- Seven - 28 August 2026
Hey friends! 👋I hope 2026 treated you well so far! On my side, eight months seemed to fly by. I'll be back at the start of the year turned into I'll save it for the post on August 28th. So without further ado – here's the state of the game on TRACHI's seventh anniversary! AbstractFirst and foremost, InvitAtion's renovation: the map and the quests are now a hub-based buffet. Main tasks advance time, side-quests (custom's office, Heinrich etc.) are optional, but affect the act's finale. Following that, overall improvements to the game. Seamless travel, elevation and click-to-move change the way it's played, while the Sprite Compositor assembles the characters' appearance as you play the game. To conclude, I'll present the roadmap for ANARCHY 0.5 (InvitAtion). Now that nory has landed a permanent position (yay!), two words should structure development. Stability and - hopefully - consiste…
- Dichotomy - 22 December 2025
Hey, Friends! 👋 Welcome to a very special announcement! We're approaching the end of 2026, which means it's time for our annual EOTY report. Let's be honest, though: I owe you much more than that. As the title of the post suggests, I'm proud to present you ANARCHY 0.4 (Dichotomy)! Primer First things first: InvitAtion (U) is feature-complete! All the scenes, conversations and logic from Trachi's eastern Checkpoint to four people stepping into a boat are playable. Last time, we followed the path to Nestville – which we'll henceforth call Neochori. There's a bit of unfinished business involving the militia, after that we get to the big story of this update. In one word: Kenovice – henceforth Philippopolis. At the other side of the spectrum, there's a few new features and interactions I'd like to cover. From story items to combat segments, AUTONOMY (U) has evolved from a remaster to a rem…
- Dichotomy (Preview) - 2 November 2025
Salut, Friends! 👋 Welcome to our first proper preview of the year. Although I'm still busy with you-know-what, I couldn't let the game sit still. In fact: we've made great strides since August 28th! As of today, everything up to Kenovice is in. That puts us just a handful of scenes away from a playable build. I'd like to take this opportunity and present you with a prologue you might recognize. We'll focus on the story for this one, covering about 80% of InvitAtion's events. As you'll shortly see, the prologue receives what the prologue needs. So before I retreat into the final stages of my PhD, let's talk politics and history! LaunchOur road starts where the games began. Trachi's Eastern Checkpoint was created in 2016 – making it the oldest piece of in-world content. Suffice to say: The story and the world have grown tremendously since then. Although the Checkpoint got updated countle…
- Six - 27 August 2025
Hi Friends! 👋 I just fell over my calendar. To my shock, I realized: it's August 28th! TRACHI's turning six, AUTONOMY hits four and ANARCHY lights a second candle. This would be the perfect time to reflect and ponder. But four months of absence aren't free. So before we dive into content – l'd like to put a thesis to my BFFs. Opus Remember my rant about art the other day? I recall being against the term. My key argument was: it's a colorful way to say good or bad. Yet as I looked back at the last 16 months, reality caught up to me. I make big promises, struggle with perfectionism – and by god – am I behind my schedule. Yes, I've dragged the brand to hell and back. From fictional history to InvAsion's meta splat. Rainy days for people that don't stay dead! And yet: we're on our way to the city, again. Now who in their right mind would come up with something like that? Hello. My name is…
- Words - 6 April 2025
Hi Friends! 👋 I know It's early – but we just passed a major tipping-point. In one sentence: AUTONOMY to ANARCHY. After handling tiles, cameras and Transformers previously, we're back in our habitat! Today we'll talk about the story. Not just any part of it! We'll put our eyes on detailed issues very, very soon. For now, let's tell a tale about two games and two engines. AUTONOMY's duality, order in ANARCHY – and TRACHI's 12.000 lines of dialogue. Constitution I admit it: AUTONOMY's true scale eluded me. My general expectation was something between six and seven thousand lines. Turns out we're much closer to 8.000. For comparison: ANARCHY – including InvAsion – sits at roundabout four. I'm sure you can see the implication. If our goal is to transpose AUTONOMY's words into ANARCHY, we need a solid strategy. The how and when were subject to intense speculation until around two weeks ago.…
- ExpectAtion - 16 March 2025
