If you’re reading this, you’re already looking at our brand new website. It’s now WordPress-based because (for better or for worse) it’s a widespread standard that we also happen to be most familiar with.
New DigiTales logo
I’ve been meaning to migrate the site for years, so what drove me to finally do it? Well, I tried and failed to update the company logo on our old site for the better part of an hour.
Check out the new logo below; we’ve streamlined both logotype and logomark, ditched the magenta color, and added an animation and a jingle:
Since we’re about to be a publisher, we also made this – to be used in at least one future splash screen:
New team member
In other news, we’re excited to announce that we recently welcomed a new member to the team: Say hi to Alex, who is lending his programming skills to our growing roster of ongoing projects. This brings DigiTales back to four in-house team members, which feels exactly right for us.
Apologies for the lack of a proper team photo. All pictures we have of the four of us together are sloppy selfies at bars and restaurants. At least we seem to be living the high life. 🍸
New project funded
Unless you follow our local news, you probably missed that late last year, we won an award for a project codenamed Courtyard. More specifically, we won the Best Concept category at Game Award Saar, which was endowed with €15,000.
That’s me holding the award on the left.
A few months later, we went on to receive a grant financing its pre-production. We didn’t want to keep this particular bit of good news from you, although the official announcement of Courtyard is still a few months out.
For now, all I can say is that Courtyard is a smaller side project and not usually what you’d expect from us. It’s been very refreshing to work on something completely different after a decade of only detective adventures, and to make quick progress due to the smaller scope.
That being said, Courtyard is notgetting in the way of The Great Sassanelli or From Ruins, both of which remain on track for their respective releases. On that note…
From Ruins @ gamescom 2026
After its very warm reception at DoKomi in May, we’re bringing the From Ruins demo to gamescom next! You’ll find us in hall 10.2, nearby the Indie Arena Booth (not inside it). We’re sharing a corner with some fellow Saar Indies at the GameUp! Rheinland-Pfalz booth (D043g), a collaboration between our state of Saarland and the neighboring Rhineland-Palatinate.
Besides From Ruins, our booth will feature demos for games such as Mindlock and Alabaster Dawn. Just keep your eyes peeled for this artwork:
We’re actually taking part in two more events next month, and already have another two lined up for Q3, but we can’t speak on those just yet. Follow our socials so you don’t miss those announcements!
Other than that, we’ll keep grinding away at our projects. I’ll write another blog post this fall – once The Great Sassanelli releases or Courtyard is officially announced, whichever happens first.
Since the Sassanelli demo release just a few weeks ago, we’ve taken part in numerous digital showcases, exhibited the first public From Ruins demo at DoKomi, and revealed two new trailers!
Mechanics trailer
Last week, we released a new trailer as part of Thinky Direct, which kicked off the week-long Cerebral Puzzle Showcase. We’re very grateful that our game was selected to be included, and we recommend you all go check out their stellar selection of puzzle games. If you missed Thinky Direct, you can view the new trailer on our YouTube channel below (and subscribe 💖).
Behind the scenes video
Just a few moments ago, we also revealed our exclusive trailer for the Women-Led Games 2026 Summer Showcase. It spotlights both the fictitious women in the game – giving a first insight into the story –, and the real women developing it – providing a peek into our work behind the scenes.
DoKomi 2026
Last weekend, we exhibited both From Ruins and The Great Sassanelli at DoKomi’s Creative Games Area. This was the first time we showed From Ruins publicy, and the reception was very positive, which was incredibly encouraging. Thanks again to everyone who stopped by, played our games, and/or had some nice words or constructive criticism to share.
Sassanelli @ Steam Next Fest
While the From Ruins demo will come to Steam eventually, you can already play our demo of The Great Sassanelli on Steam right now! It will also be part of the upcoming Steam Next Fest, so if you play it between June 15 and 22nd, it’ll give us an extra boost in the algorithm. We’d really appreciate it!
Thank you all for reading, watching, liking our stuff – and until next time!
It is with great pleasure that we announce today’s release of the Great Sassanelli Steam demo! It contains the first few days of the story, introducing you to its wondrous world and cast. It also teaches you the core mechanics of the game, although much more will be waiting for you in the full release.
