This is a game I’ve always imagined but never thought would become reality. It’s even better than I imagined, actually.

I think there’s something magic here you’ve touched upon. Aesthetically, there’s an inherent charm to hand-drawn media. The minimal line work makes the mind create more with what little is given in way of detail. This is a prime example of the fact that cartooning is an art form that has so much to offer video games, especially in an age of ruthlessly digital attempts at hyper-realism.

Also, great use of a monochromatic palette. It really gives the feeling as if you’re playing a game on a piece of paper. It’s underground comix come to life. What an idea! The art style overall brings that strange, paradoxical air of being confined within an uncanny spaciousness. Perfect for a series of point-and-click puzzles.

m_garland

Get this game on Steam | Itch.io | gog.com

 story trailer | gameplay trailer | arcade trailer

New things: the Blend | the Ornament

reviews: m_garland | Steam reviews

the World of Daymare

Daymare Town is a hand-drawn puzzle adventure game. You find yourself in a heart of a strange city populated by peculiar Metamorph creatures. This town is full of nooks and crannies, puzzles, secrets and items to collect to help you along the way. Can you escape the nightmare of a day?

Story

You are not alone here. You will meet peculiar daymare inhabitants. Some of them will help you, some need your help. Almost everyone has a story. You can choose to learn those stories if you just listen or look carefully at the environmental story telling.

Puzzles

You will have to dive deep into the nooks and crannies of this town in order to solve all its mysteries and puzzles, of which are plenty. The better part of them will have you fighting the entropy of a town, bringing back signal to noise. There are also creatures here that need your help, look at them closely to learn who they are and what they need from you. You will have an inventory of items to use while solving puzzles.

Graphics

Entire game is hand-drawn. There’s nothing auto-generated nor procedural. There’s no AI used in any capacity. Each location was thoughtfully designed. Its stylized and sketchy character emphasizes the eerie atmosphere of an unshaped nightmare you found yourself in.

Music

Piano music for this game was created by contemporary composer Alex Voytenko. His style of music perfectly emphasizes the atmosphere of unspoken madness permeating this town.

Everything that was ever created in the Daymare Town series is as of today remastered.
Every puzzle, location, minigame and animation.
Is this the end? No, not really.
Now the fun part begins.
New stuff, puzzles, locations, creatures, collectibles, achievements, lore and so on.
I will spend July and August expanding the game.
Unfortunately – I won’t be able to show you any of this…
Hang on! :D

Retro, taktyka i klaustrofobia.

Siedzisz przy stole, a zamiast chipsów i coli przed tobą rozkłada się labirynt. Pokręcony, klaustrofobiczny, retro-abstrakcyjny labirynt jak escape roomie, tyle że wyjść może tylko jedna osoba. Czujesz? Na pierwszy rzut oka można pomyśleć: „o, domino”, ale nie daj się zwieść – pod tą pozorną prostotą czai się solidny, taktyczny tytuł z klimatycznym pazurem.

Witaj w maszynie.

Submachine to kompaktowa, kieszonkowokarciana przygoda autorstwa Mateusza Skutnika, w której 2–5 graczy wspólnie buduje labirynt pokoi, ale każdy kombinuje, żeby to właśnie on pozbył się kart jako pierwszy. Gra bazuje na legendarnej serii komputerowych przygodówek, które od 2005 do 2015 roku karmiły nasze mózgi
logicznymi zagadkami i fabularną enigmatycznością. Po kapitalnym remasterze z 2023 na Steamie, Submachine wróciło na salony, a teraz robi to samo na stołach. I robi to z klasą.

Mechanika jak szwajcarski zegarek postapo

Mamy dwa rodzaje kart: 64 to pokoje, reszta (36) to funkcje specjalne. Ilustracje są minimalistyczne, ale bardzo klimatyczne – w sam raz dla fanów surowej estetyki Submachine. Każda karta ma swoje ikonki i oznaczenia, które szybko można zapamiętać i łatwo rozpoznać. Tury są szybkie i pełne decyzji. Każdy z graczy
zaczyna z 9 kartami. Rozgrywka zaczyna się, gdy ktoś zagra pierwszą kartę pokoju, rozpoczynając budowę wspólnego labiryntu. Od tej pory gracze dokładają kolejne karty pokoi – ale tylko tam, gdzie na obu kartach zgadzają się otwarte drzwi, wysunięte drabiny i puste ściany. Wszystko musi pasować.

