The Deadly Path News

Gather round, mere mortals!

We have quite the job for you. The Deadly Playtest begins today, and there's a foul-smelling demonic deity that's demanding your assistance.

[h3]Play as Roiann The Blightcaster[/h3]

Cruel, cunning, and diseased as hell, Roiann brings the promise of an excruciatingly drawn-out demise. If you stand downwind of him, you might just be able to stick around long enough to help him in his quest for vengeance.



[h3]Head to our Steam page to take part[/h3]

If appeasing an evil god takes your fancy, simply click the 'Request Access' button over on our Steam page. The Deadly Playtest ends on the 21st of June, so you have until then to play to your perishable heart's content!

[h3]Your feedback is important to us[/h3]

We'd love to make our game even more fun and enjoyable for you. If you get time, please do complete the feedback form when you reach the end of your playthrough. You'll be making a small dev team (and a band of devious gods) very happy. Thank you!

[h3]Look out for us in the PC Gaming Show![/h3]

The PC Gaming Show is taking place on June 9th, and if you keep your eyes peeled, you might spot The Deadly Path being shown!



We'll speak soon. Best of luck with Roiann's torment... You'll need it.

Hello everyone,

We are pleased to announce to you all that Roiann, The Blightcaster himself will be hosting an Open Public Playtest for The Deadly Path.



Starting on the 7th of June at (10am BST | 4am CST | 1am PST) until June 21st you will all have the opportunity to delve into the depths of The Deadly Path in service of Roiann.

[h2]How To Participate[/h2]

To participate, simply head over to The Deadly Path's steam page on the 7th and click on the 'Request Access' button as seen below;


[h2]Your feedback important to us![/h2]
It is really important to us and for the future of The Deadly Path that you provide any and all feedback possible on your experience playing the game.

There will be an opportunity for you to do so when the feedback form presents itself to you as you reach the end of your journey.

We really appreciate each and every one of you who takes the time to play our game and give us your honest feedback. We want to give you the best 'Deadly Path' experience as we possibly can!



We cannot wait to see the torment that our gods will inflict on you all,
Goodluck Sacrifices.

Following on from our previous successful Playtest, we are jumping right into another one!



We want to give you all the chance to dive right into The Deadly Path and get your hands on our newest available god - The One Who Rusts.

You can join our Playtest RIGHT NOW by joining our Discord Server and checking out the announcement channel for more information.
The Playtest will be running for ONE WEEK only (Ending on the 24th of May).





The One Who Rusts is one of the first deities of The Dread Pantheon known as those Born Of The Most High. A sinister and sombre being, she chose to use her natural creativity by designing and crafting hideous metallic automatons to do her bidding. In the cave, this did not fare well with her siblings, so she was glad of the chance to expand her enterprises once free from the underworld.

The One Who Rusts took full advantage of Oscurandyth’s bleak landscape and commanded her minions and a host of the gods of the Minor Pantheon to build her an extensive workshop.
Over the years that followed, The One That Rusts carried on crafting vicious mechanical followers, seeing The Low Ones as the perfect test subjects for her implements of torture.

Her ill-treatment of the Minor gods almost certainly drove them to begin conspiring against the Dread
Pantheon in earnest. When their betrayal came to fruition and The One Who Rusts was cursed to return to the cave of origination, her metallic creatures seized up on the spot and her workshop was destroyed. Reawoken from the curse by the presence of the fifth of The First Crones, The Custodian, The One Who Rusts has her mechanical eye firmly set on vengeance for her imprisonment.

Regaining her full strength after thousands of years of inertia, she instructs The Custodian to construct a Deadly Path to the surface of Oscurandyth as partial penance for the betrayal of their siblings.
A key being in the Dread Pantheon, The One Who Rusts will stop at nothing to bring The Low Ones to justice. Her aggression and ideas of leadership often infuriate her fellow gods, yet she inspires total dedication and vile admiration from her acolytes and servants.

Hello everyone,

We wanted to reach out and let you all know that we had an awesome time showcasing The Deadly Path at WASD.
This was the first time The Deadly Path has been playable publicly which made it that even more special to see everyone experience the game!

Thank you all for coming to see us and getting a chance to play, it means the world!



