image of the game from back then. Although the project was scrapped, the art was truly awesome!)
Repeated Failures
Let me continue the story of Sephiria. We began developing Sephiria in 2021. This time, we decided to try a top-down perspective.
Long before it became known as Sephiria, the early prototype was closer to a 'strategy game'. Players couldn't attack directly and instead used subordinates to attack. However, as we developed it, our team encountered various insurmountable problems, and this plan was eventually scrapped.
In the early stages of development, we had made a roguelite game with Dungreed, and we were full of desire to try a new genre.
Looking back, it was truly a foolish idea. We were naively trying to discard the experience we had built up through our previous service.
After several attempts ended in failure, we began to worry that 'at this rate, we won't even be able to properly release a single game, let alone complete a project'. Eventually, we decided to return to the roguelite genre of our previous game.
And now, Sephiria
After deciding to embark on roguelite genre development, we set the goal of the Sephiria project as 'improving the disappointing aspects of our previous work and further strengthening the good parts'.
As a result, we were able to implement more intuitive and diverse actions, greater build diversity, and add new systems like inventory building and multiplayer.
We released the demo version of the game through Steam Next Fest in 2024, and thanks to the passionate feedback from everyone, we were able to further improve the game. I feel that the game has developed tremendously since the June 2024 Next Fest. These achievements would have been absolutely impossible without the help of players.
In Closing
Our team is currently adding content beyond the demo version while gradually refining systems that were lacking in the existing demo.
We are doing our best to aim for an Early Access release in the first half of 2025. While the specific release plans are still under discussion, we will announce them via Steam once decided!
We will bring development journals whenever possible when time permits. Have a happy end of the year!