The Pale Piper News

For a long time, the story of the Pied Piper stayed with me — not just as a children’s tale, but as something darker. It always felt like a story with no clear answer, full of unease and unanswered questions.

That ambiguity made it the perfect foundation for a dark and mysterious game.
In The Pale Piper, I wanted to explore those lingering questions — through both story and gameplay.

The gameplay is tough but fair, centered on tight, deliberate movement where every jump matters. There’s no combat — instead, the challenge comes from pure platforming, environmental hazards, and your ability to read and adapt to the world around you.

Exploration is key: the world is made up of interconnected areas — from rotting sewers and haunted forests to castles buried deep underground — each layered with secrets, shortcuts, and atmospheric storytelling. Striking landmarks help orient the player and deepen the unsettling tone.

The story unfolds through the environment and the few scattered characters you encounter — each touched in their own way by the Piper’s curse. Themes of debt, consequence, and forgotten sins echo throughout the journey.


A fresh look at the game in motion — featuring new areas, new effects, and the updated tone I’ve been working hard to refine.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The game’s main art has been updated to better reflect the tone and direction of the final version.
You'll see this new piece across the main store page and on the demo page very soon.


Behind the scenes, I’ve been working on a lot, including:

• Improved sound and music, adding more layers and variety
  
• Refined rooms and level design
  
• Enhanced environmental details and subtle ambient animations
  
• Smoothed transitions — cleaner fade-ins and fade-outs, better timing across interactions
  
• Adjusted color palette for improved atmosphere and clarity
  
• Added a variety of new options, including accessibility features like slow motion and high contrast mode
  

It’s all these small touches that bring the world to life — and I’m finally getting closer to the tone and experience I’ve been chasing from the beginning.


The demo is nearly ready, and I’m excited (and a little nervous) to put it in your hands soon.
If this sounds like something you'd enjoy, wishlist it on Steam, and keep an eye out for the demo launch!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2925120/The_Pale_Piper/

Thank you for following this strange journey.
Cheers

Hey everyone, time for another update on The Pale Piper! A lot has been happening behind the scenes, and I want to share where things stand and what’s coming next.


Let’s get the big update out of the way first: The originally planned release date in April will not be possible. I also won’t be participating in the upcoming Steam Next Fest as planned. Instead, the new goal is to prepare for the next Steam Next Fest and launch the game shortly after that. This extra time will allow me to properly finish the demo, polish the game, and ensure everything is in the best possible state.


The major focus right now is completing the demo. This means locking down all the core systems, ensuring progression works smoothly, and making sure everything that’s supposed to be in the demo is actually there. A lot of work is going into refining the gameplay feel and making sure it gives the best first impression.


Alongside the demo, a lot of work is being put into polishing the game. This includes adding decorations, improving sound design, and adding more juice - I try to add lots of small details that make movement and interactions feel satisfying. It’s a time-consuming process, but it’s essential to making The Pale Piper feel alive.
I’ve also worked on sound improvements, especially footsteps - you’ll now hear different footsteps depending on the surface you walk on. Another important fix: when multiple sounds play at the same time, the game now caps the maximum volume to prevent it from getting overwhelmingly loud in certain rooms.


I also have a new protagonist character model! Even though I liked the old one (and I tried changing it more than once but always came back to it), the new one feels a lot better. It has a few more animations, which really add more dynamism to the player character. Movement and interactions feel smoother and more expressive now, which helps bring the protagonist to life.
There was also one part of the old model that I really couldn’t stand (and ultimately the reason I tried to change it a few times): when standing on a ledge, one foot would be free-floating in the air. It’s a common problem, but a difficult one to fix - especially with characters in a dynamic idle pose. With the new model, I found a great way around the problem. It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better, and the character feels much more grounded in the world now.


I’ve been filling the world with secrets - secret corners, secret rooms, secret NPCs... There’s a lot to discover for players who like to explore. Some secrets are hidden in plain sight, while others require a keen eye (or ear) to uncover.


I’m also working on how the story and side quests progress throughout the game. Since the game is built around an interconnected world, it’s important that side quests and story beats unfold in a way that makes sense while still giving the player room to explore.
Just to be clear: The focus is very much on the main story, and the game won’t be filled with generic sidequests. Instead, you might come across hidden NPCs in the world, and if you help them, they may later offer additional challenges. Some of the most difficult parts of the game will be included as optional content like this, rewarding those who explore and engage with the world.


