Happy New Year everyone! Just like last year (and the year before that… and the one before that), this Chronicle is a recap of the past year. That said, this time we actually have quite a lot to share, so make sure to read all the way through!
Fun fact: You may not know this but we publish the Slormite Chronicles devlog every 6th of the month, which is the day The Slormancer was released (on April 6, 2021). Everytime we publish a Slormite Chronicles, the game gets one month older, and it is currently 4 years and 9 months old. The actual out-of-Early Access release was on May 13, 2025, so it is actually 8 months old in its final form.
Since 2025 was the year of The Slormancer’s full release, it was obviously a very intense year for both the game and us, not only in terms of workload, but also stress and preparation. Looking back, everything went incredibly well. Of course, there were a few bumps along the way, but nothing we couldn’t handle.
The year kicked off with the announcement of the final changes coming to the game, as well as the start of the full localization process across multiple languages for the entire game, back in Slormite Chronicles #46.
In that Chronicle, we announced the opening of the Experimental Branch, which was initially planned to last for nearly two months. We later went back on that decision in Slormite Chronicles #47, which understandably caused some frustration.
In hindsight, we should have given this more thought before making the announcement. However, opening the Experimental Branch two weeks before release instead of two months allowed us to better focus and concentrate our player count during that period, and ultimately proved to be a positive decision.
Things got serious when we started updating our Steam Page with new gifs and key arts.
Before
After
A little over a month before release, we carefully planned every major milestone: the Experimental Branch, the patch notes, the final Chronicles, the release date announcement, and the unlocking of Achievements and Steam Cards, all with the goal of driving as many new and returning players as possible.
These are small details, and it’s impossible to know whether each of them truly made a difference. Still, nothing was left to chance. All of the elements below were carefully timed so we would have enough room to handle any kind of issue.
On April 24, we officially announced the release date: the future of planet Earth (or almost) would be decided on May 13, 2025.
April 27: Patch Notes go live!
April 29: Experimental Branch opens!
May 6: Final Slormite Chronicles in Early Access
May 12: Achievements and Steam Trading Cards are activated
May 13: We hit the “Release” button… and start sweating.
Two weeks after release, we published a Slormite Chronicles dedicated to the launch, reporting a peak of over 10,000 concurrent players, strong positive coverage from content creators, and more than 250,000 copies sold.
With the release behind us, we could finally take a step back and start discussing the future of the game and our plans for what comes next.
At the same time, as mentioned in the following Chronicle, my goal was to fix as many bugs as possible. With so many new and returning players jumping into the game, the number of reported bugs was astronomical, so it was time to roll up our sleeves for one last sprint.
Then, holidays!
By the time September rolled around, we were more or less rested, with the release behind us and most of the feedback either addressed or waiting for a future update. It was finally time to look ahead and focus on new content.
Looking back, this next series of Chronicles is actually quite funny. Here’s a quick summary:
In Slormite Chronicles #53, we talked about our plans for the future, including a new mode called “The Rogue Mode,” which was meant to introduce a roguelike way of exploring the game’s content. The feedback was positive, and players were interested.
In Slormite Chronicles #54, we went into more detail about the mode, and the feedback was almost unanimous: nobody wanted it. Oh. Well.
Since we weren’t fully satisfied with what we were building either, we ended up agreeing with the players (Slormite Chronicles #55) and decided to take a safer route instead: a brand-new class, which we started teasing in Slormite Chronicles #56.
December brought some real progress! All the abilities are now ready to be implemented in-game, and on my side I was waiting for the few animations needed to start integration. At a minimum, we needed an idle animation, a walk cycle, and a few attack poses to begin farming our first enemies.
And HyonD didn’t waste any time, most of the class’s animations are ready. All that’s left is to integrate them into the game so we have the core of the class in place before focusing on the animations and effects for each ability. Things are really taking shape!
Without further ado, here’s a little visual teaser for the new class: The Whimsical Witch.
That's about it!
Cheers!