This is my first devlog post for Dextra, which is my first published game. First off, I want to thank all of you who have made purchases of the game, and all of you who come in the future and potentially see this post. Your interest and support mean a lot to me (just as the same does for other creators out there). I just published the game yesterday, I don't have any updates to announce at this time (although as always I have bunches of projects being worked on, some related to this, some not), but today I'll tell a little story about some of the philosophy I used when deciding to make this game. I want to talk briefly about Sword of Kadash.

What is Sword of Kadash? I'm not surprised if you don't know that game. Very few people these days do. This was a computer game released way back in 1985 by the now-defunct publisher Dynamix. I played the Commodore 64 version. It is a top-down action RPG which has you wandering a large dungeon, gathering weapons and armor and scrolls and items and fighting off enemies along the way. There are hidden passages, invisible walls, traps and secrets to find. It's a long game and very difficult to complete. There's no story except for brief tidbits at the very beginning and very end of the game. I love it to this day, although it has been many years since I last wandered its halls.

What does Sword of Kadash have to do with Dextra? Nothing. The two games have virtually no overlap in terms of game mechanics, visual stylings, lore or intended audience. However, Sword of Kadash served as the inspiration for Dextra by reminding me, decades later, that a game which likely had modest sales and was almost forgotten about by the public at large can still have significance, even if only for a select few individuals. Most of us know at least one game (or book or movie) like Sword of Kadash, which has long since fallen out of popularity or even common knowledge, yet still sparks in us that sense of wonder or thrill we felt when we experienced it. That was the goal I held close in my thoughts as I worked on Dextra. The tabletop RPG market is a highly competitive realm now, especially in this era of ready self-publishing, and a rules-light game with a focus on telling stories instead of character theorizing and combat is at least something of a niche entry. Dextra is unlikely to ever be a chart-topping title. But it could serve as an inspiration to someone else, fill someone with that sense of wonder, demonstrate to them that their success doesn't have to be measured purely in terms of the number of sales achieved, but in the impact you can have on even a select few individuals.

If, twenty years from now, even a handful of people think back upon Dextra and say, "I remember some really cool times with that, I wish I could make people feel that way," I will have succeeded. And then I hope they go on to do it themselves.