Welcome to Azthengar

There are moments in development that test not only your code, but your patience.

Over the past few days, progress on the game came to a grinding halt. Constant crashes plagued the build, each one more frustrating than the last. What started as a minor hiccup quickly turned into a full-blown problem: a bottleneck of commands that would freeze the game entirely before crashing it outright. It was relentless, and it dragged development down for days.

To fight back, I began reworking portions of the code, trying to isolate the issue. I even went as far as building a small debugger directly into the game itself, just to pinpoint where things were going wrong. That helped… but it also introduced a new wave of problems. At that point, I made the call that every developer eventually has to make. I stepped back, scrapped the broken path, and returned to a previous build.

Starting over is never easy. It’s not glamorous. It’s not fun. But sometimes it’s the only way forward.

From there, I rebuilt carefully, deliberately, and with everything I had learned from the failure. The result speaks for itself. I’ve now played through all 100 floors of the game without a single crash. No slowdowns. No freezing. Just a smooth, consistent experience from beginning to end. That alone feels like a major milestone.

More than anything, the whole ordeal became a learning experience. It reminded me why I love doing this in the first place. There’s something special about stepping into a world you’ve created, taking in its atmosphere, its characters, its monsters. It becomes more than just code. It becomes something alive.

There are still challenges ahead. There always are. More bugs will come, more systems will need refining, and more late nights will follow. But that’s part of the path. Every developer chasing something meaningful goes through it.

I don’t expect this game to be a massive financial success. That’s not really the goal. If even one person cares enough to make a fan t-shirt, or invite me onto a podcast to talk about it, that would mean everything. I just want to create something real. Something that resonates.

With stability now under control, I shifted focus to gameplay balance. The difficulty curve has been reworked so that the early floors welcome new players, giving them space to learn and explore. From there, the challenge builds steadily, never unfair, but always pushing the player forward. Item placement has also been adjusted to prevent early overflow, ensuring that every pickup matters.

It feels right now. It feels earned.

Maybe that’s why weekends mean so much to me. Time to sit down, focus, and actually fix what needs fixing. Sometimes I think about what it would’ve been like doing this back in 1985. Heading out to McDonald’s, playing Atari, drinking Tab or Dr Pepper from glass bottles, and just enjoying the simplicity of it all.

I think, in some way, that’s why I made this game.

To create a place that feels like mine.