Sorry to inform everyone, we’re ‘running away’ from Overheat.
Hello everyone, I’m E17bits, the producer of Overheat, also a civil engineering guy who might pack up and disappear at any time (lol).
I’m thrilled to share this exciting news with you guys: our game Overheat has won the Gold Award in the GWB Student Group!
As mentioned at the beginning, I must regrettably inform you that we’re ‘running away’ from Overheat. But to say ‘running away’ isn’t entirely accurate. To be more precise: in order to solve the issues that emerged during Overheat’s development, we are currently developing a new backpack management auto-chess game, Touhou Witch’s Night Market.
Back in August, Overheat had encountered several unprecedented development challenges that were hard for us to resolve in the short term. These included the core ‘overheat’ system, the map and level design, and numerous smaller issues that accumulated during development. Eventually, we realized that we were facing a serious problem: we might not able to continue the development on Overheat for the time being.
We had attended a game showcase at that time. On our way out, we ran into a famous Youtuber. We were discussing The Bazaar back then, so we chatted with him about its controversial situation. The Bazaar was transitioning from free-to-play to paid, and it still hadn’t developed a Chinese localization (even till now). Its Chinese community was in an uproar, with almost everyone convinced that the game’s future in China looked grim.
After that conversation, a bold idea struck us: The Bazaar has such excellent design, but why hasn’t anyone made a game like it? So we started to imagine: if we were to create a The Bazaar-like game, where would we start? …
On our train back, we spent the next few hours discussing this possibility and quickly came to a consensus: If you’re stuck in the developing process, don’t force yourself. That’s when the idea for Touhou Witch’s Night Market was born. We hoped it would allow us to step away from the challenges of Overheat, while exploring new possibilities in game design.
As I mentioned above, Touhou Witch’s Night Market resembles The Bazaar in many ways: similar UI layout, highly simplified backpack mechanics, and design elements like the day and moment cycle... However, we’ve also added plenty of our own ideas into it, such as the pointer system. Meanwhile, we hope to use this project as a trial run to experience the full publishing process, so we can avoid potential risks that may arise in Overheat.
After three months of development, Touhou Witch’s Night Market was almost finished. Just as we were in the final stretch of polishing it, unexpected news arrived: Overheat had been selected for the GWB Student Group Award! To be honest, the timing was a bit awkward, but we still made our minds to take a three-day break from the heavy workload and head to the event. Btw, I saw the same Youtuber we’d discussed The Bazaar with again at the event…
To our surprise, after the presentation, Overheat somehow won the Gold Award in the Student Group category! Honestly, we never saw that coming—we thought we’d get a Bronze at best. What surprised me most was that my presentation was just me casually reading the my pre-written script, and the effect was nowhere near as impressive as our previous presentation at another award ceremony — That one was the highlight for Overheat! (Although we didn’t win any awards that time lol)
But at that time, we weren’t overly excited about winning the Gold Award. After all, Overheat was still facing many challenges that couldn’t be solved immediately, with no quick path to completion. Given that, our main focus was promoting Touhou Witch’s Night Market. As for the prize, we considered it as a lottery win — a pleasant surprise but wouldn’t affect our development plans.
So we took the opportunity of Overheat’s win to promote Touhou Witch’s Night Market as much as possible. At the GWB winning game exhibition the following day, we quickly set up two computers at Overheat’s booth to let players experience Touhou Witch’s Night Market while gathering their feedback.
It turned out that Touhou Witch’s Night Market was very well-received and player feedback was overwhelmingly positive. While Overheat players were still trying to figure out how to connect the conveyor belts, one player of Touhou Witch’s Night Market was already experimenting with a classic construct, and another was save-loading to adjust his card arrangement in order to defeat enemies. This stark contrast clearly demonstrates why we decided to ‘running away’ from Overheat and concentrate entirely on developing Touhou Witch’s Night Market.
Of course, during the development of Touhou Witch Night Market, we would pause from time to time to reflect on Overheat’s design problems. Thanks to the shift in perspective, many fresh solutions to these long-standing challenges have emerged, and we’ve decided to redesign the entire whole system for Overheat! As for myself, I’ve also improved my skills in both art and programming through this process, and I’m ready to apply these insights to Overheat in the future.
Currently, Touhou Witch’s Night Market is in its final stages of development and is set to release on December 3rd, 2025. We hope you can add it to your wishlist — it means a lot to us! After this temporary ‘running away’, we’ll return with fresh experience accumulated from this project to reshape Overheat into a game that combines depth and fun!
In the end, as an indie game developer who has just stepped out of student life, I’m still quite naive and inexperienced in many aspects of game development, and my work will inevitably face various challenges that may not be overcome by myself. However, I’m determined to find my own path in the world of indie games. I hope you won’t hesitate to offer your feedback, suggestions or criticism to help me level up, ultimately create games that satisfy both players and myself.
I’m E17bits. See you next time!