Since some of you might be wondering: 🖥️ Yes, the demo is available on Windows and MacOS! 💾 Yes, your save file will transfer to the full game once it comes out! 🎮 Yes, gamepad and Steam Deck are fully supported!
We’ve spend the past few months testing and polishing the game, and we really hope you enjoy today’s sneak peek. If you still encounter any issues or bugs, please don’t hesitate to report them on the community forum, the DigiTales Discord server, or via email to support[at]digitales.games.
We also have a new trailer for you today. Since the cinematic trailer was more focussed on the premise and aesthetics, we thought it was high time we added a more descriptive one to complement it. Check it out now to get an overview of the game in just over two minutes:
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:https://store.steampowered.com/widget/4024450/
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! 🎆
This is Julian from DigiTales. I haven’t written a proper blog post in almost a year even though a lot was going on behind the scenes. In a nutshell, we were having a tough time like many of our fellow indies. I’m not going to get into the various crises, detours, and tough decisions of the past year because the bottom line is: We made it out the other end, and we’re feeling better than we have in a long time.
DigiTales Publishing?
That’s right, we’re doing the thing! You either die a dev, or live long enough to become a publisher. In our case, this was a spur-of-the-moment decision when we saw the opportunity to help our friends at Forking Paths Gardening Interactive get their first game across the finish line. It’s called The Great Sassanelli, and I’ll tell you more about it below!
DigiTales x Forking Paths
Quick Q&A
Q: Wait, are you no longer making games in-house? A: On the contrary! We are currently working on one and have the next one already lined up.
Q: Do you take new pitches? A: Not right now, as our attention is fully taken up by Sassanelli and our own new in-house title. We don’t even know if we’ll ever publish other titles, or if the experiment starts and ends here.
Q: What do you do as a publisher? A: Marketing, PR, and distribution. For Sassanelli, we also took over producing and programming to help finish the game.
Q: Can you even do these things? A: We’ll see! With many years of combined second- and first-hand experience surrounding the publishing process, we feel ready to take on the challenge.
Q: Does all this mean you’re going to self-publish from now on? A: Not necessarily. For our current in-house title, we are actually looking to work with a larger publisher, although self-publishing is an attractive option as well.
Q: Those are stupid questions, can I ask you other ones? A: Yes, please email us: publishing[at]digitales.games
The Great Sassanelli
We’ve actually been following this project for many years, ever since it was just an idea in Forking Paths co-founder Nico’s head. It slowly developed into an amazingly written and unique interactive novel about a travelling circus in WWI Europe. When Forking Paths were presented with a tough choice about its future (which they expertly anticipated when naming their studio), we proposed to help finish and publish the game because we just… need it to be out there. Oh, and maybe you recognize the amazing art style – Sassanelli’s sole artist Jon created both Between Horizons key artworks.
I’m not going to try to sell you on the game here, that’s what the store page is for! Please, please wishlist the game now on Steam if it sounds like your jam, so Forking Paths think we’re doing an excellent job as a publisher. It’s not coming out until next year, but you can follow its development on our channels. We’re about to post interviews, feature spotlights, character intros and more that should give you an idea of why we fell in love with it.
Status Quo
With the headline announcement out of the way, let’s catch you up on the past year and take a brief look at the present and future!
ICYMI
Here’s a quick-fire round of what we’ve been up to since the Between Horizons console release a year ago:
6VCR Shop: World-renowned pixel artist 6VCR joined our team three years ago, and in January of this year, we collaborated on the relaunch of her shop featuring her amazing artworks in various physical and digital forms.
Unburied Kickstarter: For the past two years, we’ve already known which game we’re going to make after the current one: a psychological survival horror title called Unburied. We have some great plans for it and will update the Kickstarter preview page later this year with lots more details. Follow it now to stay in the loop!
Between Horizons 1.2.0: This major patch came out on PC in June, introducing a host of fixes, upgrades, and QoL improvements, alongside a new kick-ass key artwork. Full patch notes here. We have another update planned, but no concrete timeline yet.
Sticky Business: We collaborated with our friends at Spellgarden Games to bring new content for their breakout hit Sticky Business to PC and Nintendo Switch: the free Pride, Among Us, and QoL updates as well as the Camp Zinnias and Book Of Shadows DLCs.
