- Fortuna has come a long way: some fresh in-game screenshots - 4 August 2026
The team is hard at work as I write this, preparing for an internal playtest, which helps us prepare for bigger external playtests. Optimizations are especially tricky for this game, not just because of the thousands of NPCs but also the way the city is generated and displayed. So this time, instead of distracting someone for the time it takes to make a proper devlog, we thought we’d do a little screenshot roundup.In case you haven’t seen them already, from Monday to Thursday every week, a Fortuna developer on the Kitfox Discord (usually Brent) posts a snippet of progress made on the game, giving a behind-the-scenes glimpse, usually of the art or content, sometimes tools or bugs. I’ve picked my favorites for this post, but if you’re curious, I recommend checking the Discord yourself. Fortuna has come a long way in the past year. It’s hard to believe a year ago, the game didn’t have so m…
- Why are my heretics like this? - Streets of Fortuna Devlog #9 - 25 June 2026
It's Tanya here, Content Designer on Streets of Fortuna! Usually, the locations in Streets of Fortuna are procedurally generated. As you saw with Xin’s last devlog, the environments in Fortuna are usually very dynamic and adapt to the residents. But occasionally, we want a very special place to stand out and have a more intentional vibe. The first special location we made was our little cathedral, an iconic Miteran church, our world’s dominant religion. The Miterans worship a single God and a martyr, unlike the old pagan ways. The way we build a location like this starts like any other. We first make the base out of our usual modular tiles. Then we make the item sets, which will procedurally generate based on the residents and some randomness. Pews weren’t really common in our reference period, and instead worshippers would stand to hear the words of God, unless they were sick or elderl…
- Different ways to make an antique city beautiful- Streets of Fortuna Devlog #8 - 28 April 2026
Hi my name is Xin, I'm the art director on Streets of Fortuna. Today I want to share the development process of our environment art. The look of our game is heavily influenced by the setting, which is inspired by fifth century Constantinople.Last year, the team went to Istanbul in Turkey for an amazing research trip. We learned so much from visiting historical architectural sites and museums, as well as just taking in the vibe. We took so many photos of different buildings, mosaics, and of course cats, and it all got us really inspired. Kitfox travel photos from Istanbul. So here are some of the initial exploration for our art style from a few years ago. At first we tried an unlit look, but we quickly realized that not having shadows made the game difficult to read because shadows help us understand depth and space. So we added lighting and shadows, which will become very important for…
- The Cat Update - 9 March 2026
It’s Brent here, and I’m going to be showing off the cats we recently added to the city. Now, technically, there’s no proof there were tons of cats in Justinian-era Constantinople. But we were at least somewhat inspired by the cat-covered streets of modern Istanbul, but as cats have been present since *at least* Ottoman times, and tend to be rather popular among seafaring traders for rat-catching, we figured… why not? Most Kitfox team members have (or love) cats. They’re cute and fun and add a lot of life. I assume the cat lives here. Each of the hundreds of cats in the city get a unique name and set of traits to govern their behaviour, separate from human traits. Affectionate cats will try to nuzzle you, Cold Paws (seek out warmth), Irritable and Insane cats will both attack passersby (with additional zoomies added to the latter), some are Hoarders, some are Lazy, etc. And just like hu…
- Behind-the-scenes systems in the trailer! - 15 January 2026
Hey Fortunans!At the bottom of this post you can see we've made a slightly longer version of the trailer we released last month, showing more of the systems and how they work.There's a few different nuances we touch on that I thought I'd take a moment to explain in greater detail. Some of it you might already know if you're chatting with us on the Discord, but some of this I think is new:Survival (Hunger): Obviously an urban setting isn't a typical "wilderness survival" scenario, since you should have access to water, and there aren't exactly wolves and bears roaming the streets. But you'll still need to manage your Hunger and Vigor, in addition to your health. Our intent with Hunger is to encourage seeking out (or cooking!) more delicious food, both to assuage Hunger more efficiently but also to improve your Status or Virtue (reputation types, appealing to different types of people). I…
- Gameplay Reveal Trailer, Alpha Playtest signup - 4 December 2025
Attention Fortuna Citizens, Today is an exciting day because we just revealed a brand-new gameplay trailer on the PCGaming Show. It shows off dialogue, crime, survival and stealth features set to a brand new track “Zarya's Shadow” by Omar ‘Dabu’ Dabbous (composer for Streets of Fortuna, Dwarf Fortress and audio lead for Boyfriend Dungeon). Watch the trailer here: Highlights from the Trailer Pickpocketing All NPCs have some amount of coins and items in their pockets. They might have items related to their profession, tastes, cultures, etc. If you approach them undetected, you’ll be able to randomly grab one of the items. Sneaking around at night Using darkness and shadows will make sneaking around places you aren’t supposed to be much easier. Getting caught by guards/the community Both guards regular NPCs have the ability to detect if you’re doing something bad and will confront you with…
- How to kiss NPCs 😘 Streets of Fortuna Dev Update - 5 November 2025
