Hello dear readers,

It’s been a while since our last dev log. 

In fact, it’s been over a year—and a difficult year at that. 

I’d like to catch you up on what’s been happening behind the scenes. Our team is very small, so this story will inevitably be tied up in details about my real life. 

I would also like to share my plans for the foreseeable future, and how they tie in with continuing progress on The Inverted Spire, no matter how piecemeal or incremental. 

Finally, if you stay with me until the end, I am including an illustrated segment with more TIS lore. Something to entertain, perplex, and maybe get you curious about how the story unfolds from here.

Part 1 - What’s been going on?

I last left you with a war, or more precisely, a genocidal invasion that is continuing to this day. 

Shortly after the news first broke, I began devoting all the time I could to following news, directing funds towards local, grassroots organizing efforts, and translating documents for refugees and internally displaced people. This went on for several months in a hazy, mostly dissociated state. The psychological impact of what was happening hadn’t truly caught up with me yet.

Prior to this, I had already undergone a cascade of work and health-related troubles. I was no stranger to periods of high activity followed by rapid loss of ability and intermittent burn-out. 

Unfortunately, this time, I had really run myself dry.

Writing and art are my greatest coping strategy, but I found myself unable to effectively pursue either. It took forever to write only one or two sentences. Drawing my own characters felt like pulling teeth. And none of it seemed to line up to the level of quality I expected of myself.

With my primary coping mechanisms failing, and the compounding impact of chronic pain and mental illness becoming more severe, I went through a very dark period.

There were a few bursts of inspiration. I was able to collect the funds to visit my partner living near Portland, Oregon. We had an amazing time together. My queer found family was able to house and help a homeless friend get back on her feet. I had the opportunity to work on a series of anatomical illustrations for a book on gender-affirming surgery  in a time when anti-trans rhetoric, violence and discrimination were ramping up across the world. The wave of transphobia is still going strong, but I’m glad to continue doing my part to support my community as best I can.

During this time, bits and pieces of smaller creative ideas would occasionally coalesce into some kind of something. I pushed through, and gradually finished the script for Chapter II of TIS. 

The first chapter already had well over 150,000 words. The second was no smaller. With the help of beta-tester feedback, I had nearly rewritten the whole thing from the ground up. 

I began to transcribe and test the various branches in ren’py. Often, I would edit and refine along the way. 

This was a painfully slow-moving process. My previous estimates of how fast I could work were failing me, because they were based on a period of passionate hyperfixation, where my executive function was at its peak. 

They hadn’t taken degrading health or burn-out into account. They certainly weren’t well-planned around balancing competing life needs, or managing my disability in a healthy way (as much as I wanted to believe otherwise).

I hit a snag. 

Despite my best-laid plans, some of the narrative branches weren’t lining up as well as I would have liked. In a better state, this would have been eminently solvable. But I was exhausted and overwhelmed. I wanted to scrap the whole thing. Maybe even begin again.

Rational thinking prevailed, and I allowed myself to take a step back instead.

Both of my teammates were also working through their respective difficulties with burn-out, mental health, and other struggles of daily life. 

I had known from the very beginning that any ambitious passion project created mostly out-of-pocket would not be a smooth ride. It would be a stop-start venture with plenty of pitfalls. It was time to accept that this was going to be one of those moments. Time to take a break.

The trouble is, I’ve never been very good at taking breaks.

Over the next few months I spiraled into severe depression. A lot of heavy, unprocessed trauma was working its way through my system. My “break” felt like a self-inflicted hellscape of lost time and final chances slipping through my fingers.

I was fortunate enough to have access to therapy with someone who was trauma-informed, and sensitive to intersecting topics of gender, race, class and disability. With his help, I underwent an assessment for neurodiversity. The evaluation process was lengthy, and stressfully comprehensive. It unearthed even more buried memories. 

It also revealed that I met all the criteria for autism (and technically, due to symptom overlap, ADHD as well).

In retrospect, this was painfully obvious. 

I already knew I was struggling with a lot of internalized ableism, but the results of the assessment really put that struggle into perspective. 