Hey Friends! 👋 Welcome to 2025! Our first announcement of this year tackles two topics in particular. First, a SITREP on AUTONOMY+. Technical aspects are the main ingredient of this post, since we already handled the narrative dimension here. Secondly, I want to introduce and discuss a paradigm with massive implications for our project. It's a technology with a good amount controversy – so I'm incredibly eager to hear what you think. First, though: Let's start with something unproblematic! Status AUTONOMY has around 120 maps, 18 characters and 9000 lines of dialogue. AUTONOMY+ will have to have as much – if not more. I knew what was coming, but I didn't have a clear-cut strategy. Just a broad guideline: Whatever I'm able to produce in the daily aftermath of writing a 250-page book on verbalized attribution of causality in German environmental discourse is fine by me. Considering the st…
- TRACHI++ - 31 December 2024
Hey Friends! 👋 Look! There goes another one! Time to reminisce – and whatever the future equivalent is. A trip up and down the memory lane in two announcements: AUTONOMY handled the ideological end – now we'll focus our full attention on this game right here. Let's kick it off with a chronology! – January – The start of the year was crazy. We just released Rendevous and settled the relationship between exploration and combat. ANARCHY grew from a tactical to a CRPG and joined the ranks of games such as Baldur's Gate, Knight's of the Old Republic, Divinity: Original Sin or Dragon Age (back when that name meant something). Player numbers, engagement and overall excitement was off the charts. I reached out to several artists (like zuddi) and commissioned pieces left and right. On the whole, I probably worked 70-80 hours per week organising and prepping Silhoutte. On January 13th, we publis…
- ExtrapolAtion - 12 December 2024
Hey Friends! 👋 Today is December 12th. A year chock-full of events is approaching its end. It would be a proper shame if it went by without a proper bang. Luckily – I got a whole bag of fireworks right here! Let's start with the headliner! Our prologue's grown by two chapters: ExploitAtion and ExtrapolAtion. We covered them here, here and here. This brings up the number of Ex chapters to a total of four – combined into ANARCHY's aperitif. ExplanAtion To recap: Daphne came to in 1925. Her RAIN-powered tete-a-tete with Ganymede culminates in a plan. The screen fades in and we're back in 1926. It's the exact time and place where AUTONOMY began. A story about a city – reflected by two people in a room. To be fair, I remember it slightly differently. Maybe reality was the memories we made along. Either way! We should move on to 1927. Actually – Trachi 1923. We're in the first scene of AUTON…
- ExtrapolAtion (Beta) - 4 December 2024
Hey Friends! 👋 Holy moly – is it time! Four months after the fact, I'm proud (and relieved) to finally present the next stage of ANARCHY. We're talking two new chapters, manipulation mechanics, ultimate abilities, reworked stats, conversation control, interaction menus (Talk / Trade / Examine) and streamlined (auto)-save functionalities. Furthermore, we hammered out the Act structure: Big Picture The missing pieces (formerly ExtrapolAtion B & C) complete the prologue – which now directly leads to ParAdise. You can start a (true) new game in ExcommunicAtion or jump into any chapter / phase between that and Lorna waking up next to a monolith. Starting now, you get to enjoy the first five movements of a new major questline (Eremite), grab twelve new challenges from the hunting board and / or talk and trade with NPC patrols. If you're a dreamer with a taste for future tense, I'm sure you'l…
- ExtrapolAtion (Preview III) - 23 September 2024
Hey friends! 👋 We're approaching the end of September, so I'll have to make due on my promise! Our third (and hopefully final) preview of ANARCHY 0.3 ties it all together through a mix of ExcommunicAtion, ParAdise – and last but not least: ExtrapolAtion C! Goose Shed We covered ExtrapolAtion B in plenty here and here. Today's good news is: Trachi 1923's segments are 100% set up. We've got the intro conversation, NPC (and companion) interactions, the dialogue and subsequent battle with Ariadne all under wraps. The encounter itself is far more difficult than anything we've faced so far. A deathless run is absolutely possible, but requires pitch-perfect execution. One way or the other, Ariadne takes a fall. I'll let you discover (and untangle) her message in your own time. After all, we've got a date with the room where AUTONOMY peaked. The place where Atlas and Daphne settled things with…
