Devlog März/March 2025
Hey everyone! Welcome to our very first devlog – the first of (hopefully) monthly insights into the development of Rootbound and our inner workings!
If you have any questions about this or just want to chat, feel free to drop by our Discord!
Rootbound Discord
What to expect here:
- Announcement preparations
- How did we experience the announcement?
- Wishlist numbers
- Trailer Scoring Competition
- What’s next?
You can imagine March was a pretty special month for us. After many months of working on Rootbound, we were finally able to not only show you what we’re working on – but also show you that we’re working at all! With Brainlag Games, we’re taking an entirely new path, and we couldn’t be more excited about what the future holds. After the end of Piranha Bytes, it quickly became clear to us that we weren’t done with the games industry just yet. Of course, we see the current state of the industry – with layoffs and studio closures – but we also see an opportunity in that! We’re convinced there’s no better time to kick off as a new team. And your support has confirmed that more than we ever hoped for!
Trailer Work and Announcement Preparations
But first, let’s take a step back and look at the beginning of the year. In order to properly present Rootbound, a few preparations were necessary. We knew right away we wanted to have a trailer for our announcement. But what sounds like a small task came with quite a few challenges. First off, none of us had done much video editing in recent years – so we had a lot to learn.
But even more important were the actual gameplay scenes. What exactly did we want to show you? What story did we want to tell? And where would we get the music from? Amadeus already went into detail about the challenges we faced while recording the trailer in a great video.
It was a ton of work, but we’re really happy with how it turned out. If you haven’t seen the announcement trailer yet, make sure to check it out here! What did you think? Would you have done anything differently? We’re always open to honest feedback!
Announcement and Developer Interview
Our announcement was accompanied by quite a bit of media buzz. Having been an enthusiastic Gamestar reader in my youth, seeing our own game as a headline on the Gamestar website was something truly special. But Gamestar was far from the only website that reported on us. We were completely overwhelmed by the number of articles from around the world and couldn’t even keep up with reading all the posts and comments. A huge thank-you to all of you for your kind and honest words!
I’d also like to highlight our developer interview. Daniel and Michael from the heise team visited us and recorded a lovely video interview (German). The video was accompanied by a very detailed German article (unfortunately behind a paywall), in which Daniel summarized our development journey so far, and talked about stumbling blocks but also opportunities in the form of funding. Definitely worth a read for anyone thinking about stepping into the games industry themselves!
Wishlists
Let’s talk hard numbers. Steam wishlists are especially important for smaller indie studios, as they allow us to roughly estimate a game’s future sales potential. Now, just about four weeks after our announcement, we’ve already hit an incredible 9047 wishlists – from over 100 countries! Amazing numbers we definitely didn’t expect. Huge thanks to every single one of you for the support!
Rootbound Trailer Scoring Competition
To wrap things up, I want to shine a light on the currently ongoing Rootbound Trailer Scoring Competition by Marika Schanz and Martin Heidenreich. Marika is the composer for our trailer and did an amazing job. You can still take part until April 12th – and yes, there’s something to win. Join in and give our trailer your own unique twist! You’ll find more info about the competition here.
Once the submission deadline has passed, we’ll sit down with Marika and Martin to choose the winners. We’re really excited to hear your pieces and can’t wait to dive into the entries!
What’s Next?
The next few weeks for us are all about gameplay. So that we can soon share more of our game vision with you, we’re currently working hard on a playable demo, which we’ll first have tested by friends and acquaintances. In the next devlog, we’ll dive deeper into our gameplay ideas and give you a better look at what makes Rootbound special.
Closing Words
What else is there to say except: Thank you so much for your support and for being interested in what we’re doing. Do you have any wishes or requests for us? Would you like to learn more about us or specific parts of Rootbound’s development? Don’t be shy – just contact us! You can reach us in many different ways:
🌍 Website: https://www.brainlag-games.com/
🐦 Twitter: brainlaggames
🧵 Threads: @brainlaggames
📸 Instagram: brainlaggames
🎵 TikTok: brainlaggames
🎮 Discord: Rootbound
That’s all from us for now! But wait: I wanted to leave one more little thing right here!
What would a devlog from me be without a cat photo! 🙂
Much love to you all,
Markus