Blighted News

[p][/p][p]With the year winding down, we wanted to send a quick thank-you to everyone who wishlisted, followed and supported us throughout 2025. It’s been an exciting year! For a quick look back, check out our 2025 studio recap.[/p][p]
We can’t wait to share more about Blighted with you in 2026 🙂[/p][p][/p][p]Happy holidays,[/p][p]Drinkbox Studios 💚[/p]

[p]Hello and welcome to our first devlog for Blighted![/p][p]Blighted is the first true 3D game we’ve created at Drinkbox, built in our own proprietary engine. Switching to 3D has come with plenty of challenges, but it’s also expanded what we’re able to do — especially when it comes to graphics and animation.[/p][p]For this first (but hopefully not last!) Blighted project devlog, we’re going to be looking at some of what Michael Fattori, one of our visual effects programmers, has been doing to help make the game look like nothing else out there. Take it away, Mike![/p][p]
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-[/p][p][/p][p]We’ve been hard at work on a number of exciting effects. There are a few too many to show everything, but we’re going to have a look at some that we think are pretty neat. We have a little test area that I like to mess around in and so we’re going to take a sneak peak at what sort of goodies we've got in there. For starters:[/p][p][/p][h3]Light Shafts[/h3][p][/p][p]Any good VFX artist knows the importance of lighting. And when you need some movement and drama in the scene, nothing is quite as nice as some light shafts![/p][p][/p][p]We’re not sure if this is how everyone does light shafts (smh), but our strategy is effective! These ones are nicer than our old ones since they can intersect characters and geometry without appearing to “clip” through them.[/p][p][/p][h3]Grass[/h3][p][/p][p]We’ve had grass in the game for a while (it’s actually one of the first big effects we implemented), but we’ve also been doing a lot of optimizations on it to get a ton of interactive grass on screen rendering as efficiently as we can.[/p][p][/p][p]This scene has just one kind of grass, but we did a lot of work to get all the grass on screen to render in one large compute/render pass, even grass of different types.[/p][p][/p][h3]Tentacles[/h3][p][/p][p]Tentacles are another effect that we’ve been optimizing more heavily recently. It’s a lot of geometry and compute shader work, so we’ve been restricting the work to the tentacles on screen more aggressively. Luckily, we can do a sort of “screenspace binning” that lets us focus the compute work and rendering on just the active bins.[/p][p][/p][p]-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-[/p][p][/p][p]Thanks Mike! You deserve a break. Go touch some real grass and some real tentacles.[/p][p]These experiments (and many more) have yet to be poked and prodded by the rest of the team, so who knows what they’ll end up looking like in the final game![/p][p]That’s all for now, but let us know if there's anything you'd like to see more of in future devlog posts! If you want to keep up with future updates, make sure to wishlist and follow Blighted ASAP![/p][p]Thanks for all of your support, it means a lot to us! ːg2heartː[/p][p]
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[p]Hey everyone![/p][p]
As you may know, we announced Blighted back in June as part of Summer Game Fest 2025 and Day of the Devs.  We’re honoured to have been included in those events, and we’re thrilled with the reception the game has received so far![/p][p][/p][p]Since then, we’ve been hard at work…[/p][p][/p][p]We don’t want to spoil too much, buuuut we’ve recently added a TON of new enemies, and we’re still adding more. Each of them are deadly in their own weird and freaky little way...[/p][p][/p][p]We actually also built out an early version of the entire game as part of an internal-alpha milestone! Now we’re in the process of tearing it up, choosing the best bits, adding new challenges and putting it all back together again.[/p][p][/p][p]We still have a long way to go, and we’re working on many different aspects of the game, but we’re making steady progress.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]We can’t wait to show you more!  If you’d like to follow along, check out the Blighted store page and wishlist the game. Thanks for all of your support, it means a lot to us.[/p][p][/p][p]The Drinkbox Team[/p]

[p]Hello hello! We have some very exciting news to share! We'd like to introduce you to Blighted, a Metroidvania Action-RPG set in a psychedelic western nightmare world, and our most ambitious project to date! [/p][p]Blighted features some of the most intense combat Drinkbox has ever put together, and for the first time in 3D! Time your attacks, read your enemies and capitalize on powerful finishers to survive deadly encounters. Punches will not be pulled![/p][p]We're also excited to debut what we're calling the Blight system. Tracking skillful plays, the Blight system responds by ratcheting up the difficulty. At higher levels of Blight, enemy behaviors, player abilities and the surrounding environment can all change. [/p][p]Consume the brains of defeated bosses to reclaim lost memories and learn ethereal abilities. Use your newfound powers to complete special challenges and uncover hidden paths. [/p][p]Featuring music by the acclaimed composer Jim Guthrie (who also worked with us on Nobody Saves the World), jam along to hauntingly beautiful tracks as you play solo, or in co-op! [/p][p]Wishlist the game to get notified when the game launches. Wishlisting also helps boost our Steam launch visibility, so is doubly appreciated. [/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink]Finally, please consider joining our Discord to keep up with news and updates about Blighted. Or to just hop in to say hi :) Thank you all for your support. We can't wait to reveal more about the game soon! [/p][p]All the best, [/p][p]The Drinkbox Team [/p]