Another area I’ve been focusing on the past weeks is menus and settings. Implementing a solid options menu is crucial for accessibility and usability.
I also added key remapping and controller input remapping. If you have any specific settings you’d definitely like to see, let me know!


The beta is still running, mainly to collect data for each individual room. However, the current state of the game looks nothing like the beta anymore - most of the graphics, decorations, and overall feel have changed.
That said, the beta is still very important to me, and I really appreciate everyone who has helped so far. If you haven’t checked it out yet and are interested, I would be very grateful! And if you make it to the end and leave me an email to contact you, I’ll send you a small thank-you once the game is released.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2925120/The_Pale_Piper/


I’ve also designed entirely new key artwork and capsule art! While it’s still a little early to reveal, I’m thrilled with how it’s shaping up. At some point, I’ll update the store page to showcase all the progress made. Additionally, I plan to remake the trailer at least once more before the demo launch, ensuring that it aligns with the updated look and feel of the game. During that process, I’ll also refresh the artwork.


There’s still plenty to do, but things are moving forward. The delay gives me the opportunity to refine the game properly and ensure it meets the vision I have for it. Thanks for sticking with me through development - I’ll share more updates as things progress!
Let me know if you have feedback or suggestions!
Cheers

Greetings, everyone! It’s time for another update on The Pale Piper. The game is shaping up beautifully (in my opinion), and I’m excited to share the progress made so far. Let’s dive into where things stand and what’s coming next.


The overarching story is now fully laid out! Players will journey through a dark, mysterious world that explores themes of consequence, loss, and the shadowy forces behind the events in Hamel’s Hollow. I’ve been working hard to weave the game’s lore into its progression, ensuring that exploration and discovery feel meaningful and connected to the world’s history.


On the progression front, the system for advancing through the game is now also implemented. Players will gradually unlock new areas, abilities, and story beats, creating a sense of growth and mastery as they delve deeper into this interconnected world. I’ve worked to balance the pacing so that players feel rewarded for their efforts while maintaining the challenge of a precision platformer.


The dialogue system is up and running, bringing the world to life through its strange and memorable characters. From uncovering the mysteries of Hamel’s Hollow to experiencing heart-wrenching moments with key figures like the protagonist’s ghostly sibling, the dialogue system adds depth and interaction.


That said, gameplay remains a priority. If players prefer to skip every line of dialogue, they can do so without any repercussions—allowing everyone to experience *The Pale Piper* in their own way.

The area bosses are roughly implemented and already adding tension and excitement to the game. These encounters are designed to test players’ precision and problem-solving skills while staying true to the game’s no-combat philosophy. Each boss offers a unique challenge tied to the story, creating memorable moments that push the narrative forward.


I’m excited to share that a new trailer for The Pale Piper is also live. While it’s not the final trailer, this updated version offers a fresh look at the game’s world, story, and gameplay.

Creating this trailer was a great opportunity to showcase how far the game has come, and I’m proud of how it represents the current state of development. That said, there’s still plenty of polishing to do, so expect the final trailer a bit closer to launch.

If you haven’t seen the new trailer yet, be sure to check it out, and let me know what you think! Your feedback helps me refine not just the game, but how I present it to the world.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

With the core systems in place, my focus has shifted to polishing the game and enhancing its visual identity. One of my current priorities is making each area look distinct. Decorations and environmental details are being added to breathe life into locations like the Wilderness, Sewers, Castle, and beyond.


I’ve also been paying close attention to small details that I believe will have a big impact on immersion, helping make each location memorable and meaningful.


The beta is still live, and I’m incredibly grateful for the feedback I’ve received so far. Testers have been instrumental in identifying areas for improvement—from minor bugs to opportunities for better player guidance. This feedback loop has been invaluable, helping me refine the experience to make it as polished as possible.

If you’d like to help shape the game, don’t hesitate to join the beta here on Steam. If you make it to the last feedback form and provide your email, I’ll add your name to the credits as a token of appreciation. Additionally, I’ll give out up to 10 keys for the final release to those who submit the form with contact information.

The next big milestone is releasing a public demo. This will give everyone a chance to experience The Pale Piper and explore the world I’ve been crafting. The demo will feature a slice of the game, showcasing its core mechanics, atmosphere, and story. My goal is to release it as close as possible to the final game’s quality.


It is the last day of the year 2024 and the journey of creating The Pale Piper has been both challenging and rewarding.

