Greetings to all of you, investigators, and special thanks to all of those who patiently waited on the updates for HEAVY AS STONE. Before we do a deep dive into what’s been going on behind the scenes, let’s bring everyone up to speed, shall we?
HEAVY AS STONE is an investigative horror RPG set in 1920s prohibition-era America. Investigate a series of deaths on behalf of the Atsmith Life Insurance Co., uncovering the relationship between these cases and the cause of your mysterious illness. Adapt to your disease and survive Terminal's seedy underbelly as you face the consequences of your search for answers.
Play as a detective in the 1920s America — you are Amir, a life insurance adjuster suffering from a mysterious affliction spreading through the town of Terminal
Investigate a series of deaths — your clients are dead or missing, so you’ll have to navigate the scenes of crime and build a coherent narrative for each case
Navigate a dangerous city — confront petty criminals, bootleggers and cultists, that plague the Terminal
Adapt to your illness — a disease known as “yellow wound” will cause you to hallucinate and develop Afflictions while you progress through the game
Reap the consequences — make difficult moral choices, align with conflicting groups and uncover connections between your condition and cases you are assigned to
HEAVY AS STONE originally started as an art test back in the early 2020. I wanted to make a detective’s office and play with different artstyles. Around this time I came up with the general look of the game and started adding some movement mechanics, and flashing out some other zones. This led to that, and before I knew it, I was already building a game! With inspiration from my favorite horror and Weird Fiction stories, mainly the “King in Yellow” by Robert W. Chambers, the baseline for the game has started to come together. All this time I was a solo developer, working on the game for a couple of hours on evenings, making every asset from scratch and trying to hone my game development skills over time and treating it like a fun hobby.
Years later, once the vertical slice for the game was done, around mid 2024, I decided that I want to work in this project full-time, and pitched my game to CRITICAL REFLEX, who agreed to partner with me. You may know them as publisher of games like Buckshot Roulette and Mouthwashing.
Since we started working together, I have gain access to resources, expertise and experience that a solo developer like me lacks. Now I have more freedom to develop my vision for HEAVY AS STONE, but have an ability to achieve a new level of polish for the game with access to a whole testing team, artists and sound designers, and, most importantly, time and ability to work on the game full-time.
And, of course, with the help of the publisher, the game would be localized for several languages, such as:
Spanish
Portugal
Traditional Chinese
Simplified Chinese
Japanese
Korean
Russian
Please, note, that this is not the final list of languages that will be available on release.
We hope that you are as excited about playing HEAVY AS STONE as we are excited to make it new-found resources. More information about the game, devlogs and teasers are to come in the following months.
Prepare to investigate.
Jøy & CRITICAL REFLEX
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