The Wyndfinder

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• Patch Notes·19 Jul 2026Official

  Update #4: Playtest Sign-ups!

  Hello, everyone!Not gonna bury the lede - the form for Closed Playtest signups is live here: https://forms.gle/2Fx1755W4J9YtyfZ6Link to the Cat Lord Games Discord, where feedback and chat will happen: Cat Lord Games DiscordI really need your help. The game is ready for a massive content production push, but I want to make sure that the foundation is as stable as possible while there is still time for course correction, if that is what you all tell me is needed. I believe the basic functionality is there, and now I need a small audience, willing to test and give feedback, to help me prove it or fix it. The build is still Alpha. Not all of the writing has made it into the build, there is still so much to do. That’s all the qualifying I’m going to do, I promise.On the update!Just wrapped on a very productive two weeks. Several act one quests that are going to be live during the demo got revisions and better branching dialogues. Crafting got a bevy of new recipes for starting backgrounds.  The art team is wrapping the first group of portraits for the main PC, enough so that I was able to refit character creation to support them. Check it out! I mentioned last time that I was also exploring customizing the heads of the in-game models to correspond to the art, and that is still in the early design phase. We do have a first test up and running though! More on that soon.Development UpdateAlmost all of the Demo-scoped content is ready. I have a small bit of work to do to wrap one questline up, but other than that, it’s time to get more eyes on it. A full QA pass with several classes was performed, attempting to press on various decision branches, failing skill checks, and so on, to see if there was enough variety in the content to feel good. Still some work to do on that front, but it is getting better.Importantly, when I look at the four-step roadmap I laid out six weeks ago, I’ve stayed on target. Hopefully that gives you as much confidence as it does me.As an aside, we we...
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• Announcements·5 Jul 2026Official

  Revealing the Cast

  Hello, everyone! Very happy to share the final character art for the main cast.  You can grab the full-size poster version from the press kit HERE. I’m feeling incredibly fortunate that I found the folks at MLC Studio, who are super talented, engaged with the project, and come on a very solo-dev friendly budget. I mean, look at that! The art is so good, that I’ve made updates to the Dialogue UI and HUD to get more of it on the screen. Over the next two months, the artists are going to help create a suite of portraits for you to choose for the main character, a stable of NPC portraits (that you might see more than once, I am on a budget here), and key NPCs whose narrative warrants a personal touch. Even better, we’re currently testing out custom head models to capture the art style directly in the game world.  Much more to come! Development UpdateI mentioned in the roadmap that Cartha had some old content, and I felt it was important to revisit those quest designs, narratives, and other aspects that weren’t up to my current standard. I found a bit more to do there than I expected, so while progress has been great, it’s going to take me another week to round all of that into a build for playtesting.  Several of the in-game scenes needed to evolve as part of this, moving from the static diorama system I developed for taverns and camping, and into full environments that you can explore, have encounters in, and so on. The first hour of the game feels rich, and there are alternate paths that can yield different outcomes for different playstyles. It is starting to feel like players can have experiences that vary, which is one of the hallmarks of the genre that I think is mandatory.As you can also see here, giving Skill Checks to party members is as simple as selecting them in the HUD. In some narrative situations, I make one of your characters roll, but often you can choose. Even better, your party members will appreciate being useful, giving them little Relationship bumps...
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• Patch Notes·21 Jun 2026Official

  Update #2: Bestiary & Relationship Systems

  Hey, this is Scott, thanks for checking out the latest dev log for The Wyndfinder!First, I made a video companion to this update, which you can watch here! Lots of progress just in the past two weeks, excited to walk through it. My primary goal for this sprint was to complete the last Major feature to be implemented, the Bestiary System. I’m very happy with how that turned out, but it's a system that grows with the player as the story progresses, so it will probably need work over the next year to get exactly right.I also had a goal of redesigning the character relationship system. Working on content in Act 2 made it clear that my initial design wasn't going to scale. There were just too many strange interactions between characters that didn't feel interesting or authentic. It makes a lot more sense now, the characters and their interactions can be very well defined.Also got a few accessibility settings in place, did some foundation work for future localization, and had a little bit of fun as well adding ragdoll death animations for some of the creatures.  New feature: Bestiary System The new Bestiary system was designed to put character Skills to use with more frequency, by using them to gain an advantage over enemies in combat. Each monster has a specific type (Undead, Elemental, Aberration, and so on), and each of these types corresponds to one of the skills. First, an Advantage buff in the first round with a successful check, but that success also fills a progress meter in the Bestiary. Each milestone adds permanent buffs when fighting that creature type. By the time early monsters become minions later in the game, you’ve mastered defeating them in battle, and they melt. It’s very rewarding! Look for books as you explore the world that contain further knowledge of these creatures to make advancement to the maximum tier possible.Redesign: Relationship SystemNow that I’m implementing character arcs through the game’s 2nd act, it became very apparent that the origi...
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• Announcements·12 Jun 2026Official

  Greetings, Wyndfinders!

  First of all, please allow me to introduce myself and give you all very heartfelt thanks for how the last two weeks have been. My name is Scott, and I'm the developer behind The Wyndfinder. Over the past four years, this game has evolved from being a hobby, into a side hustle, and who knows what's next. If we can keep the current momentum going, I feel like the sky's the limit.The Land of TarlisaliaSo, thank you all for being a part of the very start of this journey. I've been working on this game, in various iterations, both table top and video game, since I was 16 years old. And I have some grainy photos to prove it.A yellowed parchment, showing the first map I ever drew. A blocky translation for an implementation in BASIC on my first computer. And this was just the beginning. A decade later, as an adult, and I get somewhere with a full rewrite of the lore through a three year tabletop campaign, still centering on the city of Jestril but with a much richer sense of place, of characters, and narrative. Skip ahead another decade or so, and I rewrite it again, only this time, the story means something. The Myth of the Solo DeveloperAnd it wouldn't be where it is right now without help. Firstly, having an artist like Witch Bolt sign on for the soundtrack has really helped capture the essence of how I want to feel when I play it. If you like what you hear from the soundtrack so far, I encourage you to check out the rest of his work.And MLC Studio has come on the past few months, taken my very amateurish art and is bringing these characters to life in ways that I had to admit I could not. So much for the "magical solo developer". There is some amazing artwork coming to the game soon, and I can't wait to share that with you. The character portraits and facial modeling work are really important to me to get exactly right, and I'm thrilled with the direction it's going in.The RoadmapI think this is getting a bit long for an introduction, so let's keep this brief. Here's wh...
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