Hey Kinoko fans!

It’s that time of the month again, and it’s also that time of the year, which means it’s time for another monthly, and also yearly, Star Heretic update! From the release of our first playable demo earlier in the year, to the naming of our game and the incorporation of our business back in the summer, to the massive development on starsprites that we’re working on right now, 2025 has been yet another really big year for us, and 2026 looks set to be even bigger as we continue to work towards sharing with you our next, playable, heavily combat and starsprite-focused update. Let’s get straight into it!

Although we’re not expecting to share our next playable demo until late 2026 at the earliest, it’s already come a really long way from the version we shared back in March. Since that demo focused primarily on Kinoko’s basic platforming, we hadn’t really put too much time or effort into his starsprites. Since then, we’ve implemented several new mechanics for them, including obtainable starlight (the consumable resource used by starsprites), castable abilities (with a goal to implement 32 of them in total!), a friendship-based experience and levelling system, and lots more besides.

If you’ve followed our game from the very beginning, you’ll know how many times our plans have changed, especially when it comes to Kinoko’s starsprites. Originally, they served purely as Kinoko’s hitpoints. Then, we decided to introduce a different passive buff for each starsprite colour. Then, we gave Kinoko his own health bar, later going as far as to introduce hitpoints for the starsprites themselves. Then, we added castable abilities and experience points, and we were recently toying with starsprites having individual levels and perks (we’re still undecided on that one, but we’ll see).

Even as recently as a couple of nights ago, I was sitting right here in Google Docs, trying to figure out if it’s viable to remove enemy hitpoints altogether and have the starsprites’ abilities offer something other than damage, with which they’d all just wind up competing with one another in order to offer the most damage per second.

In spite of these ever-changing plans, which have absolutely cost us time along the way as I’ve had to keep redeveloping things, I do feel that Star Heretic is moving in completely the right direction. It’s taken us a while to get here, but in terms of the game’s design, I firmly believe that the vision of the game that we’re working towards now is the best one we’ve ever had, and also the right one. It’s going to require a lot more thought than it would have done, had we stuck with the original, simpler systems, especially where starsprite abilities and enemy mechanics are concerned, but it’s going to be worth it. I’ll be prototyping some of these revised plans over the coming month – hopefully they work out!

Whilst I’ve been focusing on mechanics like these, Chel’s been focused on laying out some of the game’s environments. In particular, she’s been focused recently on designing our game’s first major boss encounter. This is where I hope our efforts will meet in the middle over the coming months, with the starsprite abilities I’m developing now being absolutely crucial for taking the boss down. As I said a couple of paragraphs ago, I’m keen to avoid our combat coming down to basic DPS checks; otherwise, we might as well just have one single starsprite colour with just four abilities, and ultimately that’s not the game either of us want to make.

We’ve mentioned in our blog and elsewhere before that it’s our ultimate ambition for our game to comprise five metroidvania-style planets, starting with Kinoko’s home planet Fungaia. The boss encounter that we’ve been working on takes place on the planet Fungaia, and we’ve made some progress this year on building some of Fungaia’s other areas. For the most part, level design unfortunately hasn’t had much time to be a priority for us, but we have implemented some playable areas on two of the game’s additional worlds this year, both of which should hopefully be appearing in our next playable demo.

The first of these two, smaller worlds is Starlight City, which is the game’s central hub world. Narratively-speaking, Starlight City is a sort of space station located between planets, and it’s the first world beyond Fungaia that Kinoko ever encounters. Constructed to serve as a refuelling point and rest stop for travellers on long journeys in space, Starlight City has grown to offer many useful and interesting amenities, such as a spaceport, various shops, a nursery, a botanical garden, the Star Lounge arcade, and lots more – and who knows, maybe even the Order of the Event Horizon cult have a presence there…?

And the second of the two is the planet Izelmyst, the original but long-since abandoned homeworld of the Order of the Galactic Halo, followers of the goddess Galaxy. On this mysterious jungle planet, Kinoko will encounter the ancient Temple of the Chime and its Celestial Bells: a mythical set of holy instruments, built to call upon the starsprites in times of calamity. In Star Heretic, Kinoko will be able to ring the Celestial Bells in order to gain a deeper understanding of the starsprites and how they communicate. Not even he, though, may ring the Great Chime. It was built to summon Galaxy, but in her absence, the starsprites worry about who else may answer in her place.

All of this, and lots more besides, has been our focus throughout 2025, and will continue to be our focus throughout the first half of 2026. I’m not sure how much of Fungaia is going to be explorable the next time we release a demo, but Chel wants at least a bit of it to be playable, including the boss fight that I mentioned earlier, so she intends to focus more this year on level design. As for me, I’ll be continuing to focus on starsprites and combat for the foreseeable future.

We know that creating a game with five (or even just two or three) different metroidvania-style planets is going to be a huge, costly, and time-consuming endeavour, so we aren’t expecting to touch any of the other planets this year. Our goal right now is just to create the best possible demonstration of our game by focusing purely on Fungaia and the two smaller worlds, Starlight City and Izelmyst’s Temple of the Chime. Once we’ve done that, and we’ve got a solid base upon which to build, we can look at how we’re going to fund the additional hands we need to make the other planets a reality.

Anyway, that’s our 2025, and also a little of what we’ve got planned for the next year. As always, keep an eye on our blog and social media to see what we’re up to and to be amongst the first to hear when we’ve next got something playable. Whatever form that takes, we’re both really looking forward to sharing that with you in 2026!

Until next time!