Roadmap

A gated plan — prove it's fun before building on it

Solo ARPGs die from building content on top of a loop that was never fun. So the plan is built as a series of gates: each phase ends in a yes/no question that must be answered before the next begins. Below is every step of the build, in order — 27 of them, from an empty machine to a shipped Act 1.

Where we are now

Updated 4 November 2026.

Built

All 27 steps are built: the loop, Eleusis, two zones, the boss, five chapters of story, loot, shrines, three difficulty tiers, three classes, menus, audio and a release build. Gate 0 and Gate 1 are passed.

Being redone

Every area is being rebuilt as a real place of 5th-century BC Greece. The boss arena, Zone A and Zone B are done; the town is paused as good enough. See the areas.

Next

A full play-through of the boss fight, the Zone A mood decision, art and sound passes, and a plan to port the game to Unreal Engine. See the Unreal port plan.

  1. P

    Setup & groundwork ~1–2 weeks

    No game code yet — the foundation that saves weeks later.

    1. Tools. Unity 6 LTS, a C# IDE, Blender for asset cleanup, and Git for version control.
    2. The project, created once and correctly. The Universal Render Pipeline, on a local drive away from cloud sync, under version control from the first commit.
    3. The skeleton. A fixed folder layout, code namespaces, naming conventions, and separate text tables for story and for menus from line one.
    4. The asset shortlist. Survey character, animation, environment and effects packs — shortlist now, buy later.

    Gate: the project opens, code compiles and runs, and the skeleton is in place.

  2. 0

    Prove the loop ~3–5 weeks

    Grey-box: capsules and cubes, no Greek theme, no art, no story. Each step is playable before the next.

    1. Movement & camera. WoW-style third person: WASD relative to the camera, mouse-look, a zooming camera — tuned until it feels right.
    2. Target & basic attack. Tab to select an enemy, a target ring, a basic attack on a global cooldown, and a cube that dies.
    3. The stat spine. One shared stats component and one damage pipeline that every future skill, crit and affix hooks into.
    4. The loot drop. Items and affixes as data: base items, random affixes rolled from ranges, rarity tiers, and loot tables.
    5. Pick up, inventory, equip. A grid inventory and equipment slots — equip an item and a number visibly changes.
    6. One affix you can feel, plus a bare HUD. Health, target, XP and a hotbar. Ugly is fine.

    Gate: is move → kill → loot → equip actually fun? Everything waits on yes.

  3. 1

    One class, vertical slice ~6–10 weeks

    Theme and depth, but only one of everything — the Hoplite — polished to shipping quality.

    1. The skill system. Skills as data — cost, cooldown, scaling, effects — and the first Hoplite skills on the hotbar.
    2. The skill tree. Points earned on level-up, branching choices, and a respec from the start.
    3. The first real art pass. Character and environment packs, retargeted animations, and hit feedback: impact effects, hit-stop, sound.
    4. The first zone: the Rarian Plain. Handcrafted landmarks, data-driven enemies and spawners.
    5. The town hub: Eleusis. Stash, waypoint, merchant, quest board, and a dialogue system — Myrra never speaks.
    6. Quests. A quest system and the first two chapters of the story.
    7. The boss, and saving. A reusable boss framework for the act's two-phase boss, and the save/load system — built before content piles up.

    Gate: a 15–30 minute slice — quest, fight, boss, loot, a skill point, save and resume — that feels like a real game.

  4. 2

    The full Act 1 ~8–12 weeks

    Replicate the proven slice across the whole act — still one class.

    1. The second zone and the rest of the story. The sacred grove and what lies beyond it, through to the act's ending.
    2. The full item pass. Every Act 1 item base, affix and loot table, and a signature relic.
    3. Shrines & the economy. Shrine blessings from the gods, vendors in drachmae, and a gambler for blind buys.
    4. Difficulty tiers. Mortal, Heroic and Divine — the same act, tougher enemies, better loot.

    Gate: playable start to finish, 1–2 hours, fun the whole way.

  5. 3

    The other two classes ~8–12 weeks

    The architecture makes this mostly content, not new systems.

    1. The Huntress, then the Oracle. Projectiles, traps and kiting; spells and resource management — each with its own skill tree and animations.
    2. Balance & distinctness. All three classes tuned to clear the act on every difficulty, and to feel genuinely different.

    Gate: all three classes viable and genuinely distinct.

  6. 4

    Polish & ship ~8–12 weeks

    Turning a complete game into a shippable one. Polish is not a week.

    1. Menus & options. Main menu, character select, settings, keybinds, and accessibility basics.
    2. Audio & juice. Music, ambience, a full sound pass, and a final game-feel pass.
    3. Content completeness. Uniques and sets, side quests, and lore hooks to the books.
    4. Stabilise & ship. Performance, a bug bash, a tested standalone build, the store page, and the companion book finalised.

    Gate: a stranger can install it, play any class, and hit no blocking bugs. Ship it.

The art and the sound, planned in full

Alongside the build steps, every piece of art and every sound the whole game needs has been listed in advance — what AI makes, what a person makes, and in what order.

The art plan The sound plan

Every step, on video

The build is filmed as it happens. Each devlog episode takes the next step of this roadmap in Unity, bugs and dead ends included. The day-by-day working log behind the videos is public too.

Watch the devlog Read the dev notes YouTube channel

Honest about the size

A shipped Act 1 is a serious, multi-year effort at hobby hours — and that's with the scope discipline baked in: a short act, single-player, buy-don't-build for animated art, one thing finished before the next begins. The single most important milestone is the very first one: reaching a grey-box loop that's genuinely fun de-risks everything after it.