Do tego dochodzą karty funkcyjne i tu zaczyna się zabawa. Mamy dwie główne grupy: nakładkowe, które modyfikują przestrzeń na planszy, i jednorazowe, które zagrywa się z ręki i po użyciu lądują na stosie kart odrzuconych (albo przed graczem, jeśli mają efekt opóźniony). To dzięki nim labirynt żyje, przekształca się
i zaskakuje.

Karty funkcyjne to sól tej gry – z nich rodzą się nieoczywiste decyzje, blokady i ratujące otwarcia.

Regrywalność? O tak!

Tutaj naprawdę czuć potencjał na dziesiątki partii. Układ labiryntu nigdy nie będzie taki sam, kombinacje funkcjonalnych kart potrafią zmieniać przebieg gry, a do tego dochodzi tryb solo – idealny, żeby przetestować własne zdolności planowania w pojedynkę.

Submachine to gra, która nie zawodzi. Początkowo wygląda jak domino, ale pod maską ma całą maszynownię możliwości. Jest w niej klimat, jest wyzwanie, jest regrywalność. I co najważniejsze – ma duszę. Taką lekko pękniętą, pokrytą kurzem i z notatką „Don’t trust anyone” wciśniętą między karty.

Dla mnie – absolutny must have. Tytuł, który trafia na półkę gier szybkich i dobrych, bo daje dokładnie to, czego szukam w grach planszowych: taktykę i uczucie, że właśnie zrobiłem coś sprytnego.
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Czasami człowiek orientuje się, że czegoś mocno mu brakowało dopiero wtedy, kiedy ponownie się z tym czymś zetknie. Tak poczułem się w trakcie lektury “Ostatniego Blakiego” Mateusza Skutnika. Z pierwszym albumem o Panu Blakim (komiksy o nim współtworzył wtedy Karol Konwerski) polscy czytelnicy mogli się zapoznać już dwadzieścia lat temu. Krótkie historie o lubującym się w rozważaniach, ubranym na czarno jegomościu ze spiczastymi uszami ujmowały urokliwym zderzeniem filozofii ze życiem codziennym. Połączenie czarnego humoru i narzekań na codzienność z poetycką aurą zawsze wychodziły Skutnikowi znakomicie. “Blaki Czwórka” ukazał się w 2014 roku, więc większość z nas myślała, że autor już na zawsze porzucił swoje alter ego. Jednak oto mamy dowód, że postanowił wrócić do niego po raz ostatni (osobiście mam nadzieję, że to jednak nieprawda). Blaki jest odpowiednio starszy i jeszcze częściej myśli o przemijaniu oraz walce z poczuciem bezsensowności działań. Egzystencjalnego smutku jest tu więcej, ale pojawiają się także chwile zachwytu z najprostszych spraw, jak chociażby spędzania czasu z rodziną. Skutnik dalej potrafi świetnie uderzyć w sedno problemów “każdego z nas” używając do tego swojego charakterystycznego rzewnego stylu narracji. Bardzo lubię emocjonalny stan, w jaki wprawiają mnie te komiksy — coś pomiędzy “trochę z niego maruda” a “kurde, jednak ma chłop rację”. Polecam wrażliwcom, szczególnie tym miewającym problemy z wyrażaniem emocji wprost. Pan Blaki Was wszystkich rozumie. Mieszkańcy Gdańska Wrzeszcza mogą ten komiks docenić jeszcze bardziej, bo pewnie rozpoznają znajome uliczki i budynki.

Autor: Kajetan Kusina

Well, as you all know, we’re past the peak, which was the release of Submachine Legacy in 2023.

