Hi everyone,
I’m excited to announce today that the demo build for Roguefort has been submitted for review!
I’m hoping it will be ready to launch when Medieval Fest arrives on 20 April @ 10:00am PDT, where the game will be featured.
I’m also thrilled to be writing the first Steam announcement for the game. It’s received extraordinary interest and wishlists since the page went live only three weeks ago, and I’m beyond grateful for the support and encouraging feedback. Thank you.
The game has been in development for a while and has attracted a dedicated community on itch.io. I’m indebted to the community for the many bug reports, suggestions, and general banter that helped shape the game into what it is today.
That said, the itch.io version is now frozen in time and remains free to play as an early alpha.
The Steam version has grown massively beyond it, with major improvements to graphics, visual effects, UI/UX, scope, NPC lives and schedules, interactive social systems, and much more.
I’m incredibly excited to unveil the demo at Medieval Fest - fingers crossed everything goes smoothly with the review.
A world built on cheese
Before I get into the demo itself, a word about the world, the lore, and the game mechanics.
Roguefort is a turn-based roguelike RPG set on a hand-painted continent where the land itself carries genuine power, and cheese is the most refined expression of that power. A wheel of cheese is bottled landscape.
It's not simply a pun or a play on the words - it is deeply part of the game's cosmology, its culture, and how magic works (how combat works in the game through spellcasting with war cheese).
Five great civilisations grew up around the Five Great Cellars - vast underground cave systems where ageing cheese for decades amplifies its properties. Each developed its own guild and traditions:
The Hard Guild of Thymerock ages granite-hard wheels in mountain caves
The Soft Guild of Grasse-Verdenne produces refined bloomy-rind cheeses in rich pastoral lowlands
The reclusive Blue Guild of Roquelle guards the deepest cellar, where something ancient stirs
The Washed Guild of Brinehold hardens salt-cured rinds beside a vast underground lake
The Fresh Guild of Fennmarche crafts experimental young cheeses in the wetland frontier
For centuries, the guilds traded freely along the Guild Roads, competing through craft, not war. But that era is over.
Two great alliances - the Rind Dominion and the Compact of Free Guilds - now vie for control of the continent. The frontier is caught in between, and a master cheesemaker, they say, is worth more than a general.
In short, the demo drops you right into the heart of all this.
Demo features
You wake up in a cabin in the woods, just east of the village of Hearthmere.
No spoilers, but the Village Warden is waiting for you outside, and he needs your help.
The guards do what they can, but they can’t keep travellers safe on the roads at all times. And something is stirring in the wilderness at night that locals say they’ve never seen before.
That said, from the moment you walk outside your cabin, you can ignore the main quest entirely and:
Wander the wilderness
Build a home or full fortress
Chase your own path to fame and fortune
The demo offers a sizeable chunk of the continent, with 20 to 50 hours of content based on playtester feedback.
Things you'll get to discover include:
Several dungeon types (caves, grottos, multi-level delves)
Distinct enemies and strategies required
A mysterious high-tier dungeon deep inside a mountain
The world is alive around you:
Dynamic weather and seasons
Day/night cycles
NPC routines (sleeping, working, reacting to you, remembering things that happen, developing dispositions that affect gameplay)
And beyond that:
Fishing and quests
Cheese commissions
Crafting and building
Lore books with gameplay effects
Foraging across the countryside
Companion animals
World map exploration with fog of war
And much more...
What’s ahead
Right now I’m focused on polishing the demo to deliver a complete, satisfying experience - not a "lite" version of the game.
At the same time, I’m deepening systems and making them interact in more nonlinear ways.
For example, if you walk around the village undressed, there are consequences. Guards may imprison you. NPCs may refuse to talk to you or trade. Your standing with the local cheese guild can suffer. If things go badly enough, you might be chased out of town - unable to buy even basic clothing. So you head into a nearby cave... Naked and getting colder as the sun sets... The sound of clinking bones and dripping water emerges out of the darkness...
Anyway, I’ll leave it there for this update.
Thanks so much for reading, and expect another update as Medieval Fest approaches. Hopefully the demo won't be far off.
Timmy Graham