- ExtrapolAtion (Preview II) - 7 September 2024
Salutations, 皆さん! 👋 I hope all of you arrived well into September 2024. Turns out this is our first post in ANARCHY's second year! Seeing as I just recently had to publicly apologise – it's high-time we sat down for a little one o' one. Nostalgia Let's start with ExtrapolAtion. Our return to Trachi is roundabout 90% done. The maps are finished and the dialogue is coded in. I'm currently testing the battle back and forth. On the whole, this segment took super long – partially since it's a crossroads for many things. First off: the story. TRACHI has always been about who knows what at which point. ExtrapolAtion B's situation proved to be incredibly tough in that regard. Contrary to AUTONOMY, Atlas and Daphne are greeted by Ariadne when they step inside. You can imagine how much Daphne wants to call her out. There's a good reason not to, though! As far as everybody is concerned, Atlas may…
- ONE - 28 August 2024
Howdy-ho, friends! Remember when I promised a major update two months ago? We followed it up by a progress report on July 28th, where we covered what should've been ANARCHY 0.3 (ExtrapolAtion). The truth is: I've barely had time to spin the things I've worked on into a releasable build. We'll thus have to delay the update by a couple of weeks. Rest assured, though: there's a lot more months to the year! The last couple of weeks have given me a good hold of the narrative pieces ANARCHY needs. Story remains our strongest point – so let's have a look at the arcs of the individual acts! – ParAdise – The first act puts Pandora (aka Lorna) in the driving seat. Following the intro (ImmigrAtion), our protagonist wakes up in a strange new place. There's a bunch of familiar faces, but the world has radically changed. Either that – or Pandora's memory is terribly wrong. To answer that question, we…
- ExtrapolAtion (Preview I) - 28 July 2024
Heya, friends! 👋 Evidently, I'm a bit late. So let's kick it off with an apology! I've had a couple of extra day-job commitments at work, which meant less time for development. We'll thus have to push ANARCHY 0.2.3 into the 0.3 basket. In effect, August 28th will see both the second and third part of ExtrapolAtion released as one big package. The preview right here is centred around ExtrapolAtion B – aka Trachi 1923. This segment brings us closer to AUTONOMY than ever before – a perfect opportunity to revisit the political and personal situation at hand. We'll also take a look at a new major battle and – last but not least – introduce a long promised Status Value rework. Trachi 1923 You've seen the preview – and perhaps the teasers at the end of ExtrapolAtion A. For the first time since 2021, we're going back to the city where it all began. Trachi's (outdoor) debut in Unity brings us b…
- Renaissance - 27 June 2024
Greetings, friends of the sun! 👋 After two months of work, here's ANARCHY 0.2.2 (Renaissance)! I'd normally give you an abstract about the highlights of this patch. This time, there's simply too many of them. We're facing – without a shadow of a doubt – the biggest update since the game came out. Almost every segment has received new content, wide-ranging optimisation and other equally important bits of love. Let's check it out! 👓 Narrative ExtrapolAtion A is the centrepiece of Renaissance. We covered the broad strokes in the preview. In technical terms, Daphne is visiting Ganymede on August 28th 1926. On one hand, we're witnessing a love-letter to AUTONOMY's first couple of scenes. There's a bunch of adjustments, both on the gameplay and narrative side. The dialogue is in many ways optimised and everything is far more interactive. Similar to ImmigrAtion, we're playing a lot with the…
- Renaissance (Beta) - 16 June 2024
Heyho Friends & Family! As promised – here's the ANARCHY 0.2.2 (Renaissance) beta. The flagship addition is the first part of a new chapter – ExtrapolAtion. If you'd like to know what it's about, allow me to gently point you to the Preview from a couple of weeks ago. There's also a new combat mechanic: Counter. It's born out of a larger rework – covered in this technical post. That announcement also mentioned an overhaul of Variations. There's a high chance we'll take a dedicated look at the what, how and why for that as well. On the whole, Renaissance is feature-complete. What's left is to test ANARCHY itself and apply the proper polish. If there's time, I'll try to work in more flavour and prep the stage for ExtrapolAtion B. I'll save that and the bigger picture for the actual release on June 28th. Until then, I wish you a spectacular week – with high hopes to talk to you again very s…