New DigiTales game
Despite its very favorable reception, Between Horizons was somewhat of a dud commercially. There are many complex reasons for it, and I’ll lay them all out in a detailed post-mortem soon. Combined with the larger industry crisis at hand, we were unfortunately forced to cut down our team by more than half, among other concessions.
While that hurt a lot, there is a silver lining: The efficiency and quality output of our reduced crew over the past few months has been mind-blowing. It gave me great confidence that we can deliver our next game at a fraction of the cost, in less time, at an even better quality than our last. The new title is already close to being feature-complete, and about a third of its contents are finished in final quality. If things continue this way, we expect it to release in 2027.
I’m not going to reveal more about the new game for now, but if you liked our previous titles, it should be right up your alley. Follow us so you don’t miss the big reveal. As mentioned above, we are looking to work with a larger publisher to get it over the finish line, so feel free hit us up if you are one! We have a pitch deck and vertical slice ready to go.
New office, old friends
We have moved yet again if you can believe it, making this our fourth office in six years. However, I don’t expect another move any time soon as this one meets our needs perfectly. We have our own space on a shared floor with some indie friends, finally reuniting with our old office roomies Radical Fish Games after over two years apart.
Our new place right after moving in (still a bit of a mess)
That’s the long and… not-so-short of it. Please wishlist The Great Sassanelli, and follow our socials for more regular updates.
Thank you so much for reading and, as always, for all the love and support over the years.
Half a year after its PC release, Between Horizons is now finally available on all consoles. As of today, you can find it on the Nintendo eShop (launch discount!), the Microsoft Store, and the PlayStation Store.
This marks the first time a DigiTales title was ported completely in-house. We hope you enjoy the game as much as our PC players do, as the game is currently sitting at 92% positive reviews on Steam.
We are proud of our work, but also deeply exhausted after this lengthy and arduous production phase. Our next project is still a ways away, so be sure to follow us if you don’t want to miss the announcement.
Between Horizons was released on PC (Steam and GOG) on March 25, 2024! The free demo is now also available on both platforms. Console ports are already in the works and will be coming later this year.
It took us a while to finally get this post out as we’ve been busy with the release and some patches. Just in the first week, the game received close to 100 Steam reviews totaling a Very Positive (91%) rating.
Thank you all so much for your feedback, both positive and critical, and all the support over the past three years! We really hope you enjoy your journey on the Zephyr. Please share your thoughts our our Discord server, or the Steam forums. Last but not least, please leave a review if you enjoy the game! It’s the single biggest thing you can do to support us (or any indie studio).
Let’s keep this one short and sweet: It’s finally time to mark your calendars!
Three years in the making, Between Horizons is coming out on PC March 25, 2024! 🍾 We hope you enjoy the new trailer, and we can’t wait for you to check out the full game.
You may have noticed that we haven’t shared much about ourselves or our work on Between Horizons over the last year or so. Time to bring you up to speed!
🎮 New demo at gamescom 🎮
In spring of this year, we released a demo of our upcoming sci-fi detective adventure Between Horizons. Despite its favorable reception, we pulled it again about three months later for a number of reasons. Today, we are excited to announce that a completely revamped demo is coming to gamescom! You can find it in two places in Hall 10.2: the Indie Arena Booth as well as the GameUp!/saaris booth (E020g – D021g). Come check it out!
(Don’t fret if you can’t make it, the new demo is coming to Steam a little later.)
🩸 Unburied Kickstarter 🩸
We recently announced our plan to join forces with legendary pixel artist 6VCRto delve into the genre of survival horror together. We are extremely excited about this project, but it has no clear timeline right now as it massively depends on the response to the upcoming crowdfunding campaign. If you want to see it come to life, please follow the campaign or sign up for a one-time e-mail and help us spread the word!
🎧 Lacuna Lo-Fi 🎧
To celebrate Lacuna’s second anniversary, we released a free mini album titled Lacuna Lo-Fi, a chill remix of select tracks from the Lacuna soundtrack. You can find it on Steam, YouTube, and most streaming platforms!
