We’re getting closer to our very first alpha build, which will include our core tactics, deck-building, and character progression systems. There’s a lot that goes into it, so this week we’ve been brainstorming mechanics and ideas to make the game as fun and replayable as possible. Rads and Relics pulls from a number of different traditions—tactics games, RPGs, card games, and deckbuilders—so there’s a lot of space for us to explore....

Learning to make art for a game For my whole life I’ve loved to make art. When I was a kid I used to draw a lot. I loved making comics and even made some flash animations back in the day! Sadly, as I made it through school and eventually got a job, I stopped making art as often. Maybe a few doodles here and there in my notebook, but that’s about it....

When you sit down to create a game, one of the first decisions you need to make is how you’re going to actually build it. I’ve attempted to build games a couple of times in the past, but each time I wanted to build up the engine from scratch (or at least from OpenGL and SDL primitives). This has always been exciting to me from a programming perspective, but, inevitably, I end up getting bogged down in systems details and never get around to working on the game itself....

Over the past few weeks, as we started building a deckbuilding/card system, I decided to try “vibe coding”. I’ve been wanting to jump more into the code side of Rads & Relics, but, despite having worked as a software engineer for my whole career, I’ve never really built a game before, let alone in Godot. So, I figured what the heck! Let’s give this vibe coding thing a try. Motivation One of the biggest challenges I’ve had so far while learning Godot is simply figuring out how to structure and architect my code....

This week, I’ve been making some changes to Rads & Relics, to make the underlying engine more flexible. Specifically, I’ve been rebuilding everything using a Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern. Today, I wanted to share my experience with the changes and some tips for people looking to do the same. First of all, why use the MVC pattern? Since Rads & Relics is a turn-based game, the core game can be understood as a series of actions carried out on a game state....

Over the past week we’ve continued to experiment with the idea of building a deckbuilding/card system into Rads & Relics. This is still under significant development, but today we’re going to share some of the things that have come up over the past week. The first thing that’s been on our mind is the interface for interacting with cards. Our big inspirations here are Slay the Spire, and more recently, Balatro....

This week was a bit different for the development of Rads & Relics. Normally, our team is geographically distributed and we do everything remotely; however, this week, we had the opportunity to meet up and work on the game in person. We did some coding and discussed the high level mechanics, but more importantly we did some playtesting with a physical prototype. Ultimately, Rads & Relics is a video game, not a board game....

This week I’ve been doing more international travel, so I’ve had less time to work on Rads & Relics. Still, I’ve been using my time to focus on new character designs as part of Make-a-Character March, so today I wanted to share some reflections from this first week. Design Space and Constraints With Rads & Relics still in its early stages, I have a broad idea of the game, but much of it remains in flux....

This week, I’ve been moving, so I haven’t had much time for Rads & Relics. However, now that I’m settled in my new apartment, I want to discuss what’s coming next. As previously mentioned, I’ve spent a lot of time refining the core gameplay (and learning about Godot). Now that I feel confident in that foundation, I want to shift my focus to the characters in the world. My vision is for Rads & Relics to have a full roster of playable and enemy characters that make each run feel unique and exciting....