Voidmaw Games on the Development Journey Behind Cyberpunk Roguelite Katanaut

Please introduce yourself and tell us how Katanaut began.

Voidmaw: Katanaut was developed independently, and I worked on it solo over the course of a few years. It began as a small prototype built around one simple idea: fast, responsive katana combat that felt satisfying to control. From there, I kept iterating on that core and gradually expanded the systems, world, and lore as the game started to take shape. A lot of the process came down to learning through iteration, paying attention to what felt good in the player’s hands through lots of community alpha/beta events, and being willing to adjust when something was not working. It is safe to say that Katanaut went through many versions and a few meaningful pivots before becoming the game it is today. Working solo meant I had to be careful with scope, but it also gave me the freedom to keep refining the game until it felt closer to what I originally imagined.

Can you describe the core gameplay mechanics in Katanaut?

At its core, Katanaut is built around fast melee combat, with a katana-focused system that emphasizes timing, resource management, projectile deflection, attack chaining, and combining abilities with offhand ranged weapons. The goal was to capture some of the tight, immediate feel of games like Katana Zero, while blending that with the replayability and structure of roguelites like Dead Cells.

To help the game find its own identity, I focused heavily on responsiveness and player control, especially when the action becomes chaotic. I wanted the combat to leave room for player expression through reactions, movement, and decision-making. Because of that, the controls are designed to support and extend the player’s intent rather than restrict it by making the character feel too heavy.

Splattercatgaming described it really well while playing Katanaut: “It’s like an elegant dance of death.” That is very close to what I hoped the combat would feel like when all of its systems come together:

Balancing the game mostly came down to iteration, testing, and listening to the community. I was lucky to have wonderful players helping test the game, and their feedback made a big difference. Whenever something felt unclear, unfair, or inconsistent, I tried to adjust it until the combat felt readable, challenging, and satisfying.

How did you approach challenge and readability in such a fast combat system?

With a fast game like Katanaut, difficulty can become frustrating very quickly if the player does not understand why they failed. Because of that, I tried to focus on readability and consistency as much as the challenge. Enemies need to feel dangerous, but their attacks also need to communicate clearly enough that players can react, learn, and improve. The same applies to projectiles, movement windows, and combat effects. The player should feel pressured, but not confused.

A lot of the balancing process came down to asking whether a situation felt intense in a fair way. I wanted players to feel like they were improving through practice and better decision-making, rather than simply memorizing unfair moments. That balance took a lot of iteration, especially because the combat is built around speed, deflection, and close-range decision-making. This is also an ongoing balance that I’m trying to achieve due to the nature of the sharp pixel graphics and intentional blood/gore mechanics, which can add a lot of complexity when it comes to overall visibility in the game.

What were the main inspirations behind the story, atmosphere, and visual style?

The gameplay takes inspiration from titles like Katana Zero, Dead Cells, and Ninja Gaiden, while the atmosphere leans more towards the stench and sci-fi horror of Dead Space. For the story, I was drawn to cosmic horror and the idea that power often comes with a cost. That helped shape the setting of a space station coming into contact with something unknown.

That premise felt personal to me because of my background in physics, so players may notice a few small easter eggs tied to modern theories if they look closely. I tried to keep those references subtle rather than making them the focus, but they helped make the world feel more meaningful to me as I was building it.

Visually, I wanted to blend industrial environments with organic mutation. The idea was to create a world that feels grounded at first, then gradually becomes more distorted as the player progresses. There are also plenty of influences from older games I grew up with in the 90s, which are very close to my heart, along with many nods to horror/slasher films and anime.

How did you design the world and the space station setting?

The game takes place on a supermassive space station that humans built hundreds of years from now, after upheaving all of the resources from earth, in an effort to look for a new place to occupy in our cosmic system. The space station was an interesting setting because it gave the game a grounded industrial base while still leaving room for horror, mystery, and transformation. I wanted the environment to feel functional at first, like a place built with a clear purpose, before gradually becoming more unstable and corrupted.

That contrast between machinery and organic mutation became a major part of the game’s visual language. The station starts from something recognizable, but as the player moves deeper into the game, it becomes increasingly distorted. That gradual shift helped support the cosmic horror tone and the sense that the player is dealing with something they do not fully understand.

