- New Music & Returning to ANZ Indie Fest 2026! - 9 May 2026
We're featured in ANZ Indie Fest!The Spirit Engine DX is part of ANZ Indie Fest, and now is a great time to get involved!"Advance Release" PlaylistTo celebrate the rebirth of The Spirit Engine, we are publishing music ahead of the soundtrack release on a special playlist. Click here to listen & follow the Playlist on your platform of choice. Right now you can jam to "this Place is Cursed," the re-imagination of Homestead, and "Failstate," the evolution of Security Breech. Thanks for the support — and thanks to ANZ Indie Fest for featuring the game. Listen to the "Advance Release" Playlist9+ Studio Musicians and counting!Right now over nine studio musicians have supplied their talents to our soundtrack, and there are more coming. We have a few surprises along the way! Fans of GunGirl 2 will be pleased, but that's not all...If you click this little 🎵 emoji in our discord server, you coul…
- Soundtrack Reboot! - 27 March 2026
Same Music - New Sound - Real Musicians Fans of the original game will remember the Original Soundtrack to the Spirit Engine was crafted with digital samples and a retro flavor. The original composer (that's me!) returns to merge the retro sounds with studio musicians to take the vibes to a whole new level of production and quality, and to breathe new life those old tracks.Upon release, the game will feature the new and old soundtracks with a classic "choose your adventure" toggle in the settings menu.he's really floored about the whole thing! Soundtrack Singles on Streaming Platforms In true 2026 marketing fashion, I'll be releasing singles from the new soundtrack every 3-4 weeks as best I can manage.Today was the first release of HOMESTEAD's Theme, called "this Place is Cursed:"🎧 Stream it now: https://joshwhelchel.com/releases/cursed Weekly Previews on Discord Every week I'll be dro…
- Participating in Flash Game Vibes + how to access World 2 in the demo - 10 February 2026
Alright guvnors? Participating in yet another festival, only this time its aesthetic is Flash Game Vibes! Kudos to Amy from Rogue Duck Interactive for selecting us! Take a look at all the other games participating, too!I still find it interesting that the original Spirit Engine was made during a time whilst Flash was taking off, other middleware such as Multimedia Fusion (now Clickteam Fusion), Game Maker and RPG Maker were still getting started with their communities!Now, if you've completed the demo, why not try reloading into Giant's Top and getting to the World Complete screen, then Shift-Clicking the End Demo button? All of World 2 is actually buried in the demo! Have fun outrunning the blob!~aqx
- The Spirit Engine DX is also a part of ANZ IndieFest 2025! - 6 September 2025
G'day! Overlapping festivals!?Special thanks to Bec over at The Indie Brew for letting us in with this fitting opportunity, as an Aussie myself! But what is this game now? 50% British (Mark), 50% Aussie (me)?Little fun story: here are scans of the very magazine I discovered the original Spirit Engine from as a kid! This was when dialup was still common throughout Australia, and it would still be another few years till my family got ADSL2+. The Sonic Adventure DX demo on the same disc was also another highlight, and my poor old PC back then could not run the FarCry demo 😭Alas, I've lost the original disc & case! (peep the bottom left corner!)Go check out the other Aussie & Kiwi games here! I think I spot a couple of international titles too 🧐And while you're at it, if you haven't yet, go give the demo a try! And why not peep the compendium, too?~aqx
- Demo is now LIVE! + Best Indie Games Fall Showcase! - 2 September 2025
Alright, guvnors? We're pleased to announce that we're a part of Best Indie Games' BIG Fall Showcase, a moment we feel privileged to be a part of!Take a look at the showcase premiere!And check out the Steam event, too! Extreme kudos to Clemmy for the amazing opportunity!The demo is now LIVE! Fly, my pretty, fly!
- The Spirit Engine DX is a part of Debut Festival! + Demo Release Date - 8 August 2025
Greetings, folks! We're partaking in another festival: Debut Festival, where games appearing from studios for the first time ever on Steam debut! Special thanks to the folks over at GameDev.ist for allowing us to participate.And, we can announce when our demo goes live.3rd of September, 2025.~aqx
- Resolution increases and graphical updates - 28 May 2025
The original version of The Spirit Engine was created in an era of bulky 4:3 cathode ray tube monitors, where 640x480 was the most common screen resolution. The game ran in a 490x400 window and that seemed OK at the time. Twenty years later, desktop displays look very different! TSEDX supports a range of resolutions up to 3840x1080 (32:9) and 3840x2160 (4K)!. This is over ten times the visible area to display. Since the original game is scrolling, the task didn’t seem too daunting - until we got to work. First, the entire UI needed to be re-designed. Most of the backgrounds needed to be drawn outwards to support larger screens, from deserts and marshes to trains and skyscrapers. Some skill effects relied upon a fixed top screen edge. Even one notable boss whose body used to be off-screen now needed to be drawn in its entirety. Some of the cutscenes rely on characters appearing from off-…
- The Spirit Engine DX is a part of Indie Assemble! - 6 May 2025
Alright, guvnors? We're pleased to share we're partaking in Indie Assemble! A gigantic festival full of indie titles with potent production values! Special thanks to Giorgio Catania of Excaliber for granting us the privilege to be a part of this opportunity. Please wishlist & follow The Spirit Engine DX! A demo is imminent in the next couple of months! In the meantime, why not have some gameplay footage? https://store.steampowered.com/app/3424270/The_Spirit_Engine_DX/ Don't forget to peep our press kit!
- The History of The Spirit Engine - 25 April 2025
“Can a real-time, side-scrolling action RPG be fun?” This was the question I asked back in 2001. I was at university and playing Seiken Densetsu 3, a classic top-down 2D action RPG on the SNES. I wanted to make something similar, but with a twist. It would be side-on like the platformers that remain popular with indie developers and it would be real-time, without the need to pause and navigate menus during combat. And I knew how to make it. In the early 1990s the revolutionary game development software ‘Klik & Play’ was released for Windows 3.11. It let amateur developers create games without needing to learn a traditional programming language and while new versions of the software have followed, the concept has remained the same. A thriving amateur development community soon grew up around ‘Klik’ products. I sold my SNES to get the money to buy a copy of ‘Klik & Play’ and get involved.…
- Roadmap - 15 February 2025
As of this post, the game's campaign has been fully ported over, and the rest of our time will be used for extensive polish. Our priorities include: Overhauling the game menus and UI Revamping all the art to support modern widescreen resolutions Redesigning the two 1v1 fights from the original game into more exciting and dynamic 3v3 fights. Adding context-sensitive defeat tips to the game-over screen Adding Steam achievements Supporting many more save slots Preparing a playable demo And of course many more quality-of-life improvements! TSEDX has an active Discord as well. Come find us in the Discord, and if you played the original game you may even find some old friends there! Best wishes, ~aqx https://store.steampowered.com/app/3424270/
