Category: Devlog Video

Three months. Twelve weeks. One impossible deadline.

After seven months of development, we still had zero minutes of gameplay.

This is the story of what happened next.

October 27th, 2025

Exactly three months before the PlayStation MENA Hero Project submission deadline, I realized that the way we had been developing the prototype wasn’t getting us where we needed to go.

We had built gameplay systems, tools, and technology—but they hadn’t yet come together into a cohesive playable experience.

The team was exhausted after months of volunteer work, and I knew we needed a completely different approach.

Then I came up with an idea I jokingly called:

The Minute-by-Minute Game Jam

Instead of spending weeks building systems for some distant future, I would treat every one or two minutes of gameplay as its own mini game jam.

Every week would have one mission:

Build something playable.

Twelve weeks.

One or two playable minutes every week.

That became the plan.

Week One — Build the Road

The story begins with the protagonist leaving the job he hates and walking alone along a lonely highway through a foggy forest at night.

So the first goal was simple:

Build the environment where the journey begins.

I started searching through FAB for forest and highway environments that could give me the foundation I needed.

For almost two days, it felt like I wasn’t making any progress at all.

Downloading packs.

Opening projects.

Closing them.

Trying another one.

Eventually, I found a forest environment that had almost everything I needed.

Then the real work began.

I widened the highway, reshaped the landscape, adjusted the sidewalks, changed the lighting, and added the fog.

Because, of course…

Every mysterious forest deserves good fog. 😅

Then I hit a major problem.

The performance was terrible.

No matter how much I optimized or reduced the graphics settings, the frame rate remained painfully low.

I thought I had a serious optimization problem on my hands.

It turned out to be something much simpler.

A month later, I discovered that I had accidentally enabled Use Fixed Frame Rate in the project settings long before I even started developing the prototype.

One tiny checkbox.

Several weeks of confusion.

Welcome to indie game development.

But after nearly a week of work, I finally had it:

A one-kilometer highway cutting through a foggy forest at night.

For the first time, the concept art wasn’t just an idea anymore.

It was a real place I could actually walk through.

And that’s when I knew…

The method was working.

I wasn’t just building systems anymore.

I was building a game.

Week Two

With the first milestone completed, I started planning the next one:

• The Thinking System
• Dialogue
• Three MetaHuman characters
• Voice acting
• Screenwriting
• Environmental audio

The prototype was finally starting to come together.

But the goal was always bigger than simply finishing a prototype.

I wanted Rare Castle to become a PlayStation studio.

And the crazy part?

I had already become a PlayStation Partner, and the project already had a PlayStation Store Concept Page.

But getting there…

was only the beginning.

Now I had to prove I could actually build the game.

And I had only three months.

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🎬 Watch Dev Diary #1

This is the first chapter of the Dev Diary, my flagship development series documenting the real journey behind building the prototype—from the setbacks and difficult decisions to the milestones and breakthroughs.

Three months. One prototype. One dream.

And this is where the journey begins.

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💙 Support the Project

If you’d like to follow the development and support the project, you can wishlist the game on the PlayStation Store.

Wishlist on PlayStation Store

Every wishlist helps more people discover the project and supports the journey toward bringing the game to life.

Sometimes, it’s the smallest gameplay details that make the biggest difference.

While developing the driving, traffic, and vehicle systems, I noticed something that didn’t feel quite right—especially when testing with a controller.

Whenever I turned the vehicle, the camera would stay wherever I had left it.

So instead of enjoying the drive…

I was constantly fighting the right stick just to get the camera back to where it should be. 😅

I started thinking about how other driving games handle their cameras and realized what I wanted:

The camera should smoothly return to its original position behind the vehicle while driving.

After some research, experimentation, and a little help from ChatGPT, I found an approach that could make it work.

It didn’t work on the first attempt.

Or the second.

But after a few tweaks…

It finally clicked.

Now the camera smoothly adjusts itself to the vehicle’s rotation, allowing me to focus on driving instead of constantly correcting the camera.

It’s a small feature.

But these small details are what make gameplay feel more natural and polished.

This was one of many improvements I made during the intense three-month prototype sprint, and there’s still much more to build.

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🎬 Watch Gameplay Mechanics #1

In this episode, I show the problem, the development process, and the final result of the driving camera system.

Gameplay Mechanics is a development series where I share the gameplay systems and mechanics I’m building along the way.

One mechanic at a time. 🎮

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💙 Support the Project

If you’d like to follow the development and support the project, you can wishlist the game on the PlayStation Store.

Wishlist on PlayStation Store

Every wishlist helps more people discover the project and supports the journey toward bringing the game to life.

What happens when a soul has no body?

That question became one of the ideas behind the dream world of the game.

In this world, mysterious light entities exist beyond normal space and time. But if these entities are made of light, how can they interact with the physical world?

They need a vessel.

The Inspiration

One of the ideas that inspired this concept came from Beyond: Two Souls and its character Aiden.