But 2024 was eventful and fruitful as well. As I explained last year, it’s best to hit the road running after a big release, otherwise knowledge calcifies. I’ve been busy. Let’s take a look.

Plan A
Daymare Town remaster. Expanding all remaining backgrounds and adding shop and stash mechanics. That’s the minimum for 2024. We’ll see how far I’ll be able to go with puzzle design this year.

This plan was slightly altered due to outside factors, let me explain. I was invited to Steam Nextfest happening in June 2024. For this event I had to create a fully functional demo of the game, which meant creating a vertical slice of all game mechanics and practically finishing the entire chapter 1. There were no shops or stashes in chapter 1, so that part of the plan was left behind, but a working demo was created with entire main menu UI and its functions, gameplay wise all items, puzzles, animations, music and sound effects, and it’s available for you to play since that Steam Nextfest. I even update that demo from time to time until now.

It’s entirely possible that I’ll switch to remastering small platform Daymare games to add them into this project as well, mainly Daymare Cat, Stray, Invaders and kite.

It’s entirely true that I hadn’t had a chance to get around to it. After finishing the demo I was grinding the backgrounds for the rest of the year. Alongside creating other stuff, namely…

Blaki 5. Yes, I’m coming back to comic books. This year for real. Starting with this book, because this series has a nice round anniversary coming up this year, as it’ll be a full round decade since the previous entry in the series, which, yes, I can’t believe it either, was published back in 2014. Which is insane. Luckily I have lots of story bits for this book already written. Now it’s a matter of putting them all in the right order and painting it all.

This book was released with the title The Last Blaki. I kept the actual title secret for a couple years, but I knew this was going to be the last book in this series. Looking back at this comic book I can proudly say that in my opinion, on a very personal level this is the best and the most important book I’ve ever created and it provided a fitting ending to the series.

Plan B
Submachine: the Engine. This one will take few years to finish, so don’t get your hopes up just yet. This is also why I’m making the last remaster now, I’ll just combine the repetitive work of remastering with creative work of designing a completely new game. In 2024 I want to at least write a part of the story of this game, the how, the why, the where, maybe create sketches of some locations, maybe do some puzzle design. I already have few ideas on my mind, however this is not something I can hurry up. This process will take a long time to finish. Luckily we’re not in a hurry.

Well, yes. But can we talk about it? Hell no. I’m an ultimate purist when it comes to spoilers. I literally can’t say ANYTHING beyond the fact that yes, indeed, this project started moving in the right direction this year. I will be working on it full time after Daymare Town release, this will be my next big game on Steam. That’s all I can say. Don’t ask.

Submachine Card Game. I’m in the middle of preparing Kickstarter campaign. All other plans for this project are depending on the outcome of this campaign, so there’s nothing much more to say at this point. The minimum plan would be to have a successfully funded campaign, print as many decks as to satisfy all backers and that’s it.

Oh boy, oh boy, OH BOY!

Now we’re getting to the actual meat and potatoes of 2024. Why is this so far down this list?? This should be in Plan A section, not down here! This project overtook a large portion of the year, as my naivety about it being “done and finished” was unprecedented. Yes, the game design was finished. Yes, the Kickstarter page was almost designed and done, but I forgot to mention a little thing called – packaging design and production prep. But Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The campaign launched on June 21st, and it was funded in 2.5 hours. It ended after a month with over 300% funding and a couple of stretch goals achieved. You guys came through big time and I’m still in awe of how good this campaign went. Thank You all from the bottom of my heart again and congratulations, the game is almost ready and we’re literally waiting for the factory to send us the finished product to start the last step of the fulfillment. Since the campaign went so well, the packaging of the game changed. It’s now housed in an embossed metal can, which to be honest was my dream for the longest time, to have this game in a metal can, it just feels so right and fitting the theme. The game itself also had some work done on it as well. I redesigned all levers, gratings, keys and lockpicks. These initial designs taken from later games didn’t sit right with me. As the game is graphically focused around Submachine 1, new levers are more fitting and created from elements taken from this chapter. Everything looks better now. We also hired professional translators to have the rulebook in six languages. I designed the metal can, the outer cardboard box to house the metal can and, of course the rulebook.

