Half a year after the demo release—and 11 demo updates later—we’re now drawing our first conclusions. From here on out, we’ll be shifting our full focus back to the complete version of the game, which we plan to release next year.
But first, some fantastic news:
We’ve been selected for the German Indie Showcase, taking place on December 11th on Gronkh’s official YouTube channel!
Thanks to our publisher and aspiring media designer Leonard Spät, we now have a brand-new trailer—one that even secured us a spot in the curated selection for the German Indie Showcase on 11/12/2025.
We’ll make the trailer public on YouTube and Steam the same evening.
Through the Vienna Gamedev Meetup, we were contacted by EDICTUM, an artist with long-standing experience in the synthwave scene. After discussing the project, he offered to collaborate with Powernerd to create the Main Theme for Nion Forge.
We couldn’t be happier with the result—it captures the atmosphere of our game incredibly well.
In the meantime, with a total of nine districts planned, District 5 has been implemented and work on District 6 is underway.
District 5 was a major undertaking: it focuses heavily on enemy portals that spawn entire hordes, and its boss is the largest and most formidable we’ve created so far. After the small but swift (and still deadly) District 4 boss, we wanted District 5’s boss—the Penta-Core—to be a real contrast.
Screenshot of District 5 in Blender:
Screenshot of District 6 in Blender:
During the demo updates, we watched various streamers dive into the city arena.
Based on this feedback, we added new modules, fixed bugs, and collected ideas—some already implemented, others planned for the near future.
One thing we noticed: many players entered a kind of “flow state,” driven by the action, the scrap used for upgrades, or simply the desire to push a bit further with each run. We saw the same at the LNC in Leipzig and recently at Vienna’s Game City, where some players spent hours trying to conquer all currently available districts.
Players frequently requested that XP-based level-ups should no longer interrupt gameplay.
To improve the flow, automatic upgrades can now be disabled. In that case, level-ups trigger only at specific moments, such as when entering a boss dimension. There’s also a dedicated key for manual level-ups—LCTRL by default.
An icon in the upper-left HUD indicates when an upgrade is available.
Screenshot of Boss 5:
Many players at conventions compared the game to titles we didn’t expect. Some gamers from the ’80s and ’90s said things like: “This looks like Space Invaders—but in 3D!”
Terms like roguelike/lite and survivorlike are more recent, popularized by games such as Vampire Survivors or Brotato.
With so many players enjoying the ’80s synthwave aesthetic, we decided to lean further into the arcade feel. We plan to place stronger emphasis on power-ups rather than pushing through the remaining districts too quickly, giving us room to fine-tune the overall gameplay experience.
We also changed the original 30-minute time limit:
You now start with less time, but earn more through boss fights and certain pickups—making the time mechanic more dynamic and exciting.
Since version 0.9, the game includes a German localization. More languages may follow as we aim to better reach the global market. However, we’re committed to ensuring that translations are accurate and not simply machine-generated or AI-generated.
This is especially important for Asian languages, where poor machine translations have already caused negative backlash for other games.
Additional languages will likely be added toward the end of development.
A recent Unity security leak prompted us to take a deep dive into all corners of the game. The transition from Unity 2021 to 2022 brought several changes.
With a lot of dedication, Martin dissected the game using the profiler and frame debugger to thoroughly clean up performance issues. He uncovered several hidden culprits that were slowing the game down. As a result, the game now looks better and runs smoother.
Because lightmaps function differently in the new version, I had to revisit the district models as well—but the time investment paid off. The lightmap issues we encountered turned out to be caused by unoptimized geometry.
Feel free to join us on Discord to connect with fellow Nion enthusiasts and the dev team: