Wow, it’s been a bit over a week since Angeline Era came out! And I managed to survive bugfix patching week!! First, it’s still on sale for another week! Already played? Thank you!! (Please write a review if you haven’t yet!!)

Otherwise, you can get it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2393920/Angeline_Era/ , or on GOG and Itch IO. After this week’s up it won’t be on sale for a while. However, I plan to bundle it with a few of our other past games, so if you own Anodyne or Anodyne 2 you’ll be able to get Angeline Era at a discount.

Reception

It’s been amazing! And actually I’ve been surprised how well received it’s been. It’s really clicking with a lot of players! Neither Marina or I are that used to seeing lots of word of mouth about the game, actually... it seems like players (like you!) have had more success convincing your friends to try it out!

I’m glad we could convey some of the mystery of our world through this game, in some way, whether it be the way religion and spirituality hangs in the background of ‘rational’ modern life, or how much of the world from people to places will always be unknown, despite attempts organizing and calculating All Knowledge.

In particular, people really love the sense of exploration and mystery. It’s funny to think I almost forgot that the game has such a huge sense of mystery. I didn’t revise the store page to focus on this point until around October with playtesters. It’s a bit easy to forget this appeal when you’re jumping around fixing up levels with a meta-mindset.

We also appreciate how some players have really enjoyed the storytelling style and how it’s fairly hands off, yet has a lot to dig in to and reflect on after finishing. There’s some amazing reviews up on Steam and Backloggd, too.

Roundup

I’d like to shout out some reviews! (Mild spoilers)

AV Club (Grace Benfell): Angeline Era is a shrewd and poetic examination of the past

Rock Paper Shotgun (Edwin Evans-Thirlwell): Angeline Era is all about the joy of hidden worlds and the looping frenzy of combat Dodgems

So Many Games (Matt Murray): https://somanygames.co.uk/review/angelineera/

Tech-Gaming (Shane Nakamura): https://www.tech-gaming.com/angeline-era/

Polygon (Giovanni Colantonio) Angeline Era recaptures the PS1 age by doing something completely different

noclip_2 (Jeremy Jayne) - (Youtube Let’s Play) Angeline Era Might Be Jeremy's 2025 GOTY

Reflection (On Industry)

Maybe I’ll focus on industry-related thoughts first. First of all, my biggest surprise is how weirdly accurate formulas for predicting sales are. It feels more like gravity almost, in the sense the “5% first day, 10% first week” seems like some law of the universe one can only escape under rare conditions (e.g. making multiplayer game).

It makes me think about the wishlist metric and allowing you to ‘foresee’ the next 5 years of sales from that game before your game is even out. On one sense, accurate forecasts are nice… but it also does make your mind focus on this number a lot. I don’t really like this number-focus, because I can see the shadow of number-driven game business guy mumbling “Businesses Need To Make Money” to himself, chanting like a mantra, as he commands workers to pump out mid-but-okay selling games for stale franchises. His childlike wonder and self completely lost to the void of the metal number religion he is so intent on having sustain that last flickering flame of self-meaning…

Maybe wishlists are merely the gamification of the market logic controlling games historically. Getting into gatekept showcases is not so different than pitching games for magazine features back in the day and dealing with what they wanted to see. The “now” of games works for some, but overall I think things could be better…

One thought that has been coming to mind a lot. “Can videogames really work forever?”

Aren’t they too tied to an exploitative and environmentally destructive supply chain? It feels unable to last. Like this brief dream of metal and light will one day fade into the background, a weird period where we were compelled to stay indoors by Nintendos and Steven-JobPhones.

I could see a in-between future, where we just learn to maintain laptops and not need to see GPUs get stronger and stronger. But with the current race for AI and the raw materials that requires, it feels like that kind of future is getting harder to realize… and instead these materials will be used to summon even more compelling, addictive visions for gamers.

But that also brings the “goal” of my game making to mind. Maybe my ideal game should be trying to subtly influence people to reconnect with reality, to one day end this “Metal Dream”, or at least reshape it from being in the hands of people whose Adverse Childhood Experiences lead them to for some reason to Really Need To Do Industrial Revolution Season 2, instead of leading them to make and consume weird art like a regular human. Especially as the most popular games - mobile addiction games, casino games, games that try to keep people attached to certain brands with repetitive gameplay - function by keeping people trapped in an endless cycle of retention and addiction, their money being used to fund even more technological projects.

Reflection (On AE and Religion)

Very mild spoilers for hour 1-2 of Angeline Era here.

I don’t want to talk about the game at length too much since it’s still pretty new. But as always, Marina and I both find it interesting the ways in which players debate over the meaning of the game’s characters and ending, as well as the way fan theories diverge from our ideas.

Something that surprised us was a very VERY small (<0.1%) number of players were unpleasantly surprised over the occasional presence of Christianity/Bible stuff in the game. Most people were merely surprised/amused/intrigued, and that is very much in the range of “expected reaction.”

But some actually assumed the game was pro-Christian from this, maybe because the protagonist, Tets, is Christian. What I found interesting about this was that Christian or religious imagery is a pretty common thing in games (recent indie examples include the American Christianity-coded church in Deltarune Ch 4, or the Catholic-esque imagery/theming in Silksong’s world). Crosses in Evangelion, Dragon Quest, etc etc.

But in some ways it feels like with AE we crossed some kind of invisible line in saying the word “Christian” in game instead of leaving it at imagery. I guess in part this is because the game is framed entirely as a fantasy world in the introduction. But idk. As you play the game more it makes sense why AE has to be the way it is, haha. At the same time, these kinds of reactions do bother me a bit..

The “invisible line” feels like something that might be fun to play with in the future in terms of fantasy vs. reality. After all, what is our world but a place where we think it’s all just money and business, but nearly every facet has been permanently affected by Christianity, whether you’ve ever opened a Bible or not? No religion reaches as wide of an audience as Christianity without, well… changing the world.

(In some ways, this minor undercurrent of pushback reminds me of my in-dev game Danchi Days and the way some people were caught off guard by the presence of dementia. )

Reflection (On Mechanics)

One last thing I found interesting was all the comparisons we’ve received to different games. It’s flattering, for one, to be compared to Treasure, Quintet, Falcom, Square, Hydlide, etc - but I’m additionally happy how the comparisons are so wide-ranging which I think speaks to how Angeline Era is really exploring some new design territory of its own. You can’t really pin it down with a single comparison (the bane of my marketing for this game, haha). But that’s the kind of work I want to do.

I just want to re-emphasize that the reason the game probably came out this way is because we have specific life experiences and ideas we wanted to express through games, and the wide amount of research we did was to try and figure out ways to articulate these ideas through games, rather than just being only homage to old games.

Also, haha, it’s been fun watching people enjoy… suffer…?? through the harder difficulties… hahahaha!!! Bumpslash forever…