To my fellow cider enthusiasts,

I first want to say that I’m alive, and I’m sorry for taking so long to post! In short, it’s been a wacky 15 months since the last update.

Since then, I learned just enough C# scripting and Unity to make my first portfolio piece, which I published on itch.io about one year ago. Click here to play the game in your browser. Any comments and/or criticism is much appreciated!

I also dabbled a bit with music composition using FL Studio. I have a long way to go, but I’ve started my musical journey by releasing three demo tracks so far. Please let me know what you think!

(I embedded Sound Cloud media players for each track below – but if they don’t work on your device, you can listen to them by clicking the link here, which will take you to my Sound Cloud profile page).

Lastly and most importantly, I’m working on my first original indie game project. Currently, it is code-named Emberwood, and it’s enroute to being a top-down RPG with a pixel-art aesthetic set in a technomancy/high-fantasy setting in which the world lies in ruin after the collapse of an eldritch empire. The world-building behind the game’s story is gelatinous and underdeveloped at the moment. Before focusing on art, music, world building, character development, and dialogue, I’ve been heavily prioritizing the game’s core mechanics.

I guess you could say I’m building the ‘engine’ of the game right now. This includes designing systems such as combat, stats, skill trees, inventory, UI, NPCs, branching dialogue, questing, cut scenes, crafting, farming, etc… It’s a beefy and disorganized work in progress to say the least. It’s certainly not ready for demo testing at the moment, but it’s getting there.

I started working on Emberwood back in March of 2024. Since then, I’ve completed a first pass of all the game systems mentioned above (minus the cut scenes… Haven’t gotten to those yet). The harsh reality though, is that despite having these systems largely functional and bug-free, they don’t jive well together – YET! That’s where the next few months come into play.

The big goal for the first half of 2025 is to perform a full second pass (and for some stubborn mechanics, maybe even a third pass) to improve the overall cohesiveness and feel of the game. Once everything feels right, my hope is to conduct some pre-alpha playtesting with a small cohort of retro RPG enthusiasts to get some feedback regarding game mechanics, difficulty, and overall feel of the game. If you like the RPG genre and you’re at all interested in being part of this early testing phase, please leave a comment on this blog post (or any post), or send me an email at cidermillstudio1@gmail.com.

Another goal that I have for this year is to get serious about growing the Cider Mill Community via Discord and of course, our YouTube Channel! Ideally, I’d like post regular dev logs once every two months or so. I think my goal will be to post by the end of this month, so expect a proper dev log by the end of February 2025! [I don’t know much about how to host a Discord chat yet, but I’ll also aim to get that up and running by the end of the month as well.]

That’s all for now everyone. If I’ve gained anything over the past year or so, it’s a feeling of respect towards those who have the persistence and the hope required to pursue their vision, be it to its realization or to its dissipation. Just consider, for a moment, that the finished works of human expression we experience in life as consumers (e.g. of books, movies, paintings, plays, games, etc…) are but a infinitesimally small sliver of the pie which is all of the works that were ever begun. Kind of mind blowing, at least to me.

Be in touch, stay cozy, and as always,

Cheers to our dreams!

-Wady