Besides that, the big undertaking was, as I call it – my side of the fulfillment, which was sending out prototype and proofing cards, drawing black and white ink submachine locations on paper and painting another set of locations in watercolors as rewards for this campaign. Everything was done before the set fulfillment date of January 2025 and sent out as it was created.

So as you can see there was plenty of work yet to be done on this project. But now it’s finally done, it has been waiting since I created the game back in 2019 and now we’re just waiting for the delivery of the entire lot from the factory. This was the main project of 2024. Made possible by all of you. Congratulations.

Plan C
Streaming on Youtube. Two things that can and will be streamed: DMT remaster process – at least the first phase of resizing and redrawing all backgrounds to 1920×1080 format. (Original games are in square ratio). The second one is painting the Blaki comic book album.

Yes, that happened. I was streaming large portions of Daymare Town remaster screen ratio change. I’m almost finishing it right now, in January. One or two streams left until the entirety of original backgrounds are resized and added to the game. As for streaming the creation of Blaki comic book – I decided against it. This decision was made due to previously mentioned high aversion to spoilers and its personal and very introspective character. I had to do it alone.

Daymare Morphs eBook. This is a collection of 46 short stories on over 250 pages written by Nikodem Skrodzki and put to paper by me. Just to clarify here, Daymare Morphs were a Patreon milestone back in 2016. Now I’m just putting them all together into one eBook for easy access to my free patrons, since that’s a thing on Patreon now and I want to give those people an incentive to maybe become paid patrons of mine. This eBook will be free of any charge.

Yes, this book is available for free on itch.io. Now you can conveniently download it to your phone, tablet or computer and read all these stories at once.

Revolutions eBooks. At some point I want to have my entire Revolutions series in eBook format in English available online. I feel you guys are missing a large chunk of the expanded Skutnikverse without these books. They will be sold in my shop and also offered as free perks for my patrons.

Yes, in 2024 I released the first five tomes of the series in English, you can get them on itch.io. Are they free though? No. Well, if you’re supporting me on Patreon then yes, they become free the higher your support tier is.
This is all I’ve previously planned for 2024. I think almost everything on that list was achieved. Maybe I haven’t gotten as far into Daymare Town remaster as I predicted, but hey, the card game makes up for it in full.

But wait, there’s more!

Daymare Town small flash games graphical update.
In 2023 I created a 10-year anniversary edition of Daymare Cat. It’s still a flash game, but with updated background taken from the big remaster of the series. So this year I randomly decided one day to do the same for three remaining minigames, these being Invaders, Stray and Kite. They look so much better now. I also made them 60 fps, which took a little more work than just throwing in a background image. All animations had to be twice as long for them to remain the same length and speed in-game. A bit of tinkering for sure, but nothing compared to the next point on this list:

Rebranding and republishing ALL of my old flash games. ALL OF THEM.
Yes, you read that right. Yes, we’re still in 2025, we did not travel in time ten years into the past.
I just love when something random happens and then things just spiral out of control. Listen to this story.
One day in one of the Daymare remaster streams on youtube a man by the name of Calpomatt shows up. He claims he’s the author of the music ambient used in all of 10 Gnomes games. And it turns out – he is. He shows the original file on a free sounds website and sure enough, that’s him. He’s happy with being recognized, we shake hands, say hello and the stream ends. End of story, right? No.
So I decided to add his name to the credits of ALL 10 Gnomes games. All flash games, all GameMaker games, the entire series from 2008 to 2021. While tinkering with old flash code I decided to change some main menu buttons. I don’t need a “more games” button, by now I need a “support the author” button that leads directly back to my website. So I do that. Then it turns out all those old flash games can be of better sound quality (higher bit rate in export settings) – so I do that. They can also be exported in the latest flash player (that being flash player 11, which is also already ancient). So I also do that.