I was raised by people used to being perceived as ethnic minority outsiders, both in my country of birth, and in the place I live now. In an effort to escape poverty and beat the odds of discrimination, they adopted the ideal of the “hard-working immigrant.” It was a belief system that might pay lip service to the importance of one’s health, but in practice, treated any form of disability as an embarrassing personal failing that needed to be overcome in private. 

This was compounded by the discrimination they had experienced when they actually did try to access decent medical care or ask for accommodations. It made them vulnerable to grifters selling all manner of snake oil cures under the guise of alternative medicine. It also came at the cost of their relationships, and systematically dismantled their physical and mental wellbeing. 

All this to say that I knew better than to replicate any of it—but a small, loud part of me still absorbed it into my core self-concept. 

I have since been undergoing a reckoning, both with my creative process, and the work itself.

I can see all the ways I have written autism into my characters without realizing it. Neurodiversity, mental illness and disability are certainly all prominent themes in TIS. 

I was writing them intuitively, because they were always a part of my life. 

Now I can also write them mindfully.

My diagnosis has also given me the language to describe one of my biggest worldbuilding motivators: to make lore so rich with meaning, it can be engaging to others like me. Others who also derive pleasure from hyperfixation, can’t help but poke holes in every big-picture explanation, and love finding patterns in fine details!

I never lost sight of the many difficult themes I wanted to explore—but I may have misplaced the joy that drove me in the first place. 

I think this may just be my path to reclaiming it.

Part 2 - A Detour.

In the depths of burn-out, I caught a glimpse of something that sparked my creative impulse.

It wasn’t meant to become much of anything. Little doodles in my sketchbook. Scraps of dialogue. My first time seriously returning to pixel art in years.

I couldn’t work on bigger projects, but neither could I bring myself to make nothing at all.

The idea grew. It was such a relief being able to make something (anything) again that I let it run wild, going wherever it wanted to go.

It became a small project named Alleged. 

At this point, I was once again struggling to find a stable source of income. With the encouragement of friends and found family, I submitted a pitch packet for Alleged to the Pixelles Prototype Fund—a generous grant program for underrepresented creators with projects in very early stages of development.  

The following are a few screenshots from the visual component of my application:

*(this particular slide had animated gifs depicting changing facial expressions and character sprite movement cycles)

The application also contained level maps with summaries of the puzzle design from beginning to end, a detailed breakdown of a development schedule that accounted for my disabilities and work-life balance, and various other under-the-hood details.

Last week, I received news that Alleged was one of the projects chosen by the selection committee. 

On the one hand—I couldn’t be more excited.

I’ve received mini-grants in the past. Enough to help with the cost of a digital art program, pay for a year of cloud storage, or cover a marketplace submission fee. But this is my first time receiving a grant of this magnitude. Something that actually offsets the cost of living enough that I can spend a few months working on a project full-time without my survival needs constantly dangling over my head. 

On the other hand—it means The Inverted Spire is going to have to wait a little while longer. 

As much as I would have liked to submit TIS to an opportunity like this, It would not have been eligible for the Pixelles Grant because development is too far along, and our team is spread out across multiple countries. 

Of course, that doesn’t mean that I’m any less passionate about TIS as a project. It just means I need more time to figure out how to make further development sustainable.

I’m eager to apply what I’ve learned from TIS to Alleged, and then return to TIS with all the skills I’ve developed taking Alleged from start to finish.

Part 3 - My ongoing commitment to The Inverted Spire.

I’d like to conclude this log with some deep lore that reflects my ongoing commitment to the world and story of TIS. 

What follows are relatively spoiler-free histories of the seven founding guilds of Old Order. They are, as always, written in-character as documents produced within the setting itself, in the era of New Order.

These profiles presuppose that the reader has completed at least one playthrough of TIS Chapter I. If you’ve played through the game so far, and are open to reading between the lines, you may even spot several hints about the direction in which the plot is headed. 

The guild emblems and their respective meanings are a significant plot point of Chapter II. 

Guild of Idey Donara, first (and last) goblin prophet of the cult of Veles. 

Prior to the formal existence of all magical Guilds, the Mentalists were a clerical faction who conveyed the teachings of Veles to their goblin kin. It was they who led their followers out of the mountain caverns, and into the valleys. They who supervised the erection of the first goblin cities to see the sky. 

