Hallo and Happy New Year!

2026 will be a big year for Apskeppet as I intend to release both picoCAD 2 AND Icy Tower! Hope to come with exact dates in a later newsletter.

Slow month

But first a bit about the month that passed. In short - not much happened! 😀 Was quite tired after Dreamhack but went straight into a house move and then one of my sons had surgery on both legs. All went well, but all focus has been on the family and not much else. Hoping to pick up development now again in January.

Icy Tower

Let’s talk gameplay design! The new kickback mechanic allows you to get back into the tower after falling down and it is earned by completing combo jumps. The idea is to give new players a chance to play longer, and veterans can use it as a strategic tool.

We tested this thoroughly on players at Dreamhack and everyone really liked it and the feeling when it kicks in. However, both new and old players didn’t really understand how to earn it. Not good!

So how can we make this more intuitive? Our first redesign changes how kickbacks are earned and lets players get kickbacks just by being in combo mode. Ie, if the combo meter is active, the kickback meter increases. This gives instant feedback to the process and from a UI and UX perspective it feels quite good. Subsequent kickbacks require players to stay longer in combo mode making it progressively harder.

Another version we’d like to explore would be have the kickback meter decay over time, forcing players to keep doing combos not to lose progress.

The kickback mechanic is really fun to play with and we hope to keep iterating more on it as development continues. Do you have ideas? Hit reply and let us know!

Massive winter sale

Last but not least, all games and tools are currently on a massive sale with at least 45% off. Don’t The sale ends on Monday so so hurry up!

• Steam sale: https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/Apskeppet

• Itch sale: https://itch.io/s/173179/winter-sale-2025

All the best for the new year, lots of exciting things to come!

Johan