Do you see the snowball forming yet? Now these games have a new coat of paint, better sound, newer flash player and a nice menu button that supports me.

The snowball starts to roll.

Why not do the same to all Submachine games in flash? And also Submachine Universe. So I do that. Well, I can’t stop now. I’m working on Daymare Town and I’ve just retouched all old mini games. Let’s update them again. And the entire Daymare Town flash main games as well, why not? After that – all old flash Where is? Games. After that – the Covert Front series. And after that…
Well, long story short, I ended up updating ALL OF THEM. Every single last flash game I ever created was updated with better sound quality, new support button and latest flash player. From the behemoth Submachine 10: the Exit all the way back to the smallest the Squirrel Family games.

You’d think – surely, that’s the end of it.
Well, no.

Republishing means updating all of the games on itch.io, as well as on the OG flash portals – Newgrounds and Kongregate. Yes, I know, you haven’t heard these two words since last decade, but here we are. Oh, some of these games on these portals don’t have proper avatars. Let’s update all of them too.

While doing all that I noticed that I forgot to publish the Daymare Cat anniversary edition on them. What a blunder! So I posted it on Newgrounds to much acclaim and tried doing the same on Kongregate, but it’s status is still pending, since they want you to implement their microtransactions system in all of the games posted on their website, which clearly this 10-year old flash game doesn’t have. So, good riddance, Kongregate, I’ll just enjoy my newly rediscovered fame on Newgrounds. :D

Remember, all of this happened because Calpomatt showed up in stream chat one day and said: Hey, about that 10 Gnomes ambient…

Ain’t that a story.

Speaking of unexpected:

GOG releases of Submachine Legacy and Slice of Sea.
Yup, this is another snowball. Just from another direction. Good Old Games approached me two years ago. They wanted to host my games already released on Steam, I sure as hell wanted it as well. However, our talks reached a stalemate as back then we couldn’t go ahead due to me not being a registered company. Well, this year my status changed due to the Submachine Card Game, I had to become a registered company to handle all that money you threw at me during the Kickstarter campaign (thanks!) so it also gave a go ahead in these GOG negotiations. After a brief implementation of their native SDK – boom, my games were released on GOG on December 20th, just in time for the corresponding Steam Sale. You can even wishlist Daymare Town remaster on GOG if you prefer their services.

All is set up for the future.

Speaking of…

Ok, that’s enough of looking back. Let’s try to predict what will happen in 2025.

Plan A.

Fulfillment of the Submachine Card Game Kickstarter campaign.
This means sending out the game to all backers on Kickstarter. This will be the most crucial moment for me, as with any game release – you playing the game is the most interesting and yet unknown factor in the possible further development of this game. If it flops and you don’t like the gameplay – well, we’ll have a piece of Submachine merch on our shelves. If the game is good – we’re looking at at least one expansion and possible reprints with graphical redesigns. Hard to tell right now. Let’s reconvene next year and compare notes. As it stands now – we’re waiting for the factory to send us the finished product.

Plan B

Daymare Town remaster release.
Well, duh. I’m finishing the last batch of original backgrounds as we speak and moving onto animations, puzzles and imagining expansion with new locations, new puzzles, new daymare folk, etc. Again, can’t say more, because spoilers. The additional stuff territory is not to be discussed before game release. I also won’t be sharing any release date yet, as I honestly have no idea. The game takes its shape, but how much expanded will it end up – I don’t know yet.

Plan C

Revolutions 12: Panaceum.
Well, to be honest, I’m not so sure about this one. I want to draw this comic book, I really do, I just don’t know when exactly it will happen. It will be my return to the Revolutions comic book series. As the last entry was published back in 2018, it’s high time to revive this series. But it completely depends on how long finishing the Daymare Town remaster will take. Which, as I just said – is completely unpredictable at this point. Let’s just wait and see.

I think that’s it.

I’m pretty sure something else will pop up, but we’ll talk about it next year.

Until then, see you on my live streams!

Take care.
Mat.