Case study — In development

Riftwrought

An offline-first action RPG built in Godot 4. My long-term flagship project.

Overview

Riftwrought is an offline-first action RPG that combines my two favourite genres: ARPG buildcraft in the spirit of Path of Exile and the replayability of roguelites. It's for players like me who want mayhem and freedom — and who want to own the game they bought: no online economy, no seasons, no FOMO. The save file and the progression belong to the player.

My role

I design the story, the game loops, skills, formulas, the economy and balancing. I build it in Godot 4 with AI assistance: I write the specifications, review every delivery against them, and only accept work that meets them — the same way I ran development teams as a product owner.

How I work

Every decision goes into a decision log — over 400 entries so far — so months later I can check what I decided and why, instead of relying on memory. Before committing to anything risky, I run a feasibility spike: a small, disposable test of one question. Before building the Huntress, for example, a spike checked whether bow animations could be retargeted onto her model at all.

Work moves through the same cycle I used as a product owner at IBM and UNIQA: delivered, reviewed, accepted. I own the vision, translate it into concrete technical work, and test every result against what the player needs before I approve it — or send it back.

Direction changes

I started with a clear picture of the look and feel: a dark, gory ARPG-style roguelite. Along the way I explored a 2D isometric version and drew my own pixel-art characters — and learned that art production would be the biggest blocker for a solo project. So I moved to 3D with free CC0 assets, which lets me focus on what I do best: systems, design and the player's experience.

None of these directions were mistakes. Each one answered a question, and the decisions stay in the log: tested, accepted, and no longer the active target. I try things, look at the result, and decide based on what's best for the product and its players.

What I learned

In Riftwrought, skills, abilities and auras are Imprints — unlocked permanently into the character. Persistent Imprints like auras reserve part of your Mana while they're active, and before building the system I modelled it in Machinations to answer one question: should Mana regeneration be calculated from the full Mana pool or only the unreserved part?

The difference compounds quickly. With 100 Mana and 10% regeneration, a player regenerates 10 Mana per second. Reserve 25% for an aura, and regeneration from the unreserved pool drops to 7.5 per second. I chose the unreserved model: every aura carries a real, ongoing cost, and that cost gives future build stats — Mana leech, Mana on hit, Mana on kill, recoup — a genuine job to do.

It took about half a day, including learning Machinations itself. Since free Machinations projects are public, I also modelled it with neutral names so my own numbers and formulas stayed private.