Stockholm - Faith in Despair Devlog #37 August 09th 2025
I just came back from a week in Stockholm. It was a much needed vacation after the last game update, which took place a week before that and introduced many new things, including a new deck (Gambler) and the journal mode.
Honestly, it was a very random decision to pick Stockholm as my destination. I just always felt like going there, and because summers are quite hot in Vienna, it was a good opportunity for cooler weather.
After I had already booked my flight ticket and my hotel, on a random day I was looking at the wikipedia page for Seventh Seal, and I found out that Ingmar Bergman was inspired by "a medieval church painting from the 1480s in Täby kyrka", which was just north of Stockholm. Seventh Seal is one of the many inspirations for Faith in Despair, where you play against Death. So I knew I had to check it out.
So, on the fourth day of being in Stockholm, I decided to get into a train and travel north for approximately thirty minutes. When I exited, I had to walk maybe ten minutes and I was able to see it in the distance. I walked closer, and there it was in its entirety.
There was a photographer taking pictures of the Nordic runes scattered around on the outside walls (finding runes was a common occurrence in this area, there were many displayed around the town). He was laughing as I walked by, he said he had to take photos like these, because as a wedding photographer, he wanted them to have all kinds of memories.
"Are you here to see the chess player?" he asked.
Surprised, I said, "Yes, I am."
"You have to be quick, it's upstairs and the wedding starts in 10 minutes."
"Oh, I'll be quick then," I said and hurried inside, past people dressed up for the wedding.
As soon as I entered, I saw why this church was special. The paintings on the walls were incredible. Later I would learn that this church was one of the only few remaining where the walls weren't painted over with white. There was a model of a war ship hanging in front of one of the windows, and there was an Yggdrasil on the right side of the altar. During my stay in Stockholm, I learned that vikings were heavily influenced by Rome and Christianity, and so there was a period where they merged these ideas together.
I could not find the painting of the chess player, so I decided I would leave and come back later, so I could enjoy the moment.
I walked further north, past a cemetery, and into a forest. It took me another half an hour to get to a lake. I stood there, enjoying the scenery. It was quiet and peaceful.
I returned all the way to the church, now maybe an hour or more later, and this time it was seemingly empty. As soon as I entered the church again, someone started playing a beautiful piano piece right above me. I did not see who played, I just sat down and waited for it to end. It was played twice, so I realized this must've been practice. When the piece ended, an older woman came down a small flight of stairs and I said, "That was beautiful." And she laughed and said, "It's for the wedding."
There was another wedding! It didn't seem as imminent as the other one, so I thought I still had time.
I stood up and looked around more carefully. As I went closer to the life tree, I checked out the nearby bowl with the holy water inside of it. It had a golden ship embedded. That's not something you see a lot in catholic churches, I thought.
A different woman approached me from the church entrance, and she asked if I'm here to see the chess player. Once again, I said yes.
She said, "I will turn on the lights. You can see it if you walk up these stairs, and then you have to turn right and look up."
I thanked her and walked up the tight staircase. Slowly but surely I made it up and I was stopped by a black gate. I thought, maybe she forgot that this was locked. I tried to see if it was somehow possible to unlock myself, it had a strange mechanism on the right side of it. But no luck. Then I remembered, she had said, turn right and look up. So I did. And then I saw it.
I had to crane my neck upwards so far that it hurt, but I just laughed and tried to soak in the moment. Here I was, seeing it with my own eyes, the inspiration for Seventh Seal, which in turn got made fun of by Bill and Ted, which led me to this point. It was haunting in a way, but also kind of delightfully silly. As if the artist had just added a little easter egg he came up with on a whim.
I would see many more fascinating artifacts throughout my stay in Stockholm. The Vasa museum was breathtaking, with the fully intact warship from 1628. The Skansen felt like a dream. But when I met Rumpel, he told me to check out the Codex Gigas, the Devil's Bible. It was on display in the National Library of Sweden. When I checked its location, I couldn't believe it. It was right inside the park across my hotel, maybe a minute of walking.
The book is much bigger in person than it looks on photos. It is absolutely massive. According to the description, it was written "in a single night by a sinful monk who was trying to redeem himself from guilt. In despair the monk turned to the Devil, who helped him in exchange for a devil's portrait in the book."