Tanya here. Today I’d like to talk about how we allow players to build relationships with NPCs, whether it’s friendship or kissing or falling in love. A you may recall, this game simulates thousands of citizens. As a sandbox, we’re trying to help the player tell their story, not listen to OUR story. So rather than maintain hundreds of different dialogue trees, we just have one that almost all characters use. We’re going to work on this game for a long time, so we want to make sure we can keep adding logic to EVERYONE simultaneously. So for example, if I add a special greeting from a friend when they are Greedy, it will immediately improve all of the NPCs. A single NodeCanvas can be a bit overwhelming since it’s trying to handle all possible traits, contexts, situations, relationships, etc. But if we zoom in to follow a single thread of logic, it’s more manageable. So in the screenshot b…
- The World of Fortuna 🏛 Streets of Fortuna Update - 8 October 2025
Hey Fortuna Citizens! I’m Tanya, the main world designer and writer for Streets of Fortuna. You might know me from content I wrote and designed in Moon Hunters, Boyfriend Dungeon, The Shrouded Isle, or even bits of The Secret World, or Age of Conan. Streets of Fortuna is inspired by Constantinople around 550 AD, so our typical reference point is midway through the reign of Justinian I. I chose Constantinople because I've always found it to be fascinating, and because I could imagine it specifically as the perfect sandbox. Justinian, reference images It was the wealthiest city in the world, with riots, diversity, coup attempts, and big personalities. Fortuna is a game about living your other life, and where better than the heart of the eastern Roman empire, during the messy adolescent years of monotheism? Getting drunk But rather than stick to the history, we want the freedom to do whate…
- Devlog #5 - Character Generation - 7 August 2025
Hey everyone! Brent here (lead designer), talking about character generation in a new devlog. You can watch it here: Our goals with character generation are to: 1 - fill the city, so when you’re walking around, there’s people everywhere and you feel you’re in a simulated world 2 - we need a place for (almost) everyone to live, work, be entertained, etc Each character needs unique traits and tastes, so they can feel individual, but there also need to be cultures and professions that have similarities so you can recognize the patterns. Finally, we want those traits and tastes to effect the game world. How We Generate NPCs Step 1: generating the road and buildings. Step 2: we generate Properties (a stall, shopfront, residence, church, etc). We place things inside chunks that are collections (for example, a shopfront could be a bakery, ceramics shop, etc). In some ways, these properties are…
- We’ve added female residents to the city - 9 July 2025
Attention Fortuna Citizens!It’s Alexandra with a very exciting new addition to the game. You may have noticed that all of our player-characters and NPCs in our videos and screenshots have been a variation of dudes with different hairstyles, clothing and skintones. But things have been a little different lately! That’s because we’ve been busy designing the female model, which ended up being quite tricky to make.Now that we have women running around the city, I thought it would be a great time to chat with 3D artist Alex to see what the historical inspirations were for the female model design and the technological challenges.Q: What did women wear in 550 AD Constantinople and how does that inform Streets of Fortuna?A: In Constantinople, a combination of various secular and religious orthodoxies dictated fairly confined lives for most women, and strict garment usage. But then again, one of…
- Dialog System Preview - 10 June 2025
Hey everyone,We’ve been posting micro-dev updates in the Kitfox Discord. Brent has been sharing screenshots and day-to-day updates on what the team is working on. And the rest of the devs have also been hanging out in the channel to answer questions or just nerd out about Byzantine history.Some things we’ve posted haven’t been revealed anywhere else yet, including the first glimpse of the dialog system. This is a VERY early version of the display for the character you're talking to - we're looking into a few different ways to handle it, including a first-person camera. The basic functionality of the interface is classic RPG but the intention is that most of the time you use this to express what you want to get out of the character in a hub-and-spokes type design. Of course there are also contextual cases that have a more linear flow such as when someone catches you stealing in their hom…
- We went on an Istanbul research trip! - 28 May 2025
Attention Fortuna Citizens! It’s Alexandra here! Been a while since we’ve done a text post since we’ve been focusing on devlogs and showing off lots of in-progress stuff. You should definitely check them out if you haven’t! But we thought we post about a really exciting opportunity the team recently had to go to Istanbul for a research trip. We’ve talked a lot about how the city of Fortuna is inspired by Constantinople 500 A.D because we wanted to create a world where the player could be a criminal or religious leader or both. You can read our full explanation in our Steam post “Why Constantinople?” if you want more historical details. We started development working with academics with specialities in Byzantine history but you can only learn so much from looking at pictures and listening to lectures. So last month, some of the team travelled to Istanbul to study the art, architecture an…
- Devlog #4 - Generating the city - 7 May 2025
Attention Fortuna citizens! Programmer Mehrdad is here to talk about our inspirations for designing the large Constantinople-inspired city and the tools we are using to accomplish such a task. Watch the full video on the Kitfox Youtube: The city of Fortuna is not a complete recreation of Constantinople but we’ve studied its design closely. Historically, Constantinople had a main road called the “Mese” (Greek for “middle”) that ran from the Palace to the Golden Gate. The mese famously went through many Plazas that were large structures that host various important locations, marketplaces and gathering areas such as the famous Hippodrome. Reference image: "The Mese" by Antoine Helbert In Streets of Fortuna, we started building the city using the mese as a starting point, adding plazas, roads and other features surrounding it. We want players to be able to explore or (exploit) the bustling…
