iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

That about covers it for this update. We go into a lot more detail (but no spam) in our newsletter. Sign up if you want to know more about our game, and other goodies like market research: kolena.gg/newsletter

kolena.gg

Newsletter Signup | Kolena Game Studio

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

And our lovely composer and sound designer, Lars, has been mixing the music tracks for our upcoming demo. Listen to this banger on SoundCloud kolenastudio.createsend1.com/t/y-i-adjddl...

kolenastudio.createsend1.com

Project Sala weekly sketch 6 -mix 01

Listen to Project Sala weekly sketch 6 -mix 01 by Kolena #np on #SoundCloud

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Also, the art bible is largely done, thanks to the hard work and dedication of our amazing artist, Simon. He put so much research and love into the art bible.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

This week we're experimenting with *boost*, which we definitely *did not* steal from the amazing board game, Summoner Wars (seriously, play Summoner Wars). Boost is a number you can add to a card; the card can spend that boost to do cool things.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

We recently added structures, deployable cards that can't attack but act as powerful passives at the cost of board space (they spawn useless temporary obstructions on your board).

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

In our last big update, we overhauled Sala's structure: it now plays like a traditional RLDB but keeps the unique quick deploy and autocombat.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Hey, it's been a minute. We've been working hard on our North-African-sci-fi tactical roguelike deckbuilder, Project: Sala, and we wanted to share some updates. 🧵👇

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Reposted by Kolena Studio

Everyone is Solid @every1solid.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

SYSTEM ALERT: #TurnBasedThursday engaged! 🎉 Official host protocol activating. #GameDev / #IndieDev: Initiate upload sequence. Share your turn-based games, demos, and links in the replies. Players and fans: Execute support functions. Like, repost, and wishlist. Help some indies succeed!

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Reposted by Kolena Studio

Badger Punch Games @badgerpunch.com · 22/01/2026

We are thrilled to officially host this week’s #TurnBasedThursday! 🎉 🛠️ #GameDev / #IndieDev - drop your turn-based games below and use the hashtag! 🎮 Fans - like, RT, and discover your next obsession in the replies 👇 RPGs, tactics, strategy, all welcome!

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

Early pre-final-art build of our tactical roguelike deckbuilding autobattler (phew 😅). With North African sci-fi inspo!

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

For more details and to be one of the first to play, sign up to our newsletter: kolena.gg/newsletter (No spam and sent once a month) /🧵

kolena.gg

Newsletter Signup | Kolena Game Studio

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

So we've pivoted, but we feel that we've kept the fun core of the game: deploying enemies and building a powerful deck. 2026 has us heads down and working on content on top of our new design.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

➡️ *Moves per turn* ~ You no longer have influence (mana/energy). You instead get three moves per turn every turn. ➡️ *No commerce* ~ You don't need to buy cards anymore. To build your deck, you draft three cards at the end of each combat, selecting one to add to your deck.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

We also simplified across the board: ➡️ *Defeat all waves* ~ Your win condition now is defeating all enemies in a combat encounter. ➡️ *One lifewell* ~ Your loss condition is having your lifewell (left of the screen) killed.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

So we ate some humble pie and pivoted to a traditional combat-draft structure. You now play smaller combats, and draft cards to build your deck in between these combats. We hope this will make it easier to design enemies with unique identities.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

This made enemy design very "flat". We couldn't give unique identities to enemies or enemy groups, since any enemy that spawned had to work with any other enemy.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

This is how our game was in 2025. Your entire run was one long combat. Enemies streamed onto the combat board throughout the run.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

Hey 👋 It's been a while. Wanted to update you on our North-African sci-fi tactical roguelike deckbuilder. We're still cooking. In fact we made a big design pivot in 2025. Here's what we've been working on 🧵👇

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Colour studies by our amazingly talented artist Simon as we lock in the art direction for our tactical roguelike deckbuilder.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

Sneak peak of some Simon's concepts as we close out the art bible for our tactical roguelike deckbuilder.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

Hope you had a nice winter holiday, fellow game devs :) We're back to work and working on closing art direction as well as adding cards to our tactical roguelike deckbuilder.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

While we're refactoring and working on the art bible of our tactical roguelike deckbuilder, our sound designer Lars has been mixing some saucy tunes. I think this one works well for a boss fight. soundcloud.com/user-5340974... #sounddesign

soundcloud.com

Project Sala - oct 24 - mix 01

A mix of one of the tracking going in the demo of our tactical roguelike deckbuilder.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

Our talented sound designer, Lars, has gotten into a groove. This is one of his recent "audio vertical slices" which tests the soundscape of the game in combat. #gameaudio #sounddesign on.soundcloud.com/QHZ0FfEezEud...

soundcloud.com

Project Sala Audio Vertical Slice - 2025 Nov - Track 01

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

While this is not our final art style, it's so cool to see how far our talented artist, Simon, has come.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

