Artwork by YuiKannon
Greetings everyball, happy Pride Month and welcome to the newest of blog posts! 🏳🌈
Another third of the years has gone by, so another post is overdue. And we got quite a few topics to talk about! Aside from the mandatory update on the Alabaster Dawn development, there are good news regarding CrossCode merch, a concert, a shoutout to another indie project and finally unveiling another team member who long helped us from the shadows (omg, is that a reference to RPG Maker classic “The Way”?!)!
The Smug Lea Plush and Maybe More?
In our last post in January we announced a Makeship crowdfunding campaign for a Smug Lea Plush, which was an overwhelming success! Exactly 4.000 units were ordered, which means that it reached a funding of 2.000% or 20 times of its mandatory goal!
Over the past 2 weeks we noticed happy fans posting about the arrival of their personal Smug Leas so we hope that yours have reached you by now or will soon as well!
Now, with the popularity of this campaign, the question for further CrossCode merch arises! For this purpose we created a poll to collect some opinions from you, our fans:
We are interested which characters you’d want to have for additional plushies and also what kind of additional types merch you would want to have.
Thank you for taking the time to share your opinion with us!
GAME ECHO Concert, feat. CrossCode
Our composer Deniz Akbulut (going by “Nagi Shirakumo” in Japan) and his classmate Hibiki Utagawa co-founded Game Echo, an officially recognized club in Kunitachi College of Music. Together they arrange and perform various video game music in concerts, including wind band and orchestra. You might remember their arrangement of Lea! from last year, fully written by Deniz himself!
On this year’s March 25th they performed the The Ultimate Experience for wind band, arranged by Utagawa-san.
Also part of the concert was a medley of Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil, arranged by Deniz!
And on that note, congratz to Deniz for graduating!
Current Alabaster Dawn Focus and Introducing…
With Alabaster Dawn meanwhile, our current focus lies on the Prologue, which we decided to include for a future public demo version. The writing and proper introduction of the setting is a high priority with this part of the game, so we have to make extra sure to get those aspects right!
And on the topic of writing, we think it is about time we finally properly introduced another team member who has actually already been supporting our writing process since an early stage: Enter Luke “Lun Calsari” Wacholtz!
Some of you old-timey fans of the RPG Maker 2k scene (like many of our team…) might know him as the creator behind the cult classic The Way, while others might have experienced his newer work, as a writer in Shadows of Adam or his recent own project, Learn Japanese RPG: Hiragana Forbidden Speech!
In Alabaster Dawn he has already played an essential role in further fleshing out the scenario and characters and is also a great help in polishing up our dialogues to make them more snappy and incorporate diverse yet internally consistent styles of speech!
But lets give Luke the stage to introduce himself:
“Hello! I’m a wanderer, game developer, and writer with a passion for cool tech and storytelling. I’ve spent tens of thousands of hours crafting RPGs, including The Way and Learn Japanese RPG: Hiragana Forbidden Speech. I also contributed to Shadows of Adam, and now—most exciting of all—I’m thrilled to join the team behind Alabaster Dawn!”
More Alabaster Dawn Progress
Outside of the prologue there has also been progress on other fronts of development, some of which we have already shown on social media!
The biggest new feature is the Cinematics system which helps us deliver visually dynamic cutscenes outside of the usual ingame-perspective.
We implemented a whole new system to show special “cinematic scenes” that we can use for important story moments or just when we need a perspective we can’t achieve with our top-down in-game view.
Note: Many of the scenes shown are still work-in-progress!
#AlabasterDawn #gamedev #indiedev #pixelart— Radical Fish Games (@radicalfishgames.com) 2. Juni 2025 um 13:52
Of course new content also requires new enemies to fight. And, as old wisdom goes, giving someone a fish might feed them for a day but implementing a fish enemy will allow them to punch fish for a lifetime! … Anyway, look at these flying fish… They fly and shoot lightning, is that cool or what?!
You’ll face all kinds of foes in the world of #AlabasterDawn
Are you ready to take on these flying fish enemies?
