Chapter One

Welcome to the first development log for our video game Halmi: A Troll’s Path to Collect the Golden Books. In this current chapter, we'd like to introduce what this game is all about and—more importantly—when you'll be able to get your hands on it.

Halmi is an open-world exploration & deck building game. We're big fans of Minecraft and Slay the Spire, but we've been pushing ourselves to elevate the experience beyond these inspirations in several key ways:

First, we want this game to be beautiful. Our goal is to evoke that heartfelt warmth you experience with handcrafted furniture or a lovingly quilted blanket. In today's world filled with AI-generated content, we can assure you that every element of our game is truly made with our blood, sweat, and tears.

Second, we want the game to be refreshingly fun. We’ve been working really hard on developing a system that stands apart from existing deck-building games like Slay the Spire, Balatro, Pokémon TCG, and Inscryption. Of course, it’s still a card game at its core but it’s already grown to be quite distinctive and fun.

And third, we're designing the world and characters to be both cozy and captivating. We’ve been spending many hours polishing our terrain, diversifying biomes, and adding interesting flora and fauna. The fruits of your foraging will meaningfully expand your decks' prowess. On top of that, our character designs aim to avoid typical clichés or aggressive archetypes in favor of cuter, more fantastical explorations.

Regarding release timing, we can't provide an exact date just yet but we're targeting early next year. In the meantime, we can't wait to share more lessons learned, progress updates, and game snippets through this Substack.

Stay tuned!

💖