Some New Order historians paint the original Mentalists as a cabal of mind-controlling, power-tripping authoritarian thugs overseen by a ruthless cult leader. In this version of events, the rise of the seven founding Guilds is seen as a reluctant concession of power. A last ditch measure when their subordinates grew too numerous and difficult to control. 

A more moderate interpretation often cited by Mentalist Guildmasters suggests that their ancestors were true believers. They relinquished their power gradually, as part of a religiously-motivated plan for the future of goblinkind. The precise nature of this plan has been lost to time, but even their most virulent critics agree that the cult of Veles was founded on some kind of preservation strategy. The most popular theory, presently circulated in academy textbooks, is that Donara was leading a band of survivors from some unknowable cataclysm that decimated an even greater goblin civilization. 

Many New Order historians argue that the Veles of early Mentalist texts is not a real historical figure. After all, the only surviving sightings of the alleged traveller god ever put to writing were penned by none other than Idey Donara. Moreover, there is no recorded precedent for goblins to engage in cannibalism prior to the Age of Blood. Modern interpretations vary on whether the Veles of Donara’s scriptures was a fictional character, a delusion, a case of split personality, or an intentional metaphor. Regardless, the tale of the devoured guest whose meat grants magical powers is formally regarded as fiction by any respectable New Order scholar.

There is, however, ongoing debate about the first prophet’s unnaturally extended lifespan.

Was Donara an anomalous prodigy capable of eluding old age through long-lost magical practices? Did they simply pass on their name to like-minded descendants, who were then treated as reincarnations of the founder? 

Accounts of how the first prophet was finally supplanted are equally murky. Few retellings survived the Age of Blood. 

The present scholarly consensus is that Donara’s supporters were massacred in an armed uprising, shortly after the establishment of the founding Guilds. Survivors of the coup sought protection from rival Guildmasters. Their descendants remained as refugees, scattered among the warring factions.

The Mentalists were finally permitted to rebuild under close supervision of the New Order Council. Their abilities proved instrumental to developing the mass surveillance and re-education methods of the Bureau of Service. Bureau positions continue to be the most common jobs assigned to Mentalist graduates to this day.

Modern-day Mentalism is among the rarest and most painstakingly regulated magical disciplines in New Order. Its adherents are not permitted to seek leadership positions outside of their own Guild structure. Their birth rate is heavily restricted. Young goblins who display Mentalist attributes may often find themselves redistributed to ensure that the population never exceeds acceptable density within a given region. Any use of mind-altering abilities that does not align with New Order values is a severe offense against the Equation, punishable by reducing a citizen score to zero.

Sometimes pejoratively described as the “catch-all” Guild, the Artificers began as a grouping of magical disciplines that were not sufficiently specialized or pronounced to belong to any other category. Their members often had some combination of skills revolving around limited influence on temperature, light or sound.

The Guild ultimately came into its own as a breeding ground for builders. The most accomplished Artificers were skilled engineers and famous architects. 

They also gained a reputation for exerting pressure on other Guilds through sheer numbers. New Order historians tend to agree that it was the Artificers who first led the rebellion against Idey Donara. They were the first of the seven founding Guilds to fracture into warring factions controlled by regional Guildmasters. 

During the Age of Blood, Artificers were infamous for their gargantuan war machines and elaborate torture mechanisms. Smaller factions were frequently engulfed by bloody internal conflict, only to be reabsorbed by larger, more powerful adversaries. 

While the New Order Council first took form, the Artificer clans remained divided. Many of their surviving Guildmasters were suspicious of relinquishing precious blueprints in exchange for peace. There were also a few who kept the old faith. Most significant among them were the descendants of former dancers—goblins with a ritual role in the Cult of Veles. They kept a firm grip on their convictions even as other clans gathered under the Council’s banner. The group’s most reluctant stragglers would later found the Luminist Guild. They were ultimately recognized, despite staunch ongoing opposition from the Artificer majority. 

Luminists continue to occupy a controversial place on the Council. Their Guildmasters have frequently faced censure for advocating exemptions to Equation edicts on behalf of anachronistic traditions. The separate laws governing travelling professions were developed on their behalf. Some have accused the Luminist Guild of being responsible for the black market trade in misappropriated Council-issue wares. They are also known to be overrepresented among Old Believers apprehended by the Bureau of Service. 