Also want to give a huge shout out to PCGamesn, GINX.tv & AMostAgreeablePasTime
for covering The Deadly Path - make sure to check out their articles!

[h2]Endless Replayability Fest[/h2]

Make sure to check out the Endless Replayability Fest on Steam from the 13th of May - 20th May at 10am PT for some awesome games that you can play until the end of time.
We're going to be taking part in the festivities with The Deadly Path - We'll see you there!



[h2]Closed Discord Playtesting[/h2]

We are also currently conducting a closed play test within The Deadly Path's Discord server that you can join here - https://discord.gg/aeqeHm9uEJ


This current play test will only be running until Sunday the 12th of May.
HOWEVER there will be more opportunities to join play tests within the Discord in the future!

It's also important to remember that joining the Discord is the best way to stay on top of everything that is happening with The Deadly Path! So come and say hi to our growing community!



Thank you all again for supporting The Deadly Path,

We can't wait to show you all what we have coming up!

To understand the Deadly Path, it's useful to know what I was doing before I made it.

You see, I used to make Detective games. I made quite a few of them in fact, each larger than the next. In October 2022 I released Riley & Rochelle, a visual novel mystery about two forgotten pop stars. It was released within a month of both Immortality and The Case of the Golden Idol and sank without a trace. Not only was my work distinctly unpopular (except for with my parents), but I felt completely out of ideas. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde - I was fucked. Something had to change.

The main challenge with my games to this point was that they demanded an enormous amount of work for content that would likely only be played once. For example, Riley & Rochelle had 12 original songs, plus countless documents and custom pieces of artwork. It took a year to create something that could be completed thoroughly in 6 hours. I felt tired of hiding clues in newspaper articles and song titles. I wanted to make something re-playable and more system driven, which could be played over and over, without costing millions to make.



At this time I was playing a lot of Stacklands – a village building management game by the Dutch collective SokPop. I was also playing Cultist Simulator, Alexis Kennedy’s genius-level narrative game about dropping cards into slots. Both games combined elements of management, idle games and survival within a board-game-like framework. They had very few verbs, mostly just click and drop. Later I would discover Reigns, which scratched a similar itch.

Crucially, these games didn’t simulate anything. They used timers and spat out results, but nothing relied upon complex under the hood calculations. In Stacklands your villager didn’t need to walk to the warehouse to pick up the fruit to take it to the hall to eat it - they just ate. In fact, the only element of Stacklands that was simulated was the combat, which I thought was the weakest part. Abstraction not only was easier and cheaper to make, it also allowed for more immediacy.

There were other games as well – Domekeeper, Loop Hero, Against the Storm – short games with tangible goals and quick restarts. I loved how compact these experiences are. Where most games want to meander on forever with nebulous goals and weak tempo, these took off like a rocket. You always had something to do and interesting, chunky decisions to make.



However, it was not immediately obvious how I could harness my interests. Nor was I sufficiently educated in systems to be able to imitate my references. Instead I spent quite some time making a game called The Gentle Art of Slaughter, where you play a woman called Abigail, traveling around a frontier town killing cultists. It sounds good, it’s not. It was full of cheesy, weak mini games and was met with universal derision.

Then one day I had the thought, “What about a game where you make a dungeon and defeat raids”. Obviously this bore some resemblance to 90’s Dungeon Keeper, however, I wasn’t worried. Firstly, that game was really old. Secondly, it was a traditional building simulation, where this would be anything but.

Originally, I wanted to make it exactly like Stacklands – dragging monsters onto production nodes to produce resources. It wasn’t exactly the right approach, however, there was a chilling moment of realization when I released a card onto another and a timer started. This works.



I then parked the idea for several months while I worked through Slaughter. When that game had finally gone as far as it could (which was pretty much nowhere), I turned to The Deadly Path. Firstly, I needed to work on my education. I got some sessions with Alexander King, the professor of games economy at NYU, read some books and gradually started to get a handle on this numbers thing. The game progressed, codebases written and rewritten. Things started to fall into place and with help from a systems designer called Arthon Kleerekoper, I turned to crafting the economy of the game,

which will be the focus of the next post.

Thanks to everyone for reading and for supporting The Deadly Path.

See you next time,
Tim