I've met more friends in Stockholm and on Wednesday it was time to fly back to Vienna. With new inspiration and a fresh perspective, it is now time to finish my game.
Honestly, it was a very random decision to pick Stockholm as my destination. I just always felt like going there, and because summers are quite hot in Vienna, it was a good opportunity for cooler weather.
After I had already booked my flight ticket and my hotel, on a random day I was looking at the wikipedia page for Seventh Seal, and I found out that Ingmar Bergman was inspired by "a medieval church painting from the 1480s in Täby kyrka", which was just north of Stockholm. Seventh Seal is one of the many inspirations for Faith in Despair, where you play against Death. So I knew I had to check it out.
So, on the fourth day of being in Stockholm, I decided to get into a train and travel north for approximately thirty minutes. When I exited, I had to walk maybe ten minutes and I was able to see it in the distance. I walked closer, and there it was in its entirety.
There was a photographer taking pictures of the Nordic runes scattered around on the outside walls (finding runes was a common occurrence in this area, there were many displayed around the town). He was laughing as I walked by, he said he had to take photos like these, because as a wedding photographer, he wanted them to have all kinds of memories.
"Are you here to see the chess player?" he asked.
Surprised, I said, "Yes, I am."
"You have to be quick, it's upstairs and the wedding starts in 10 minutes."
"Oh, I'll be quick then," I said and hurried inside, past people dressed up for the wedding.
As soon as I entered, I saw why this church was special. The paintings on the walls were incredible. Later I would learn that this church was one of the only few remaining where the walls weren't painted over with white. There was a model of a war ship hanging in front of one of the windows, and there was an Yggdrasil on the right side of the altar. During my stay in Stockholm, I learned that vikings were heavily influenced by Rome and Christianity, and so there was a period where they merged these ideas together.
I could not find the painting of the chess player, so I decided I would leave and come back later, so I could enjoy the moment.
I walked further north, past a cemetery, and into a forest. It took me another half an hour to get to a lake. I stood there, enjoying the scenery. It was quiet and peaceful.
I returned all the way to the church, now maybe an hour or more later, and this time it was seemingly empty. As soon as I entered the church again, someone started playing a beautiful piano piece right above me. I did not see who played, I just sat down and waited for it to end. It was played twice, so I realized this must've been practice. When the piece ended, an older woman came down a small flight of stairs and I said, "That was beautiful." And she laughed and said, "It's for the wedding."
There was another wedding! It didn't seem as imminent as the other one, so I thought I still had time.
I stood up and looked around more carefully. As I went closer to the life tree, I checked out the nearby bowl with the holy water inside of it. It had a golden ship embedded. That's not something you see a lot in catholic churches, I thought.
A different woman approached me from the church entrance, and she asked if I'm here to see the chess player. Once again, I said yes.
She said, "I will turn on the lights. You can see it if you walk up these stairs, and then you have to turn right and look up."
I thanked her and walked up the tight staircase. Slowly but surely I made it up and I was stopped by a black gate. I thought, maybe she forgot that this was locked. I tried to see if it was somehow possible to unlock myself, it had a strange mechanism on the right side of it. But no luck. Then I remembered, she had said, turn right and look up. So I did. And then I saw it.
I had to crane my neck upwards so far that it hurt, but I just laughed and tried to soak in the moment. Here I was, seeing it with my own eyes, the inspiration for Seventh Seal, which in turn got made fun of by Bill and Ted, which led me to this point. It was haunting in a way, but also kind of delightfully silly. As if the artist had just added a little easter egg he came up with on a whim.
I would see many more fascinating artifacts throughout my stay in Stockholm. The Vasa museum was breathtaking, with the fully intact warship from 1628. The Skansen felt like a dream. But when I met Rumpel, he told me to check out the Codex Gigas, the Devil's Bible. It was on display in the National Library of Sweden. When I checked its location, I couldn't believe it. It was right inside the park across my hotel, maybe a minute of walking.
The book is much bigger in person than it looks on photos. It is absolutely massive. According to the description, it was written "in a single night by a sinful monk who was trying to redeem himself from guilt. In despair the monk turned to the Devil, who helped him in exchange for a devil's portrait in the book."
I've met more friends in Stockholm and on Wednesday it was time to fly back to Vienna. With new inspiration and a fresh perspective, it is now time to finish my game.