On the challenging side, developing a 2D precision platformer with pixel art is no small feat. Promoting the game during development has been especially tough, as missing decorations and incomplete visuals can sometimes make screenshots or videos feel a bit empty. Currently, wishlists on Steam are under 300, which isn’t ideal. That said, I’m optimistic that the upcoming demo and trailer - along with the progress on decorations and background elements, which will make for more engaging visuals - will help grow the game’s audience.

Despite these challenges, I’ve loved every moment of creating this game. If I didn’t, I would have quit a long time ago. Thankfully, I’m not financially dependent on it, and I work on it purely in my spare time. My dream is to create a game that people genuinely enjoy playing - even if it’s just for a niche audience.

Thank you for following along on this journey. Your support means the world to me. If you haven’t already, please wishlist The Pale Piper on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2925120/

It makes a huge difference for indie developers like me.

And if you’d like to get more involved, join Discord or X (Twitter) to stay updated and share your thoughts. I can’t wait to hear what you think of the demo once it’s ready.

Until next time, stay tuned for more updates!
Cheers and Happy New Year!

Hi everyone! I’m excited to finally open up the beta for The Pale Piper and give you the chance to explore this world. As a solo developer, I’m thrilled to have you join me in shaping the game!
[h3]What’s New?[/h3]
🏆 New Achievements – Unlock new achievements and show off your skills!
🏰 New Locations and Expanded Levels – Venture into eerie areas and uncover secrets.
💀 Challenge Rooms – Conquer some of the toughest platforming challenges I’ve crafted so far.
🐭 Improved Gameplay and Mechanics – Fine-tuned based on your alpha feedback!
[h3]Feedback[/h3]
Your input will directly shape The Pale Piper, so please share your thoughts on everything from gameplay to design flow. After playing, look out for the feedback form—who knows, your name might even end up in the credits as a special thanks!
[h3]How to Join[/h3]
Join the beta here on Steam and hop into Discord to share your thoughts. Your feedback is crucial to refining the experience. Thanks for joining me on this journey!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2925120/

Welcome to a progress update for my game, The Pale Piper. It’s a 2D precision platformer set in an interconnected, mystical, and strange world, featuring metroidvania elements, bosses, a story, and more. I’ve made quite a bit of progress recently, but there’s still plenty of work to be done.

At first, I planned for six different regions, each with its own mechanics and enemies, plus a town area. However, as I worked on the story, to make everything make sense, I had to add a new region as a sort of buffer between two regions. This meant a lot of extra work, as I had to come up with new mechanics, enemies, a boss, and the level layout. Fortunately, the theme for this region was quite obvious to me. But now that it's done, I’m very happy with how it turned out. It will make the story flow better, and some cool mechanics now have one more region where they can be encountered. Plus, some of the new enemies and hazards have become my favorites in the game. In short, it was a lot of extra work, but definitely worth it in my opinion.

I’ve been thinking for quite some time about how collectible coins can be integrated into the game. I definitely wanted to include coins, as they’re fun to collect and add a bit of challenge when placed in hard-to-reach spots. Plus, the player needs something to find in secret rooms, right? However, I always intended for coins to be an optional collectible, not something mandatory.

One idea I came up with for using the coins is to have special areas called challenge areas. These are hidden throughout the different regions, and players can unlock them by spending a certain number of collected coins. Currently, these challenge areas are some of the most difficult areas in the game, made even harder by having only one checkpoint at the start of the area. Whether these areas are too difficult or frustrating will be determined by beta playtesting, though. But since they’re entirely optional, they won’t be necessary to complete the game. So I am curious about how difficult I actually should make them.

As for rewards for beating a challenge area, I haven’t settled on anything specific yet. I have a few ideas, ranging from unlocking even more challenging content at the end game to revealing optional lore or character information, or even just more coins to help unlock other challenge areas. Whatever I decide, everything related to the coins will remain optional and challenging.

I recently made the switch from Godot V 4.2 to Godot V 4.3. At first, I was hesitant because a major node I use - the TileMap - was deprecated and replaced by the TileMapLayer. Now, I find the approach with TileMapLayers actually a lot better and the right choice for the engine going forward. The old tilemap was often unintuitive and unclear about how to use it properly. With TileMapLayers, each node represents one layer, which is a lot more straightforward than having multiple tilemaps with multiple layers within them.

Despite the improvements, switching to TileMapLayers means I have to redraw every room in my game. Since every room has its own tilemaps (I chose this approach to easily reposition and modify rooms independently), this change requires manually redrawing - at this point - over 300 rooms and also setting up all the new layers in the first place. That’s a lot of extra work! But I decided to make the change for a cleaner node structure, for the other improvements in V 4.3 and because I would need to rework some rooms anyway. I’m currently in the midst of this process, and it will still take some time, but I’m confident I’ll be happy with the results once it’s all done.