Although responsible for the majority of criticism directed at the defecting clan, the modern-day Artificers are not without their controversies as well. Several generations of Guildmasters have shut down recurring motions to redivide the largest Guild in New Order. Their sheer breadth arouses concerns about stagnation, where individual citizens face debilitatingly fierce competition to advancement. This has led to accusations of defying nepotism protocols, and other forms of systematic corruption. 

Most New Order Artificers uphold the legacy of their ancestors by graduating into metallurgy and civil engineering positions. Field agents of the Bureau of Service are still called to sweep the ruins of recovered clan warehouses for illicit mechanisms. Fresh locations are marked for excavation every year.

Graviturgists retain the distinction of being the only goblin Guild capable of unassisted flight. Their ability to influence the weight of objects makes them an interwoven element throughout every part of New Order society.

There is scant record of Graviturgists ever having sought power under Old Order. Surviving chronicles remark on the presence only in so far as they supported the leaders of other more outspoken Guilds. Their reputation as affable utilitarians persevered throughout the Age of Blood. The individual Graviturge might rise to prominence as advisor to a bloodthirsty warmonger in another Guild, but they would not seek to form a united front advocating on behalf of their own.

Graviturgists were among the first goblins to join the New Order Council. Early motions to absorb them into the Artifex Guild were only struck down due to concern that the Artificers were already too numerous. Having no real enemies on the Council, and a membership spread evenly across a broad range of New Order professions, Graviturge Guildmasters often found themselves in the position of peacemakers. 

Although the low profile of their Guild has left individual Graviturgists relatively unrestricted, they have also been known to feel isolated and unsupported. A position lacking in the close-knit community ties other goblins may receive through their respective disciplines. 

Graviturgists are underrepresented in Bureau of Service data of apprehended dissidents. However, their Guild members are still considered top priority candidates for mental wellness and re-education programs in their district. This is due an established history of Graviturge magic causing unparalleled destruction when it does go wrong. 

Prejudicial attitudes towards goblin Shapeshifters seem to date as far back as the Cult of Veles.

The earliest accounts on record suspect them of being descended from a different species altogether. Even Idey Donara’s writings referred to them as half-kin who inherited the spirit of Veles. Since there seem to be no historical examples of Shapeshifters adopting the classic wolfish features associated with Veles the traveller god, the prophet’s intended meaning is unclear.

The Shapeshifter Guild of Donara’s time was said to be heavily divided in their views towards Mentalist authority. Some went so far as to side with the Mentalists during the bloody uprising against them. Those who did were massacred alongside the prophet’s followers. 

The surviving Shapeshifter clans banded together to stake their claim to power in the ensuing collapse. They were widely feared for their terrifying martial prowess. So much so, that the threat of a new Shapeshifter-led regime formed a series of temporary coalitions among the competing factions of other Guilds. 

The repeated coalition strikes were so successful, they nearly drove the Shapeshifters to extinction. Hunting parties dedicated to finding and bringing down individual Shapeshifters continued to form throughout the Era of Blood, long after the Guild had lost any semblance of structure or formal leadership. 

Despite being among the first to seek reconciliation through the founding of the New Order Council, Shapeshifters were also the only Guild to initially be rejected from having their own seat at the table. They were alternatively perceived either as relics of the Old Order mentality, or as a brutish sub-goblin species incapable of living in harmony with true goblins. 

Under New Order, many Shapeshifters were ultimately able to gain greater acceptance as field agents for the Bureau of Service. Extensive testing by Fleshcarver researchers found no evidence to support the theory that goblins who develop Shapeshifter abilities are born with unique traits separating them from other goblin infants. However, a legacy of stigma towards the discipline remains the most cited cause of Shapeshifter dissidence. 

Shapeshifters are also uniquely vulnerable to a progressive disorder that causes the sufferer to lose control of their magic. The disorder is sometimes hypothesized to be a milder form of the condition that gives rise to Chaotics. Although the cause is yet unknown, there is evidence to suggest that guided group re-education sessions are effective in slowing its advance, and may, on rare occasions, even reverse it.