- Devlog #3 - Fixing the Fountain Bug - 26 March 2025
Attention Fortuna Citizens! Our third devlog is here and this time, Programmer Julia is here to talk about fixing a pesky NPC bug. Turns out, when you're simulating 3000 NPCs, there's a lot of silly things that can happen with them. Julia told me that she spent a lot of time following NPCs and seeing their behaviours so when she noticed a huge pile of containers near public fountains, she knew she had to investigate. Watch the devlog to see how she solved the mystery and fixed the bug: We are able to look back and laugh at this bugfix now because over the past month, the team has officially moved its focus from raw city generation to gameplay concerns, especially the important stuff, like characters wearing clothes based on their traits and tastes, or the player starving to death. Megasims are all about the systems, and in particular the generation underlies all the other systems, so we…
- Devlog #2 - NPC Behaviours & Simulation - 28 January 2025
Fortuna Citizens! Lead Designer Brent is back with our second Streets of Fortuna devlog, this time about programming NPC behaviours. Fortuna is a city that has simulated people who have their own schedules, behaviours and lives, regardless if the player is present or not. We can currently support 1000 NPCs at a time, with that number hopefully growing to 3000 as we have more content and buildings to support them. When playing Streets of Fortuna, it will be important to get to know people in the city no matter what playstyle you choose. A key part of being a thief for example, would be to learn the schedule of a rich merchant and find access to their store-rooms in the right moment. In the devlog, you’ll see a play-by-play of two kinds of NPC behaviours with Work-in-progress gameplay footage. Brent also shows off some behind the scenes footage with the Behaviour Tree plugin to show exact…
- Devlog #1 - First in-engine gameplay (WIP) 🏛 Streets of Fortuna Dev Update - 12 November 2024
Attention Fortuna Citizens! We are thrilled to share our first video devlog hosted by Lead Designer Brent Ellison. In this video, Brent shows off the first in-engine work-in-progress gameplay footage. You’ll see the player character moving around a giant generated city, various interactions with objects and NPCs and some of the tools the team has been using to craft buildings and objects. He also outlines the goals of the project and the development philosophy that will shape all future updates. Please keep in mind that all footage is captured from our internal builds and the editor which means there’s unfinished early/prototype art, UI and functionality. Watch the full video on Youtube: The context menu will contain a huge selection of verbs for most objects so you can manipulate the world as you like. At the start of the game you may not know what you need to do to succeed, but you sh…
- Constructing a Capital of Late Antiquity 🏛 Streets of Fortuna Devlog - 30 September 2024
One of the most important considerations on Streets of Fortuna is the creation of editor tools for designers and artists. With hundreds of locations and tens of thousands of objects it takes a great deal of variety for the city to appear believable and compelling so we need to quickly and easily be able to create A LOT of stuff. In fact, the Item Tool was one of the very first things implemented in the project - it was through the process of creating different types of Items in the editor, even before they could do anything in-game, that we worked out many of the details of how we should simulate the gameworld. Whenever we start a new feature that requires authoring we really dig deep to figure out how to make a tool as user-friendly and flexible as possible because we anticipate using it for years to come. Almost anything you see in the game besides walls, floors and characters is a si…
- Why Constantinople? 🏛 Streets of Fortuna Devlog - 15 August 2024
We often get asked “Why Constantinople 500 AD?”, either because people aren’t familiar with this uniquely fascinating moment in history, or because people ARE familiar and wonder which aspects are relevant to Streets of Fortuna. A quick follow-up question is often “So how historical ARE you?”, which is trickier to answer but we’ll give it a try. In case you’re not familiar with the ancient city, Constantinople around 500 AD was the capital of the Roman Empire, which historians later decided to call “Byzantium” to distinguish it from other periods of Roman history, and to more easily discuss its unique blend of cultures and contribution to culture. It’s the home of the famous Hagia Sophia, and a classic “east-meets-west” melting pot in history. There are literally thousands of books written about it, and many feature its particularly famous rags-to-riches emperor Justinian (reigning 527…
- Announcing Streets of Fortuna - 9 June 2024
We’re here to announce our next game, Streets of Fortuna. Fortuna is the city of your dreams! Or it will be, if you can survive. We've been secretly working on Streets of Fortuna for years. It's bigger than anything we've ever made before! We are calling it a "megasim" because there are so many different paths you'll be able to take and the simulation will support all of them. Features: - Freeform gameplay in a dense, seamless, generated city - No job or class system to constrain you, only heaps of skills to grow - Made in consultation with the creators of Dwarf Fortress to optimize for emergent player stories - Simulated people and communities for infinite hours of megasim gameplay - Focus on narrow escapes and heists rather than toe-to-toe combat - Original, richly textured world and lore, loosely inspired by Constantinople circa 500 AD We're working hard on the game every day plus Lo…