Most of the other changes from 4.2 to 4.3 didn’t break anything major, and the engine has received some nice improvements overall.

I’ve started creating decorations for some of the regions in the game some time ago. These are small details that will be placed in each room to help differentiate the regions from one another. They also contribute a lot to the game’s art style, making each area more interesting to explore. Most regions will have their own unique decorations, although there will be some overlap (for example, multiple regions might have grass on the floor). The goal, however, is to make the decorations as unique as possible for each region.
I also want some of the decorations to have some sort of interaction with the player. For example, grass will sway slightly when the player steps on it, and vines hanging from the ceiling will react when the player walks past them. I feel that these kinds of interactive decorations add a lot to the game’s overall feel, so I want to put a lot of care into creating them.

I’m also in the process of creating sound effects for every object that needs them. It usually takes me a long time to get started with sound and music, which isn’t the best approach - I know. But once I do start, I love how much the right sounds can significantly enhance the game. For those curious about my process, I create sounds by mixing and matching different samples from my (now pretty big) sound collection that I’ve gathered over the years. I usually combine 3 to 6 sounds, sometimes more, to create something unique and fitting.

Sometimes a sound just fits perfectly, sometimes it’s surprisingly fitting, and other times it doesn’t work at all - but that’s just part of the process. There are a lot of sounds I’m really happy with, quite a few are still missing, and some I’m sure I’ll end up changing after hearing them in the game for a while.

I’m currently also working on implementing the music in the game, including transitions, fade-ins, fade-outs, and more. If you’re interested in how I’ve conceptually implemented this, I’ve made a short tutorial on it. The tutorial is a simplified version since I have to account for additional factors in the game, such as the current music intensity, but it’s based on the same basic approach.

As for the music itself, I’m still trying to find tracks that best fit the game. I initially composed my own music, and while I really liked the melodies and tracks, they leaned more into a synthwave style, which doesn’t completely match the game’s theme in my opinion. So, I’m currently testing different paid music tracks, and I have to say, some of them fit really well. But I’ll keep experimenting - maybe I’ll end up with a mix of both my own compositions and paid tracks.

I’m using the same implementation approach for the ambient sounds. Since it’s a kind of stacked-area method, it works well for ambience too. My plan is to have unique music and ambience for every region, with specific tracks for certain parts, like boss rooms, to keep things from feeling repetitive.

I’ve also overhauled the player controller and animations (yet again). I implemented a lot of small features, like a coyote timer and input buffering some time ago, to make the controls feel smoother. I also polished the animations, which overall improved the feel of the game. However, there are still some minor issues - like the player’s punch animation sometimes getting canceled unexpectedly. That definitely shouldn’t happen, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out eventually.

Overall, I’m happy with where the player animations and controls are right now, though there’s still room for improvement (and probably always will be).

To deliver a compelling world and story that guides players through the game, I’ve implemented several methods of communication:

• NPC Dialogues: There will be standard interactions with NPCs. You can approach them and engage in dialogue, but don’t expect choices or branching conversations. The interaction is straightforward: you can listen or not, most are optional, but some are necessary to unlock new areas, especially those tied to the story.
  
• Cutscenes: I’ve added cutscenes that can play when you enter specific areas, such as a boss room. These are designed to enhance the storytelling experience.
  
• Readable Objects: I plan to include signs and other readable objects in the game. These will function like brief dialogues and give the player useful information.
  

I understand that not all players enjoy reading text, listening to NPCs, or watching cutscenes. To accommodate this, I’m keeping all narrative elements short and skippable. If you encounter a cutscene once, such as at the start of a boss fight, it won’t replay if you die and respawn, to avoid frustration from repeated waits.

Overall, my goal is not to include dialogue and cutscenes for their own sake but to ensure they either help the player, advance the story, or contribute to world-building.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for reading. I hope you found the update both informative and entertaining.

If you’d like to follow my journey, I’ll be posting more articles here, whenever there’s something exciting to share. You’re also welcome to join my Discord server to stay updated. I do plan a beta test at some point, so if you are interested in that, also join Discord, and I will let everyone know.


And, if the game piques your interest, it would mean a lot to me if you added it to your Steam wishlist.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2925120/

Thanks again, and I hope to see you around soon. Cheers!