One of the biggest hearts in game dev, and a master of game feel, @tricko.bsky.social is one of those devs I'm constantly learning from. He just released his first commercial game. Go check it out. #ff #followfriday

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

Simon, our talented artist, has been working on rendering and art pipeline. This piece is of a Banumarin. Inspired by the North African Amazigh, the Banumarin are a noble, agile faction who know the desert like the back of their hand.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Now we need to clean up our dirty, dirty prototype code and take on the next big design problem: board size? Too big? Too complex. Follow us to find out 😊

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

So we're going with a traditional combat-draft-combat-draft design and a traditional hand system within combat. It might seem "safe" but we feel we can innovate *within* this structure and still do some cool stuff with the tactical RLDB space.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

So we A/B tested: 🅰️ The reserves 🅱️ Traditional RLDB hand Ultimately we realized that 🅱️ a traditional RLDB hand was more intuitive, gave us better card cycling, and simplified the design overall.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

However, with a traditional combat-draft-combat-draft design, the reserve didn't make sense anymore. It was just kind of "there", bloating the game screen.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

So, in the original design when one of your units died, it went back to a reserve queue. The reserve queue moved by one each round until it eventually ended up in your hand to play again.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Unit healing and reserves were a solution to: what the heck happens to your units when they die in a single, long combat run? We needed your units to stay around during the long run, but we needed a cost for their death.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

We dove head-first into the pivot, but we realized that two parts of the game no longer made much sense with the new design: unit healing and the reserves queue.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

So we pivoted to a more traditional combat-draft-combat-draft structure. It's tried and true, and we could still lean into what was thematically unique about our game: North African sci-fi and hit & and run tactics.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

We originally had a design where your run was a single, long combat. Enemies and purchasable cards would stream in, and you would go on fighting until you beat the run boss or died. We felt it was innovative, but it made designing enemies difficult, since the board state was infinitely complex.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

After struggling with designing enemies for our tactical roguelike deckbuilder, we landed on a design space that makes our lives easier. Read on 🧵👇

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

Oh wow, this art is going so hard! Kudos.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

WIP concept by our talented artist, Simon. The Reddin faction are loosely based on 16th-19th Century Ottoman pirates, and they're one of our favourites: Swashbuckling yet honourable, they bring a lot of chaos to our tactical roguelike deckbuilder.

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

Sorry for the radio silence recently. We're back and we can't wait to sure the latest design with you :) Follow us for more updates. (7/7)

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

Very achievable within a traditional combat-draft structure, it turns out. *And* we get to design each combat with distinct enemy group identities. So it seems like it was wise to walk away from the current design, and embrace a more tried-and-true framework. (6/7)

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

We were worried that this would take away a lot of our game's personality, but we realized that our game's identity is actually separate from the "one run as a match". We want short runs for our game, & we want board chaos, lots of board attrition, & hit & run tactics. (5/7)

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

While there may have been solutions to this that work within the current design, we weren't landing on anything we liked. So we decided to eat some humble pie and go with the traditional combat-draft-combat-draft phases. (4/7)

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

You want to give an enemy group synergies and a distinct personality. However, when the combat *is* the whole run, the enemy grid can have a massive number of states that an enemy will deploy into. So you design bland enemies to compensate. (3/7)

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

TLDR of the current/initial design: you deploy your cards on an autobattle grid. The game takes place as one long run; no discrete combats or drafting phases. This felt innovative to us, but it came at a high cost: Designing enemies was very difficult. (2/7)

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

Hello :) It's been a while. We've been cooking. For a while we thought the design of our tactical roguelike deckbuilder was "the bed we made" & we'd have to lay in it. But inspiration struck recently & we decided to solve some of our core design problems. Read on👇🧵(1/7)

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Hey‪ @ggstudio.bsky.social, thanks for hosting this week's #TurnBasedThursday! Recently, we’ve been experimenting with control-style decks in our North African–inspired sci-fi roguelike deckbuilder. Here’s one of our latest additions: 👇 bsky.app/profile/kole...

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

We’ve been experimenting with control-style decks in our North African–inspired sci-fi roguelike deckbuilder. Our latest addition, Entangle, blocks enemy reinforcements for a turn, giving you the breathing room to regroup and set up your next big play! #TurnBasedThursday

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

Hey @oathgames.bsky.social , thanks for hosting this week's #TurnBasedThursday! Lately, we’ve been experimenting with control-style decks in our North African–inspired sci-fi roguelike deckbuilder. Here’s one of our favorite cards from testing: 👇

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Kolena Studio @kolena.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

We've been cooking up new cards for our North African–inspired sci-fi roguelike deckbuilder. Recently, we experimented with a control-style deck. One standout was Stun—a powerful ability that can come in clutch when needing to disable an enemy unit temporarily. #TurnBasedThursday

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