- Technically - 6 June 2024
Hey friendy-friends! I recently announced a triplet of monthly updates. Each of them packs a piece of this year's special event - ExtrapolAtion. I also mentioned that the first part – ExtrapolAtion A – was about 80%-90% done. Just a week later, we're almost feature complete. This left a bit of room to sit down and finally polish some of ANARCHY's core systems. In this post, I'd like to present these optimizations and also provide a more in-depth technical overview. Visualisation From the get-go (i.e. InvAsion), I put a big effort into making the character's visual appearance customisable and scalable. Thanks to Unity's Sprite Libraries, we're able to run all the characters on a single animation tree. We're also using inheritance to derive individual character prefabs from a single base-combatant. This means that changes to colliders, path-finding and many other pieces of logic don't nee…
- Renaissance (Preview) - 28 May 2024
Howdy-ho, friends! 👋 It's been two months since our last dance. The release of Café was followed by – well – just about sixty days of eerie silence. Today I'd like to break that streak. At the core of this post thus lie three major talking points: the state, future and ambition of ANARCHY. Retro Here's the story so far: ANARCHY was conceived in May 2023. Over the course of ten months, we managed to build the foundation of a tactical RPG. Specifically: we established the segments ExcommunicAtion, InvAsion and – most importantly – the first few hours of ParAdise. I would have loved to keep that pace until August 2028 at least. On the other hand, a man's got to earn a living. I pushed ridiculous hours into ANARCHY, severely neglecting my PhD. This became undeniable in February – and public knowledge on March 28th. Going forth, ANARCHY couldn't be my top priority. So where does that leave…
- Café - 28 March 2024
Salutations, friends! 👋 Today is March 28th, our monthly date where we celebrate TRACHI taking another step towards greatness. The matter at hand is ANARCHY 0.2.1 (Café), a wholesale package full of new content and overall improvements to pretty much every aspect of the game. Most of these were covered by the preview. Normally I'd also point at the changelog in the beta announcement. Unfortunately, we skipped out on that this month. I'm super sorry about that, but I'll say a couple words in regards to that and our future release schedules later down the line. For now, let's refocus on the changes coming with Café! Synopsis Highlights include the continuation of the main quest (Argonautica) through two new quest taks: Sanctuary and Familiarity. In-between these two interactions there's a chance to engage with individual party members. On top of that, Fragments have been further intertwi…
- Café (Preview) - 14 March 2024
Greetings, TRACHIANs! 👋 Halfway into March – time for our routine! The topic at hand is ANARCHY 0.2.1 (Café). For this step of the road, we're putting a big focus on character interactions, quests and abilities. To track these and all the other changes, I've set up a public roadmap where we can measure our progress towards 0.3 (Renaissance) – to be released on August 28th this year. Café In February's Update (Merci), we introduced our first set of new-world indoor areas. The Checkpoint sits at the tail end of Paradise, overlooking a river separating north from south. It's supposed to be a place that – well – checks people and their IDs. However, it's become more of a pub-like environment with a whole lot of people that don't plan on leaving anytime soon. There's a vibe of a bunker/sanctuary that protects its residents from the big bad outside world. This aspect is currently only partia…
- Merci - 29 February 2024
Hello, friendly people! 👋 Today is February 29th! That's six months since TRACHI 2.0 set foot into this world. One hundred eighty-five days after the fact, ANARCHY 0.2 (Merci) is here. Most of the new content was covered in the preview and in the release notes. In other words: we have all the space in the world to tie everything together here. We'll take a look at what kind of game ANARCHY aims to be. A 'story-driven hub-based tactical RPG', is a lot to take in – so let's break it up into individual elements and measure our progress on these fronts from August 2023 to February 2024. Story-Driven Old World For the lack of a better term, the 'Old World' consists of around 30 years of fictional history (1890-1924). It's the backbone of AUTONOMY and will continue to play a major role in ANARCHY. Even though the world itself is overwritten, ANARCHY follows the TRACHIAN paradigm that history…
