▶️ Official press release here! ◀️
Dear everyone,
This is Julian from DigiTales. Today, we are thrilled to reveal our third game From Ruins, a narrative detective adventure set in a post-apocalyptic world. Check out the Steam page below for all the details, including the short but sweet reveal trailer. If you do only one thing with all this information, please wishlist the game! This is currently the number one way to support us and its development:
That being said, stick around if you'd like to know a little more about the future of the project and our studio.
Same same but different
The concept for From Ruins as well as early prototypes have existed for almost three years at this point. With 2025 drawing to a close, and a year after the console release of our second game Between Horizons, we are already deep in its production phase. The game is virtually feature-complete and free of bugs, with a large part of the campaign already finished. We've been testing and reiterating a lot (much more extensively than we did with our past games), and the feedback has been very positive. All that being said, don't expect the game to come out before 2027 for a number of reasons.
If you enjoyed Lacuna and/or Between Horizons, From Ruins should be right up your alley. However, there are a few notable deviations to the formula, which were mostly inspired by the Golden Idol series. Case sheets, although a core mechanic of our previous titles, are now more elaborate than ever before. You're tasked with filling in the nouns and verbs to form sentences that best answer the question posed by the case at hand. And besides the clues you uncover around the levels and by questioning suspects and witnesses, you now also collect the very words you need to fill in the gaps in the case sheet.
There is another aspect to From Ruins, albeit a small one, that was completely absent from our previous titles: mini games. We've found that, at the very least, these short brain teasers provide a nice break of pace and small dopamine hit half-way through a larger case. We've made sure that, even though they are somewhat self-contained, solving mini games always advances your investigation in one way or another, e.g. by unlocking the path to a new person to talk to.
Other than that, From Ruins is all you've come to know and hopefully love from our titles: deduction gameplay embedded in a story full of twists and turns, as well as some tough choices along the way that influence the way the game unfolds and ends. Regarding the art style, you may have noticed that we went back to 2D after venturing into 2.5D with Between Horizons. To put it bluntly, we've come to the realization that we can create a denser, prettier world in a similar, if not smaller time frame by ditching the third dimension. It didn't add much, and we haven't missed it over the past year.
Self-publishing
Even though From Ruins is somewhat similar to our previous titles, it's a major, scary step for us from a business perspective. As you may know, our previous releases were published and partially funded by German publisher Assemble Entertainment as well as additional partners for the Asian markets. This time around, we are flying completely solo, which means that all the marketing, PR, and distribution work falls on us. Like for many studios who have taken the same plunge, this might end up being a do-or-die situation. If you care about us and/or our ability to keep making games, it's more important now than ever before to help us get the word out. Besides putting From Ruins on your wishlist and telling your friends about it, following and engaging with our social channels would go a long way!
On the plus side, not having a publisher on board enables us to talk about our new game however and whenever we want. We've never believed that secrecy will help "build the hype", so we'd like to share the development of our games much more openly going forward. Please come and join our Discord community, or say hi on Twitch, where I'll start streaming development of From Ruins very soon. If you're reading this around the game's reveal, then there should already be a scheduled stream coming up!
You may have noticed that, at least for now, we only list English and German language support on Steam. We also don't have any plans at this time to support any operating systems other than Windows, bring the game to more store fronts, or port it to consoles. This is all because we are a smaller team than ever before, with no external funding whatsoever, and all the marketing and publishing responsibilities on our shoulders. We need to play things slower and safer than we did with our previous titles, when external funding and publishing allowed us to launch with more languages and on more store fronts at once. That being said, we hope and aim to include additional languages, stores, and platforms as time goes on and interest in the game grows – be it before or after its eventual Steam release.
The detective trilogy
Even though the release of From Ruins is still a ways away, I can already tell you that our next game won't be another detective adventure. In 2022, we revealed the Kickstarter page for our next big project: a psychological survival horror game named Unburied. At this stage, it's still not much more than a concept, albeit a quite detailed one that we've done a ton of research for over the years. On a technical basis, the project will hugely benefit from what we've been building in the past and are presently building for From Ruins. That being said, we might take one last, relatively short detour next year before tackling another massive, years-long project. I'll tell you more if and when that happens!
Speaking of branching out, we also have the release of The Great Sassanelli coming up next year! Developed by our friends at Forking Paths Gardening, it will be our debut as a publisher. We'll start showing it off much more on our socials next month, so be sure to follow along. Finally, we currently have a winter sale going on over at the 6VCR Shop. Check it out if you're in the market for pixel art stickers, digital wallpapers, or the newly released limited-edition signed prints.
Anyway, that's more than enough plugging of our stuff for one post. We can't wait to share the conclusive title of the DigiTales detective trilogy with you. We believe it's on track to becoming its best entry, but you be the judge when the time comes.
As always, thank you so much for all your support. Happy holidays, everyone, and have a nice rest of the year! 🎆
Julian