I also wanted the space itself to support the feeling of escalation. The world is not just a backdrop for combat. It reflects the larger story of something unknown pushing into a controlled environment and changing it from the inside.

What did the technical development process look like?

The game was built in Godot using GDScript. As a solo developer, I tried to keep the systems flexible rather than investing too heavily in large custom tools. Most of the technical work went into creating systems that were easy to iterate on, especially around combat, enemy behavior, effects, and game feel. Because the project changed a lot over time, flexibility was very important. I needed to be able to test ideas quickly, throw things away when they did not work, and keep improving the systems without making the project too rigid.

One of the biggest challenges was managing scope. A project like this can easily keep growing over time, especially when every new system gives you more ideas for what the game could become. As a solo developer, I had to keep reminding myself to focus on what actually served the experience.

For optimization, I focused on keeping performance stable early by being careful with effects, enemy counts, and resource usage. Since Katanaut has fast combat and a lot of reactive elements, I had to be mindful of how much was happening on screen at once.

Console work is currently ongoing. That process mainly involves improving stability, maintaining performance across different hardware, meeting platform requirements, and doing a lot of testing to make sure the game feels consistent. Fortunately, working on the console ports has also revealed several performance improvements that were able to carry over to the PC version, which has been a great bonus.

Can you tell us more about the blood, gore, and physics-driven effects system?

One of the most demanding systems in the game was the blood and gore system, which went through many reworks over the years. Each blood particle and gore piece has its own physics and trajectory behavior based on what it touches.

It was a very time-consuming system to refine, but it also became one of those details that helped give the game more impact and texture. Since Katanaut is such a fast and violent game, I wanted the effects to feel reactive rather than decorative. When combat happens, the environment should feel like it is responding to the player’s actions. The game is filled with small details here and there. My hope is that they all come together into a satisfying network of ambient interactions that players can appreciate, even if they only notice some of them subconsciously.

The difficult part was making sure those effects did not hurt readability. The game needs to feel intense and messy, but the player still has to understand enemy attacks, projectiles, movement options, and danger. That balance between impact and clarity was something I had to keep testing throughout development.

What marketing and community-building efforts did you invest in before launch?

I focused on sharing the game early and consistently, mainly through short gameplay clips and ongoing interaction with players. Building interest gradually helped create a small community before launch. I also worked with external support to improve visibility, with a special shoutout to PiratePR.

If I had any advice, it would be to start showing your game earlier than you think and to keep the message simple. Clear, entertaining, short clips that quickly communicate what your game is tend to work best. It is also helpful to pay attention to trends early on, especially while you are growing your initial network of followers. Connecting with other developers can also make a big difference, both for support and for helping each other reach new players.

That part can be one of the hardest aspects of development, especially because it often feels very different from the creative and technical work most developers are used to. It can feel like a second job, but it is also one of the most necessary parts of the process. You can make something you are truly proud of, but if people do not know it exists, you are limiting its potential, especially when you are new to game development.

How do you plan to support Katanaut after launch, and what lessons did you learn during development?

I plan to continue supporting Katanaut through updates, with a focus on fixes, balance adjustments, and improvements based on player feedback. I tried to make that process as easy as possible by integrating feedback forms and bug reporting directly into the game, so players do not have to leave the experience or search for a separate place to report issues.

The reception so far has been positive, especially from players who enjoy fast, challenging combat and responsive movement. It has been really rewarding to see people connect with the parts of the game that took the most iteration to get right.

One of the biggest lessons for me was the importance of staying focused and finishing the project. It is very easy to keep adding features indefinitely, especially when you are working on something alone and every new idea feels exciting. Getting feedback early also made a big difference, because players often notice things that are easy to miss when you have been too close to the project for a long time.

I also learned that making a game is not just about building systems. It is about constantly deciding what matters most. Every feature, effect, enemy, and mechanic needs to serve the experience in some way. That can be hard to judge at first, but it becomes clearer through iteration.

For other solo developers, my biggest advice would be to start small, prove the core idea first, and be careful with scope. If the core of the game does not feel good, adding more content will not fix it. For Katanaut, everything started with the feel of the combat, and that remained the most important thing throughout development.

Voidmaw, Developer of Katanaut