Irsen

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• Announcements·4 Sept 2026Official

  Devblog #29. Why IRSEN Has No XP, Gold or Equipment.

  Hello everyone.Today I’d like to talk a bit about character progression in my game. In many RPGs and roguelites, progression is built around several different systems. The most common approach is simple: the player earns experience, and experience gives levels. The player finds weapons and armor and becomes stronger that way. The player earns gold, which can then be spent on experience, armor or weapons, skills, or talents.In IRSEN, I decided to move away from this standard structure. So I’m trying to build progression without relying on those traditional pillars.That doesn’t mean there is no progression in the game. Quite the opposite: adjusting and constantly rebuilding the character is what I’m trying to make one of the core mechanics. I’ve simply moved most of that growth into one central system - genes.Experience and LevelsThe first thing I decided to remove was the traditional experience system. Usually, progression is simple and linear: the player defeats enemies (or completes quests), gains experience points, and automatically becomes stronger. Stats either increase on their own or through distributing attribute points. New abilities are either purchased or granted automatically as well.That system didn’t fit what I wanted to do. When I started developing the game, I wanted the character’s strength to depend primarily on the player’s decisions. Throughout the entire game, from the first battle to the last, the player is constantly making choices. Which enemy to break down into genes and which gene archetype to try to obtain. Which genes to keep for fusion and which to consume. Which genes to finalize, and which ones deserve the limited Gene Map slots first. In what order to combine genes and which gene chains to build.If the player simply goes through 20 battles and automatically gains several levels, that dependency starts to disappear. The character becomes stronger even without the player opening the character screen at all. That is why the main reward fo...
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• Announcements·28 Aug 2026Official

  Devblog #28. Direct Gene Management.

  Hello everyone.In previous devblogs, I talked in detail about the Genetic Lab system, which allows the player to develop and rebuild the genes they find. The Lab provided access to various operations involving individual genes and gene pairs: stabilization, consumption, destabilization, gene fusion to synthesize new genes, removing properties and extracting gene substrate, and adding skill properties.The mechanics themselves work, but over time I noticed that performing these actions requires the player to constantly switch between the Gene Map, Inventory, and Genetic Lab windows.So I decided to simplify and restructure the system a little. I think this is something I will have to do more than once during the development of my game.How the early system workedOriginally, working with the Lab required a separate interface. Let’s look at gene stabilization as an example. The sequence of actions looked like this. The player:Opens the Gene Map.Removes a gene from the Gene Map and sends it to the Inventory.Closes the Gene Map.Opens the Genetic Lab.Selects the stabilization operation.Finds and selects the required gene in the gene selection window.Presses the stabilization button.Confirms the operation.Returns to the Gene Map.Finds the modified gene in the Inventory and places it back into its slot.While the system was still small, this worked perfectly well. But the Lab gradually grew, new types of operations for individual genes and gene pairs appeared, and some operations started requiring more and more button presses.The problem was specifically in the interface. The second problem was the disconnect between performing an action on a gene and seeing the result. In other words, the player has to break a gene chain and remove the gene from the Gene Map entirely, modify it, and then place it back onto the Gene Map again.In the new version, I reworked the interface and changed the approachInstead of constantly dragging genes between several windows, I introduced a menu tha...
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• Announcements·14 Aug 2026Official

  Devblog #26. From Graph to Dungeon.