Despite their exceptionally low birth rate, Shapeshifters continue to be overrepresented among the Council Ward penal colony population. Every Spire expedition to date has involved a Shapeshifter. It is commonly believed that they are always the last to die.

Like Mentalists, the Shapeshifter Guild operates under heavy surveillance. Unauthorized transformations are not permitted in any public setting. Likewise, any new transformations taken on in the performance of a Shapeshifter’s citizenship duties must be logged with their respective Auditors.

Both Shapeshifters and Fleshcarvers display the ability to alter their own bodies at an early age. 

In order to differentiate between them, early childhood Guardians are instructed to watch for the following divergence: where young Shapeshifters are prone to restructuring the composition of their own bodies to mimic other species, Fleshcarver children display a fixation with enhancing their body’s existing functions. They may alter the shape of their own heart to be more effective at running games, or accelerate the growth of their claws after being clipped. 

Guardians are advised to identify candidates for the Fleshcarver Guild as early as possible. Those who remain unmentored too long are known to rapidly progress towards attempting to alter the bodies of others, often with severe unintended consequences.

Historically, the Fleshcarver Guild has always been highly revered. The prophet Idey Donara famously described their discipline as a symbol of the self-determination of goblinkind. 

Under Old Order, they were known to collaborate with the Hortulan Guild to create mind-altering substances used to enhance Mentalist abilities during religious rituals. The rituals themselves seem to have been in service to some kind of fortune telling or truth seeking power that goblins were thought to achieve by communing with spirits in their blood. 

New Order historians tend to agree that such claims are dubious at best. The substances in question did, however, have a measurable hallucinogenic impact. They were greatly sought-after by warring Guildmasters during the Age of Blood. Due to their unpredictable effect on goblin behaviour, the reproduction of any surviving recipes is strictly prohibited.  

Despite working in close partnership under Old Order, the Fleshcarver and Hortulan Guilds grew apart during the Age of Blood. The primary source of their dispute was a growing Fleshcarver preoccupation with reversing the goblin aging process, bringing the dead back to life, and even eradicating death altogether. 

Many ambitious Guildmasters from other Guilds were lured into coalition with Fleshcarver clans by the promise of immortality. Some even went so far as to capture live prisoners for experimentation. A handful of collaborators would then go on to claim that they had achieved endless life, only to be struck down by their rivals.

New Order historians agree that there exists no credible account of a Fleshcarver actually triumphing over death, though a handful may have succeeded in delaying the onset of old age.

The practice of researching undeath was banned in one of the first motions put forward to the New Order Council, prior to Fleshcarver membership. It was a vital condition to offering them a seat at the table. After losing support from the last defecting Artificer clans, The Fleshcarver Guild ultimately conceded.

Under New Order, the Fleshcarvers were reinvented as a Guild of healers. They have also come to work closely alongside clinic-trained Mentalists to supervise re-education efforts, and their former allies, the Hortulan Guild, to perform autopsies for the Bureau of Service. 

Hortulans have a reputation for being insular, with good reason. Their affinity for plant life not only makes them the primary stewards of goblin agriculture, but also brings them into close proximity with death.

Evidence suggests that the first iteration of death grove burial rites as they exist today emerged alongside the Cult of Veles. Few records survive of the traditions that preceded them. The most credible accounts were penned during the Age of Blood, when individual Guildmasters attempted to revive the old ways—ostensibly in the belief that immuring corpses in stone walls would make their fortresses stronger. 

Idey Donara described each stage in the process of preparing a corpse for planting as a peace offering to the forces of nature. This turn of phrase seems to reflect a core tenet of the Veles Cult: the idea that the mere existence of magic is not only at odds with nature, but also inherently destructive to the surrounding environment. Adherents of the old faith placed great emphasis on appeasing nature. Most New Order historians believe the act of fertilizing the earth with our dead seemed to come into practice as an emergent property of the challenges involved in transitioning from a society of nocturnal hunters to diurnal agrarians.

The honoured role of Hortulans in these new burial rites placed them in a unique position in relation to the Mentalist massacre. They were able to maintain relative neutrality during the Age of Blood. The desecration of communal death groves was unthinkable, even to the most bloodthirsty and irreverent of Guildmasters. Interfering with the lives of their stoic gardeners was viewed as equally obscene.

