2025 was a great year for Future Vibe Check. We went from a quiet project to finally turning the speakers on to share what we've been working on. If you’ve been with us since the start or just joined the recent Playtest in December, I want to give you a big thank you. You are the rhythm section of this development that keeps me going.
2025 RECAP: The Year We Built the Foundation
We patched bugs, built key features, and started to better understand what makes FVC special. Here are the highlights:
The Alpha Launch: We kicked things off with a Alpha demo and joined a series of festivals which helped us get started on the journey. Thank you to the Six One Showcase, Orbital Potato, Secret Sauce, Humble Games, and others who helped us spread the vibe this past year.
The MIDI Revolution: We ripped out the old sound engine and replaced it with full MIDI support and Soundfonts. Now we have >300 instruments and real musical expression. Pretty soon we will have the BEST node based composition and procedural music system ever made :)
Creative Mode and Sharing: We launched v1 of our creative sandbox mode where you can make music with all our tools available and share them to the community. I'm still amazed at some of the things the community has built.
Sessions and Procedural Everything: Terrain, resources, and threats are now procedurally generated. No two runs will sound (or play) the same.
Quality of Life: Reworked belt logistics, HUD, menus, tooltips, indicators, and more. We cleaned up a lot of UX/UI noise to allow you to better enjoy the music. Still much more to do here in 2026.
THE PLAN FOR 2026
The hard foundational systems (automation logistics, object placement, save/load architecture, MIDI integration, composition systems, procedural music) are largely done. We have the ingredients, now we need to make a tasty meal.
2026 is all about game design iteration, progression, and polish.
Hybrid Design Iteration: FVC is taking a lot of risks being a hybrid game, so expect more updates to test and iterate on game loops to get things right. A large playtest update is incoming within a month with the areas below being worked on.
Better Music Faster: Our pacing of the early-to-mid game still needs work. We are working on a way for players to start with better music early so they hear the magic of the procedural generation quicker. We want you to focus on crafting how the music expresses itself (e.g. do you want a rousing lead vs a solemn melody?) rather than crafting each individual music item.
Sessions and Replayability: We plan to continue to test more concepts related to making FVC highly replayable with shorter "jam" sessions. Next on the list is dynamic production goals while you are playing, inspired by the Orders system from games like Against the Storm.
Crafting & Gathering Complexity: We want to strike the right balance of supporting musical exploration working in concert with base building and logistics. Our current playtest has different scenarios that explore ways this can go—we would love more feedback on this!
Onboarding: Our tutorialization is still a struggle for many players. This will be a big focus area to improve in the first half of 2026.
Playtest and Community Credits: Reminder —if you participate in the playtest and fill out the feedback form, you get your name in the credits. We are building this together, and I want your name on it if you help us get to to the finish line.
2026 is about finding the perfect Vibe together.
Much Love,
— Unwise