#pixelart #indiedev— Teflora (@teflora.rocks) 27. Mai 2025 um 20:06
Another new interesting enemy is a turtle. Wait, we already introduced it? Well, but now it’s angry! Which means higher stats and new attack patterns! Expect to see variations like that to truly test your skills in special battles now and then.
More Alabaster Dawn content: A new turtle miniboss. I worked on that one in a gamedev stream not too long ago. This is how it turned out! Parrying the projectiles is an effective strategy here, but the boss can be beat without it as well. #AlabasterDawn
— Lachsen | Radical Fish Games (@lachsen.radicalfishgames.com) 28. Mai 2025 um 20:06
On the quality-of-life side, we realized that the swapping between weapons to match enemy weaknesses has been pretty annoying early on, when only one element is available. Our solution was a Loadout option that allows players to simply swap weapon combinations with a single button-press!
Apart from switching elements you can also switch loadouts, allowing you to swap what weapon is slotted into each element during combat.
You can even do this mid-combo to style on your enemies!
#gamedev #AlabasterDawn
— Stefan | Radical Fish Games (@regiden.radicalfishgames.com) 30. Mai 2025 um 15:42
To improve the atmosphere and immersion of our world, travelling NPCs have been added, like these restless caravans that are diligently delivering crucial cargo between predefined stations.
Look at this Motoyaki transport!
We added traveling NPCs like these to make the world of #AlabasterDawn more lively! They will even pick up and unload their cargo. #gamedev #indiedev— Radical Fish Games (@radicalfishgames.com) 31. Mai 2025 um 15:23
And, on the visual side, our weather effect system has been further improved and can dynamically change the vibe of your journey with flying leafs, rain and clouds.
Would you look at all those weather effects in #AlabasterDawn
Our system is quite flexible by now, here’s a little showcase
#pixelart #gamedev #indiedev
— Radical Fish Games (@radicalfishgames.com) 2. Juni 2025 um 00:08
Other work, not shown yet still essential, includes more sidequests and further progress with the second and third areas of the game!
Indie Shout-out: Yarn Guardians
For the end of this post we want to give a quick shout-out to the our friends and fellow German developer Pentapaw Studios and their upcoming game Yarn Guardians!
A little shoutout for #FollowFriday to our friends from
@pentapaw-studios.bsky.social – They will participate in the upcoming Steam Next Fest with a new demo of their game Yarn Guardians!It’s a Twin-Stick Shooter about cute flying cats with handrawn animations!
Check it out here:
— Radical Fish Games (@radicalfishgames.com) 30. Mai 2025 um 20:02
Take control of various adorable flying kitties and fight your way through hordes of only slightly less cute enemies using BALLS… Yarn balls! And a variety of other yarn-themed weapons.
And best of all, you can play it in coop with a friend!
All of this cuteness has been animated by VanAnimation, who also animated Lea and Juno in their respective game trailers!
Socials
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/radicalfishgames.com
Community Discord: https://discord.gg/radicalfish
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/radicalfishgames/
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/developer/radicalfishgames
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@radicalfishgames
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/radicalfishgames
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RadicalFishGame/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RadicalFishGames
Followers and Subscribers are always appreciated!
As always, thank you for reading our updates and for your continued support!
Until next time!
5 Comments
EMILIE PLUSH EMILIE PLUSH EMILIE PLUSH !!!!! Im so hyped for the chance for more crosscode merch in the futire, and with how good alabaster dawn is looking, if you guys were to make merch i would buy it in a heartbeat.
The cinematic system looks beautiful, best indie devs ever
Why does the Crosscode merch poll have STV when a lot of countries don’t? It’s not fair!
Simple! The intent of the crosscode merch poll is to determine the outcome that appeals most to the largest number of people, to make the most people happiest on average.
The intent of most voting countries’ voting systems is something other than that.
Hi! Im nintendo switch player from Brazil and would love to buy your game but he is not available in Brazil. Im not sure if that is the right place to ask for but would you guys make it available in Brazil? Thanks!
If you could please release the demo on Gog it would be nice.