  Hello everyone. In one of my previous devblogs, where I talked about the new demo version, I mentioned that I had reworked the dungeon map generation. Now I want to take a closer look at this particular change: how a new sector is created, from a few connected nodes to an actual playable map. Procedural map generation seems like a very simple task until you actually sit down, start generating maps, and get a few terrible results. You can simply create a rectangle and fill it with rooms and walls, place enemies, passages, and chests. In principle, that is already the simplest kind of procedural level. Technically, the map will always be new and random.The problems start a little later. When you realize that you have almost no control over how such a map is created, and that a random map is not necessarily a good map.That is exactly what I ran into when I wrote the first version of the map generator. The biggest problem was that I ended up with a rectangle made of rooms, with passages to areas above and below, but there was never any real route through it. The player was simply placed inside these rooms and wandered through the available tiles. Sometimes, after clearing 80% of the labyrinth, the player would reach the last room and then have to walk all the way back toward the starting point through the entire labyrinth just to find the correct passage. And in IRSEN, where every extra step increases the character’s Corruption and brings more Mutations, this became very annoying.I needed my dungeon to always have a beginning and an end. And between these two points there had to be a main route leading from start to finish. Besides the main path, I also wanted additional random areas that the player could explore if they wanted to. This solved the main problems: the player never has to return all the way to the starting point, while still always having the option to leave the main route and explore additional areas.Graphs and NodesSo I decided to turn to graph theory an...
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• Announcements·7 Aug 2026Official

  Devblog #25. A Small Movement Bug.

  Hello everyone.This week, I released a new version of the demo on Steam, containing mechanics and fixes accumulated over several months. I have already started working on the next gameplay system, which will most likely take more than one week to complete. Every few days, I try to take a break from it and switch to a small feature improvement or bug fix from my TODO list.A few days ago, I ran into a small bug related to the character’s movement across the map. Normally, nobody pays any attention to movement when everything works correctly. It seems very simple: press a button, and the character moves to the next tile. The animation and sounds play as well. But it was during this movement between tiles that the bug appeared, even though it had never shown itself during normal gameplay before.I designed the IRSEN map as a grid. Logically, the character, or rather its in-world model, is always located on a specific tile. Visually, however, movement does not teleport the model from the center of one tile to another. After a directional key is pressed, the game checks the neighboring tile, takes its center as the new target, and begins smoothly moving the 3D model toward it. Once the target is reached, the new tile is marked as occupied and the previous one as free. The step is considered complete, and the game waits for the next command.When a button is held down, movement continues automatically until it is released. Holding Shift enables fast movement. The logic stays the same, but the speed increases. Because of this, the system cannot simply move the character model forward. It has to determine the exact moment when the model reaches the center of the tile, finish the current step, and only then begin the next one.I introduced a small distance threshold that was checked while the model was moving. Every frame, the character’s position changed by a distance calculated from the direction, speed, and frame duration. A step was considered complete when the remaining dis...
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• Announcements·31 Jul 2026Official

  Devblog #24. New Demo Version v0.48

  Hello everyone.On August 1, I plan to release a new demo version of IRSEN on Steam. Two months have passed since the previous major update, and during that time hundreds of changes have accumulated across the game. I have collected the most important of them in this devlog. I would like to go through the updates to the mechanics, visual systems, and overall run structure. Starting next week, I will move on to the next stage of development, while version 0.48 will become available for testing.The biggest change is the new dungeon structure. I rewrote the map generator and replaced the randomly created square-shaped dungeons with a system that builds each floor as a connected graph of rooms. Movement through the floor is no longer completely random: there is now a starting room, a final room, a main route connecting them, and branches leading away from that route.Alongside this update, I reworked the minimap, added a larger floor map, and introduced new rules for placing objects, enemies, and chests inside rooms. Previously, these were mostly positioned at random points. Now each placement is selected according to the shared rules of the generation system. More importantly, a floor is no longer one large area that must be cleared all at once. I divided each floor into smaller sectors. After completing a sector, the player arrives at the Processing Station, where they can consider what to do next. They can descend deeper or remain on the same floor and enter another sector selected through one of the station modules.The selected sector type affects the structure of the map, the number of enemies, and the chances of encountering champions or rewards. The Processing Station has become an intermediate hub within the run. It also contains the Stabilization Module, where the player can heal the character and reduce their corruption level.The reward system has been completely reworked. In the previous version, I introduced the ability to extract a gene from a defeated enemy....
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