Some New Order historians claim the Hortulans were in fact the founders of the First Council, although this hypothesis remains unverified. They were, without a doubt, welcomed at the negotiation table with little to no demands placed on their existing Guild structure or activities. 

Hortulan influence on Equations edicts includes the right to request travel exemptions for ritual plantings, and long-distance visits to the trees and flower gardens fertilized by former acquaintances. 

In recent decades, the Guild has faced challenges in securing land for their groves at the expense of new building developments for the living. They have also been at the forefront of managing food supply in light of the encroaching Spire wasteland. An ongoing controversy has developed around turning over the cultivation of new plots and livestock to the growing penal colonies in place of their traditional stewards.

Under New Order, Hortulans are the only Guild formally mandated to preserve their Old Order attire. While other goblins may wear robes embroidered with abstract plant-like motifs, only members of the Hortulan Guild wreathe themselves in images of trees or pronounced floral patterns. The same flamboyant style of embroidery is otherwise reserved for the death shawls traditionally worn at a ritual planting. These provocative elements in Hortulan daily wear mark their profession as deserving of solemnity and reverence, much the same way as a Bureau Agent’s faceless mirror mask conveys a commitment to impartial justice.

Under Old Order, their ability to shape and manipulate kinetic energy frequently placed members of the Kinesthetist Guild in leadership roles over groups of labouring Artificers. Many Old Order machines operated with the use of magically-induced perpetual motion and enhanced concussive force. 

However, there are contradictory sources from the era suggesting that the Cult of Veles was committed to using such powers sparingly, with esoteric limitations imposed on their place and time. As a result of these impositions, some of the more elaborate mechanisms eventually fell out of favour, and ultimately, into obscurity. 

Their popularity surged during the Age of Blood, together with some of the more violent personal applications of Kinesthetist abilities. In collaboration with roaming Artificer clans, the Kinesthetists also came to practice rapid, destructive mining techniques to acquire the resources needed to sustain their mutually-developed war machines. Neither the numbers nor their political presence of the Kinesthetists were strong enough to secure a successful takeover on behalf of their own Guild. They did however succeed in turning any Artifex clan they partnered with into a marauding force. 

The Kinesthetists were among the last Guilds to join the New Order Council. A decisive move towards replacing the majority of Old Order mechanisms with magical labour alternatives placed their Guild at a significant disadvantage. Especially after the authority they had previously enjoyed. 

The Kinesthetist Guild would ultimately lead the development of regional programs for lively and abundant bonding activities in the freshly restructured communities of New Order. Particular attention was paid to regulating the energy levels of goblins whose disciplines gave them  different intake and expenditure needs. 

Although their relationship of their Guild to labour and production may have changed under New Order, the sprightly predispositions of Kinesthetist graduates continue to gravitate them towards vigorous managerial and teaching roles.They likewise have a well-earned reputation for casual mischief. A Kinesthetist with a citizen score unfettered by a long string of minor misdemeanours is a rare sight indeed.

I wanted to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has read this far.  Every comment, email and message means a lot to me. 

To be honest with you, I've felt nervous about posting this dev log.  The fast-paced, rapidly evolving world of indie games (and any creative field, really) often gives off the impression that the only way to stay afloat is to create non-stop, like a living content machine. It's an ecosystem where people with inherited wealth, strong support networks and relatively low support needs tend to have the upper hand, because they have the most time and energy to devote to that kind of breakneck pace. I have seen how creative freelancers in my own personal circle of friends will sacrifice everything—social life, family life, physical and mental health, and every last bit of their savings—to keep up. They'll even do it with a smile, apologizing profusely for every missed post. I've seen them burn out, and I've seen how unsympathetic followers would chide them for being lazy or unskilled. For not doing enough (never enough) despite putting in everything they had every single day of the week.

A big part of overcoming my internalized ableism has been learning that sometimes, it's okay if something important takes a long time. It's okay to take breaks, have significant detours, and make time for living life while working on big creative projects. In fact, it's necessary to keep the work fresh, at the highest quality I can make it! 

It also means The Inverted Spire will continue to evolve alongside who I am as a person. I am a living being—not a content machine, and TIS is a living work-in-progress, just like me.~