🎻 Lacuna in concert 🎻
Earlier this summer, a medley of the Lacuna soundtrack was featured in a video game soundtrack concert at Saarländisches Staatstheater. From the bottom of our hearts: Thank you so much, Saarländisches Staatsorchester, Yannick Süß from HippoScore, and everybody else who helped make this possible! A full recording of the concert will air September 27 on Saarländischer Rundfunk. Check our Twitter or Instagram for a tiny sneak peek!
DigiTales co-founders Julian and Jasmin on stage with the orchestra
🏢 New office 🏢
Believe it or not, we recently moved for the fourth time in less than four years. We swear this is the last time for a while now, as the new location is everything we could ask for. It’s a very central place in Saarbrücken and just two floors underneath some good indie friends that moved in with us. Check out our break room!
❓ The future ❓
These are the major developments of the past few months that we can speak on for now. We still don’t know when exactly Between Horizons will be released, but we continue to aim for late 2023.
As for our plans beyond that, we currently have multiple projects lined up that may (or may not) be realized sequentially or concurrently starting this winter. We had more concrete plans already, but the federal games funding program being cut over night threw a massive wrench in the works.
We look forward to meeting everyone at gamescom. If you can’t make it there, stay tuned for the demo release on Steam this fall!
Best, The DigiTales team
PS: If you don’t want to constantly refresh our website to stay in the loop, how about you follow us in one of these places and/or subscribe to our newsletter!
In case you are new here: We are German indie studio DigiTales Interactive, developers of critically acclaimed sci-fi noir adventure Lacuna. Today, we’d like to introduce you to our upcoming second title, Between Horizons, that’s coming to PC and consoles in 2023, once again in cooperation with our publisher Assemble Entertainment!
What Is It?
Between Horizons is a story-driven detective game set aboard the semi-open world of a generation ship en route to another star. You assume the role of Stella, the ship’s young Chief of Security, who is faced with multiple problems threatening to jeopardize the mission. You will have to make some tough moral choices and think hard to unravel the complex conspiracies on the ship if you want things to end well for Stella and the mission. That’s right: Just like in Lacuna, the story branches and ends based on your decisions and performance as an investigator.
The gameplay will feel familiar to fans of our first title: direct platformer-style controls, non-repeating branching dialogs, automatic saving (no going back!), collecting clues, submitting solutions to cases. However, we made some major improvements to the formula! In the next few paragraphs, we’d like to provide insights into our thinking behind some aspects of Between Horizons. If you want more marketing speak instead (and of course add the game to your wishlist ❤️), just check out its store page!
Refined Detective Gameplay
At its very core, Between Horizons is a detective game. We learned a lot about investigation mechanics while working on Lacuna, and we kept around some of the things that worked well:
Cases are solved by filling in gaps in case sheets: you must complete sentences using names of people, places, and other clues you found.
You can always drive the plot forward by submitting a case, even if your solution is wrong. If that happens, you may not know until later, when the consequences manifest themselves.
Instead of alternating cutscenes with self-contained mini games, all the puzzles you solve are directly connected to what’s happening in the story.
Good detective games usually give the player a great amount of freedom to come up with the solution on their own. Hence, after a lot of trials and discussions, we landed on some improvements to the formula that aim to maximize player agency:
You can submit the solution to a case at any point in time. You have to decide whether or not you know enough to crack it yet. This also makes it much easier to quickly replay content if you know the solution already.
Any evidence you find (in the entire game!) can be assigned to any case (in the entire game!).
Instead of being presented with a linear string of levels, you can freely move around parts of the ship to investigate. New areas unlock in a Metroidvania fashion as you progress through the story.
You can present characters with evidence, and oftentimes you need to show someone the right clue to make them talk.
Between The Lines
Finally, Between Horizons is also very focused on its story, characters, and dialogs.
The idea for its premise originated back in 2020. We wanted to explore the concept of one generation setting out to do something and the next generation being presented with the consequences of that (unfinished) journey. We believe it’s a relatable topic to many people especially nowadays, with the younger generation inheriting a host of different crises. The responsibility generations bear for one another is a complex and nuanced problem for which we believe to have found the perfect setting.
We can’t wait to show you more of the game over the coming months. For now, we hope that you like what you see and that you enjoyed this little write-up of our thoughts behind the game. Follow us on Steam for more updates and most importantly, add Between Horizons to your wishlist! Both would help us out a great deal.