Twitchcon EU - Faith in Despair Devlog #36 June 06th 2025
In the past week, I was in Amsterdam and Rotterdam for Twitchcon EU. I had a great time, met lots of people, and made new friends. But what does it all mean for Faith in Despair?
Before going I had already begun working on the 6th deck, currently called "Gambler". It uses dice on cards and you have to make sure the dice are the same as your opponent to be able to block and damage them.
What Twitchcon showed me is that I need to follow my inner voice, which has so often told me to keep streaming game development. So, I'll now switch to a (hopefully) stable schedule. This might still change with summer coming along, but for now I'll stream Monday, Wednesday and Friday, every week. This is very similar to schedules of other streamers, and I think this will be perfect for me, as I can recover between "stream days", and also use these off-days to work on other stuff that's maybe meant to be a surprise or maybe not even related to making games.
I don't expect anything from it. I'm just following my gut. And it tells me to stream more and meet more people this way. It helps me to stay focused, keep a more or less regulated work schedule, and also motivates me when people stop by in chat to say hi.
Plus, as the release of the game comes closer and closer (end of the year, or early 2026), I feel like it is no longer necessary for me to "find" what the game is, and I'm entering the production part of the project. A phase where I just sit down and tie up all the loose ends. Something that always excites me towards the end of a project.
And especially during this time, it helps to share my process and get a little bit of motivation back in return.
Again, summer is here, and during this season my room gets super hot. I'll try my best to find solutions, but I may just end up not streaming 1-2 weeks in August, and resume doing so when the weather cools down. Or I'll find a room with AC somewhere that also lets me stream. We'll see.
It just feels like all the signs are pointing towards doing this, in tandem with making games. It feels right. And if you need someone to co-work with, maybe I'll see you in one of my streams.
Altar of Tears - Faith in Despair Devlog #35 April 09th 2025
A lot happened since the last devlog. Let's quickly go through it.
The freelance gig ended earlier than originally planned. I won't get into the details, but suffice to say, it was a super weird outcome that I didn't expect. I believe I did good work, but apparently not good enough. Instead of going back to my old job full-time, I decided to focus 100% on Faith in Despair until end of March, then create a new demo and a new trailer and see what happens.
I got a few youtubers to play the game and their feedback was invaluable. I changed the game massively, reducing the number of nodes on the map, changed balance, decks, blessings, curses. I also added new music for the shop and for the end credits. Through meeting new friends in the gamedev and audio space, I even got to record a professional opera singer for the song after you win a run. It was an experience I'll likely never forget.
In the same week as my freelance gig ended prematurely, I also had an opportunity to talk to a publisher, who was interested in working with me. In general, I was told the game lacks marketability. I tried to remedy that with the latest update, but in another universe it's probably even more like Inscryption or Buckshot Roulette. Here you just fight Death to stay alive, just like in The Seventh Seal (or you know, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey).
So, the game now has more art, more music, more sounds, tighter balance, more choices, more events, more, more, more. But when is it enough? What will actually make a difference?
I want to add at least one more deck and more music. I'll likely experiment with adding additional effects for lacrima. Maybe more blessings, curses and bosses.
At this point, I'm definitely seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I still have half a year left, but time's running fast.
I'm wondering if all of this will have been for nothing. I can't have another project cost me several years of my life and not result in anything. Well, Faith in Despair has already given me a lot, in terms of opportunities and experiences. It did win me a ticket to Gamescom last year. I was able to show it off to around 80 people at a gamedev meetup and people enjoyed the talk. And people still speak to me about it to this day. But if it won't be a financial success, I will have to reconsider why I'm even trying.
I already know the answer to that though. Because I can't not try. It's all I've been doing for the past 25 years, ever since making maps for Half-Life. I just have to keep going. I have to keep creating.
I guess this is the usual mid-point of any project, where there's this huge uncertainty of the thing you're making. You're never quite sure until the very end. I'm sure as the release gets closer I will also get more clarity. At least I hope so.
The freelance gig ended earlier than originally planned. I won't get into the details, but suffice to say, it was a super weird outcome that I didn't expect. I believe I did good work, but apparently not good enough. Instead of going back to my old job full-time, I decided to focus 100% on Faith in Despair until end of March, then create a new demo and a new trailer and see what happens.
