Self Recurse

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• Announcements·1 Sept 2026Official

  A Big Bounty

  Greetings folks,there are a good number of updates for the month, but there's one that I don't want to be hidden. Steam stats.I bring this up because it is a form of data collection, so I want to be as transparent as possible with it.The stats will only be used to gauge falloff points in the demo (I've listed them at the bottom of this update).By gathering these, I can determine where friction points are in the demo and work to fix them, ultimately making the game better for you all.If you have any qualms with this, please let me know. I want to ensure Self Recurse is a wonderful experience and the last thing I want to worry players.I also want to note that Steam stats are essentially the demo's version of achievements (if you need something to compare it to). Tech updates> Feature workIcon UX UMG: this handy graphic will animate for effects that have confused players with the interactions (e.g., Hades Cauldron results, Reach into the Bag die rolls, the Chance spellbook) and this feature is meant to alleviate that by displaying the cause and effect of an item. It might look something like Hades Cauldron and Energy Damage, then slide towards the enemy. This gives a quick hint into what just happened and you'll also get the floating text that player's requested to have a better battlefield reada new cursor has been added that more accurately reflects the game themestats are being used to determine when players are dropping off of the demo. This will eventually evolve into achievements when the full-release comes along, but Steam recommends starting with stats as to not frustrate players who played both the demo and full-release.a banner system was put in place which should make the following explicitly called out: player/enemy turn boss phase changes battle complete tutorial completeimproved tooltip housing UX because tooltips could cover too much of the hovered itemadded card noise for: draw, draw multiple, hover, and shuffleensured the players starting deck contains...
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• Announcements·2 Aug 2026Official

  I want to show you...

  Greetings folks,July contained 2 notable features worth mentioning: the interactive tutorial and status pop-stacks.One of the pieces that I'd been putting off was the onboarding experience. I hoped that having good UX throughout a run would be enough to teach the player how the game works. While I think that can happen in many games, it didn't with Self Recurse. No matter how many tooltips, guidance text popups, etc. that I added, I still got asked for a better way to illustrate the depth of the game starting with fundamentals. If I had to choose the biggest learning point, it'd be the energy system. Even veterans to the Score DBZ/GT card games (a large influence to the energy system) gave the feedback that they didn't understand how it worked in Self Recurse. The other feedback that I saw/heard is that players would bypass the old tutorial because, even though it was a video, they did not like that they could not control its progression. With all that in mind, I decided to buckle down and make an interactive tutorial.The tutorial ended up being a long endeavor (it took nearly the entire month) and it exposed some bugs with the status effect system. Self Recurse has several keywords on cards and they broken into 2 categories: statuses and action effects. You can think of statuses as being reactive and lasting longer than the item that just played them. The most common example is shields. You play a card and shields will last a turn. Action effects, instead, are instantaneous. A card that heals Phalaen will heal her, then the effect is over with. There is no lingering to see if something reacts.The status effects were built in a way were they would get iterated through in a way that didn't block phases. For many of them, this wasn't an issue. Shields were though. We ran into what's called a race condition where enemies could potentially take their turn really fast and they would use an action to gain shields before their upkeep truly completed. This resulted in situa...
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• Patch Notes·3 Jul 2026Official

  July Update

  Greetings folks,during June I got a few changes surrounding projected damage completed but won't be pushing them until next month.This is because the largest change, that I'm currently in progress with, is a refined tutorial.The category that had the most feedback in the past 2 months was the onboarding and UX. After accomplishing the tutorial the game will be in much better place for new players to understand the basic mechanics and dive into a run.Other features have been listed below. Thank you all for the patience while the next month sets the stage for the big tutorial change! Tech updates> Feature work- the player's projected damage will now appear in the target selectors- enemy next actions now include projected damage- a total threat damage visual now appears over Phalaen's head, so that player's don't have to do a full set of calculations to determine the rough amount of damage they will take from the enemies.- Game Message Subsystem implemented. This might feel like a different language, but this is essentially a big win for the scalability of the user interface for the project. In other words, I'll be able to move faster on features that depend on visual updates in the user interface. It's also a bit more professional to have a system like this in the game. > Bug fixes- n/a > Balancing- n/a
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• Announcements·2 Jun 2026Official

  Save the Game

  Greetings folks,May was one of the busiest months I've had in awhile. Deck Builders Fest kicked off the early month while it was incredibly humbling, I learned a lot and was given loads of feedback. During deck builders fest, I logged 23 items resolved in the span of a week. While I'd love to highlight those, previous updates have more details on those (and it felt like double-dipping).Outside of the fest tasks, the largest was implementing the save versioning feature (about 2.5w). The release list might look a little slim, but this change was a necessary one that I learned about from the folks at Sandfall Interactive and their work on Clair Obscure and the game would cause a lot of frustration if during each demo update I asked you all to delete your save files. Instead, the feature updates everything for you. The remainder of the items were implemented in the spirit of improving user experience.I've still got a lot of work to do and my focus for June will be more user experience improvements. Ultimately, I need to improve these and implement a better onboarding experience. I've prioritized these items because the feedback I've received with the gameplay mechanics has been largely positive. It is just understanding these mechanics can turn off players who don't want to reverse engineer how everything works (I can't blame them).I appreciate everyone who's stuck with the project and supported me. Please enjoy the demo update!What's next?I've got a long way to go with the onboarding experience. The most significant feedback items that were given to be during the fest were "you need to improve how new player's learn to play the game." Steam also provided playtime data that suggested the same thing. I'm dedicated to improving this to make a more understandable gameplay loop.Tech updatesFeature work- save system v2: version control- visual effects added for who dice target to improve battle state- card and spellbook selections will now have lingering animations to improv...
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• Patch Notes·6 May 2026Official

  Deck Builders Fest Day 3

  Thank you all for the feedback during the past 2 days! I've been working on improving the user experience, fixing bugs, and feature requests that everyone has graciously notified me of. I have 2 intents with this update: I wanted to show that your feedback does matter. I created 34 tasks from the last 2 days. Some of them are larger projects that I'll need to take on after deck builders fest wraps up, but there were plenty of items I was able to complete in the 48h since receiving them. The only reason I didn't complete more is because I wanted to tackle the big ones before needing to pivot to some marketing strategies for the evening. The new build is live! When you next log into Steam, the update will download. You'll get access to the newest demo build.When I say I welcome feedback, I really mean it. Please download the newest demo build and give me your next round of comments. Below is what I've fixed, and below that is what I have road mapped from this event alone. If you don't see your comment on there, please let me know either through the discord (link is on the start screen) or the support email on the Steam page.Updatesrecur status effect was breaking over time (not activating or showing free card played visual).bluff enemy action bugs: tooltip header "bleeding" no longer present and accurately accesses the number of strikes when determining health damage.pistol and special effects not occurring when resources are constrained has some stability builds that should resolve this.angelic music didn’t stop after antagonist elite and now it doesvampirism is no longer healing the player with defend playsfeature: the esc key now opens settingsfixed: background went black and stayed black after second eliteevent text is too small and event background makes it difficult to read the text: I created some general UX fixes for these, but feel like there is still more work to be done here. I'll need to go back to the design drawing board on these, but there should be som...
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