I was fascinated by the idea of an entity that could move through the environment, interact with objects, and even possess people.

I wanted to take that concept in a completely different direction.

Instead of possessing human beings, the light entities in this world can inhabit mechanical vessels.

The Mechanical Vessels

I imagined these strange mechanical bodies scattered throughout the dream world, waiting to be inhabited by lost souls.

The connection between the entity and its vessel is a mysterious crystal.

The crystal acts as a gateway, allowing the light entity to take control of the mechanical body.

But I didn’t want the crystal to exist only as part of the story.

Eventually, it becomes something much more important to the player.

A weapon.

A tool.

And potentially a way to interact with, protect, or even heal other entities.

From Concept to Prototype

This idea has already moved beyond concept art.

The mechanical vessel and light-entity possession system have been implemented in the prototype.

The next step is developing the crystal mechanic itself, followed by the larger weapon and shooting systems.

There’s still a lot to build, but this is one of those moments where an idea that once existed only in my imagination starts becoming something you can actually play.

A soul made of light.

A body made of machinery.

And a crystal connecting the two.

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🎬 Watch Behind the Dream #2

In this episode, I explore the inspiration and design behind the mechanical vessels and the light-entity possession system.

Behind the Dream is a development series exploring the ideas, inspirations, and design concepts behind the game.

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💙 Support the Project

If you’d like to follow the development and support the project, you can wishlist the game on the PlayStation Store.

Wishlist on PlayStation Store

Every wishlist helps more people discover the project and brings the dream one step closer to reality.

Some game characters start with a detailed design document.

Others start with a strange idea that refuses to leave your head.

For this game, one of those ideas became The Shadow.

The Shadow represents the darker, repressed parts of the protagonist—the thoughts, fears, and emotions he would rather ignore.

But I didn’t want to make it a typical evil shadow character.

I wanted something more unpredictable.

Something that could mock you, challenge you, manipulate you… and occasionally even help you.

The Inspiration

One of the inspirations came from the classic Prince of Persia, particularly the iconic moment where the protagonist encounters his own shadow.

Another major inspiration was The Stanley Parable and its narrator.

I loved the idea of having a character that constantly observes what the player is doing and comments on their choices.

So I started imagining the Shadow as something between an inner critic and a sarcastic trickster.

It doesn’t simply want to defeat the player.

It wants to get inside their head.

The Shadow and Healing

There’s also a deeper reason for the Shadow’s existence.

The game explores the idea of healing—and one of its themes is learning how to deal with negative thoughts and emotions.

Instead of constantly fighting your darker thoughts, what if you learned to understand them?

What if your Shadow could become something you work with rather than something you try to destroy?

That’s the role I want the Shadow to play throughout the story.

From Concept to Gameplay

The Shadow isn’t just a story concept anymore.

The first version of the Shadow System has already been implemented.

The player can summon the Shadow, watch it mimic their movements, and interact with it through dialogue.

There are still many mechanics I’d like to explore as the story develops, but this is where the idea starts becoming a real part of the game.

A character born from the protagonist’s darkness…

but perhaps not as evil as he first appears. 🎭

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🎬 Watch Behind the Dream #1

In this episode, I talk about the inspirations, story purpose, and gameplay concept behind the Shadow.

Behind the Dream is a development series exploring the ideas, inspirations, and design concepts behind the game.

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💙 Support the Project

If you’d like to follow the development and support the project, you can wishlist the game on the PlayStation Store.

Wishlist on PlayStation Store

Every wishlist helps more people discover the project and brings the dream one step closer to reality.

While developing the game, I encountered a strange visual bug affecting the hair of my MetaHuman characters.

The hair would become extremely blurry and appear completely out of focus during gameplay.

The Investigation

My first suspicion was translucency and Depth of Field.

After testing different settings, I discovered that switching from Virtual Shadow Maps to the older Shadow Maps method made the problem disappear.

But that wasn’t really the solution I wanted.

Virtual Shadow Maps are an important part of the project’s rendering setup, so I wanted to find a way to fix the issue without giving them up.

After some research and experimentation, I eventually found a console command that solved the problem while allowing me to keep Virtual Shadow Maps.

The Console Command:
r.HairStrands.ComposeAfterTranslucency 2

And just like that…

The hair was sharp again.

A Small Bug, A Useful Lesson

This was a relatively small issue, but it was a good reminder of how unpredictable game development can sometimes be.

A visual problem that looks like it should be related to one system can sometimes come from somewhere completely different.

And sometimes, finding the solution means a lot of testing, research, and asking the occasional AI for help. 😄

🎬 Watch Bug Hunt #1

In this episode, I document the problem, the investigation, and the final solution.

Bug Hunt is a development series where I share some of the technical problems I encounter while building the game—and how I solve them along the way.

One bug at a time. 🐞

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💙 Support the Project

If you’d like to follow the development and support the project, you can wishlist the game on the PlayStation Store.

Wishlist on PlayStation Store