I got a few youtubers to play the game and their feedback was invaluable. I changed the game massively, reducing the number of nodes on the map, changed balance, decks, blessings, curses. I also added new music for the shop and for the end credits. Through meeting new friends in the gamedev and audio space, I even got to record a professional opera singer for the song after you win a run. It was an experience I'll likely never forget.
In the same week as my freelance gig ended prematurely, I also had an opportunity to talk to a publisher, who was interested in working with me. In general, I was told the game lacks marketability. I tried to remedy that with the latest update, but in another universe it's probably even more like Inscryption or Buckshot Roulette. Here you just fight Death to stay alive, just like in The Seventh Seal (or you know, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey).
So, the game now has more art, more music, more sounds, tighter balance, more choices, more events, more, more, more. But when is it enough? What will actually make a difference?
I want to add at least one more deck and more music. I'll likely experiment with adding additional effects for lacrima. Maybe more blessings, curses and bosses.
At this point, I'm definitely seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I still have half a year left, but time's running fast.
I'm wondering if all of this will have been for nothing. I can't have another project cost me several years of my life and not result in anything. Well, Faith in Despair has already given me a lot, in terms of opportunities and experiences. It did win me a ticket to Gamescom last year. I was able to show it off to around 80 people at a gamedev meetup and people enjoyed the talk. And people still speak to me about it to this day. But if it won't be a financial success, I will have to reconsider why I'm even trying.
I already know the answer to that though. Because I can't not try. It's all I've been doing for the past 25 years, ever since making maps for Half-Life. I just have to keep going. I have to keep creating.
I guess this is the usual mid-point of any project, where there's this huge uncertainty of the thing you're making. You're never quite sure until the very end. I'm sure as the release gets closer I will also get more clarity. At least I hope so.
Atonements - Faith in Despair Devlog #34 January 14th 2025
First patch of the year 2025 has arrived. Five new atonements await, for a total of fifteen.
After every patch follows a little mini-burnout. Thankfully, I have other projects to work on at the moment too. In fact, since December I'm a freelance gamedesigner/gamedev for a company in Germany. I'll share more about how that's going in the future.
How will it affect the development of Faith in Despair? Honestly, not at all. I still reserve one day in the week for my game, and I'm working on it on the weekend too sometimes, even though that's probably not a good idea in the long run (burnout is always looming around the corner, y'know).
I'm currently in production mode. I think I will now keep focusing on polishing what's already here, and maybe try to get the Android version done as well.
There's one aspect that does influence Faith in Despair though: I simply learn a lot about how other people work on their games, especially larger teams. And I'm learning Godot, which so far feels pretty good to work with.
Suffice to say, 2025 has started pretty amazingly, even though I was sick the past two weeks. I have a bunch more things planned for this year that sound amazing in theory too, but we'll see how it plays out.
And of course, Faith in Despair is going to get released. I think it's time.
Card Art - Faith in Despair Devlog #33 December 08th 2024
I recently showed off Faith in Despair in front of 60 other game developers at a meetup here in Vienna. The feedback was great in general, but the one question got asked once again (thankfully): What about art on the cards?
I have taken my own advice, which was to just give things a try and then go from there. I added generic card art for creatures, spells and enemies and the game felt already better to me. Whenever I see screenshots from before, I now see what other people must have seen. It's kind of crazy that I got this much of a tunnel vision on this issue. I mean, I knew I wanted to do something, but now I realize how barren it looked.
So yes, the generic cards have art now and decorations based on equipped lacrima. It's not super dependent on the type of lacrima, but it at least depends on rarity and randomizes scale and builds up a specific shape on the cards.
The roadmap from the last entry was very ambitious and I'm already behind. I have new decks planned, and new difficulty modifiers prepared, but it did not go live in November. It was probably because of the art update that I just mentioned. But hey, it doesn't really matter.
As I keep going, I will probably keep simplifying the roadmap. Especially when I realize that maybe some deck ideas won't work out at all. I'm currently finishing up the new Mercenary deck and it was difficult to get it working to a level that made sense. I will definitely go through all decks before release again and adjust them, but it's also important to me to get them out in their first versions, so they can be tested and refined.
What's next? According to the roadmap, more decks, more circles. But the feedback I got was quite in-depth, and the upcoming update will already address lots of things that people mentioned.
All I can say is, showing off your game continuously is extremely important. I can't even imagine what Faith in Despair would look like if I developed it in secret.