January 2026 Dev Update
Greetings, Travelers, and Happy New Year! Doug here - it's been a while, hasn't it? Too long, I'd say! I wanted to let everyone know what's been going on with Advent of the Reaper!
Let's get the bad news out of the way - development on Advent slowed down quite a bit in the second half of 2025. It actually feels crazy to me to look at the blog and see how far back the last time I posted an update was! One of the unfortunate realities of working on a project like this — where the core team is entirely working in a hobby capacity subject to our limited free time — is that seemingly small breaks, life happenstances, and differing schedules/priorities can lead to major gaps in dev time. Even what starts as a short break can snowball into months of little progress. I can assure you that it frustrates us creating the game as much as any of you looking forward to updates! In addition to the general slowdown, during the fall we learned that we did not make it into the MAGfest Indie Game showcase (MIVS) for 2026. This was such a fun event to be a part of last year (see the blog post here), and not making it to such an amazing local event again certainly took some wind out of the sails (and to be clear, there's no ill will towards MIVS from us here - they receive hundreds of applications for very limited space. We'll apply again bigger and better for 2027!). That being said, we are working to revitalize our development efforts in 2026 and hope to have many more exciting updates to share in the coming months!
So what have we been up to? We did have one public showing of the game demo since the last blog post. This was at a gaming-focused event coordinated by a local library system in September 2025, and it was a great time! We were one of only a handful of indies present, as the event was designed to cater to both tabletop and video gaming. There was a performance by members of the Baltimore Gamer Symphony while the event was going on, which was a real treat!
Our setup at the September library event (Lisa is technically in the picture.. hiding behind the banner!)
Although game development has been slow on the implementation side of the house, we have had some new assets getting made behind the scenes! New music, pixel art, and promotional/worldbuilding art have continued getting created for the game. I'll be unveiling some of that on the game's social media channels in the weeks to come, but I wanted to share one of the aforementioned worldbuilding pieces here - it's too cool to keep hidden any longer! Behold!
The Four Realms of the Advent Universe
What the heck is going on here, you ask? Well, that requires a small lore dump. This is a mural-style image that was commissioned (see the artist’s other work here) to illustrate the Four Realms of the Advent Universe. I'd like to imagine this very mural could be found in crumbling ruins somewhere across the continent of Phaetaea, or transcribed as an illustration in the codexes recording the history of the world of Vythnia. At the bottom of the image is the Mortal Realm, where virtually all of Advent of the Reaper's plot takes place. At the top of the image is the Soul Realm, also known as the Vast Dream, where souls of the dead wander through an seemingly endless mist until they reach the Eternity Precipice. Here, a soul will take one of two paths. Most souls will have their essence converted into energy for the Prismatic Realm, shown on the right side of the mural. However, special souls will be able to reach the Celestial Realm, also known as Deus Proxima, shown on the left. Here, souls are reincarnated to the Mortal Realm with unique abilities imbued from their passage through Deus Proxima. Now for those of you who have played the demo at one of our public showings, you might recall that the Reapers (and Angels) are resurrected - not reincarnated - souls, summoned through a magic ritual. How does this play into the Four Realms? Those answers will have to wait for another day!
Hopefully that tickled the itch for my fantasy worldbuilding enthusiasts today! I'm so excited to share more of Advent's story and the wider lore surrounding its world as the game's development continues. Thanks so much for reading, and here's to an amazing 2026!
Don't forget that you can wishlist Advent of the Reaper on Steam!