If it’s not already on your radar, Curse of Resthaven is a most intriguing upcoming game that blends point-and-click adventuring with an innovative time-looping structure. This is not your standard isometric action-roguelite, by any stretch of the imagination.
I recently had a chance to take a closer look at an extended demo version of the game, and so when I was offered a chance to put some questions to the dev team behind this fascinating project, I clicked on the dialogue option for: “Yes, please!”
I was able to send over several questions to the team over in Toronto, Canada, with Scott Christian from Hilltop Studios providing the answers to my questions. And so, without further ado, I’ll let our Q&A do the rest of the talking.
RL: Curse of Resthaven is a fascinating mixture of ingredients. Tell me about the game you’re making!
SC: After wrapping Lil’ Guardsman, which is basically a Saturday morning cartoon come to life, I knew I wanted to make something with a completely different vibe. I was on a big dark fantasy, gothic horror, and “weird fiction” reading kick, so that was what was rattling around in my head when I started spitballing ideas for the studio’s second game. The idea of a colony on the edge of civilization came first, then a fledgling governor, then his missing niece – sort of a riff on Twin Peaks’ Laura Palmer main plot. As the mechanics started to come together, we decided it should be an island, which brought the show Lost into the mix.
So, yeah: new governor, missing niece, mysterious island. The narrative is the heart of the games we make, but we also like finding mechanics that lift the story and are fun as hell to play. Early on, we were looking at the loops in games like Dredge, Cult of the Lamb and Darkest Dungeon. We didn’t think we wanted to go the combat route, so we started looking for something else that could create that same sense of preparation, risk and reward. That’s where trading came in.
You interrogate the townspeople, trade with the visiting merchant captains, improve the colony, gather resources, and then take what you’ve accumulated out into the wilds for card-based expeditions. And, of course, there’s a six-day time loop wrapped around the whole thing.
It’s a weird collection of ingredients, but we’ve spent the last two years making sure they actually belong in the same dish. Hopefully the result feels familiar enough to draw you in, but unique enough to surprise you.
What can you tell me about your gaming influences and reference points, which must come from some very different places?
The heart of Curse of Resthaven is its narrative mystery, so I can’t deny the influence of classic adventure games. But I’m increasingly interested in games that feel like adventure games at their core while finding a completely different way to interact with them.
Games like Blue Prince, Seance of Blake Manor, Esoteric Ebb, Disco Elysium, The Case of the Golden Idol, and Return of the Obra Dinn all do this beautifully. They’re recognizably adventure games, but they’ve evolved into these strange little offshoots because of how you engage with them mechanically.
We’ve called Curse of Resthaven a “Dredge-like,” but without the fishing. That comparison feels pretty close to me, particularly in the way the game is structured around preparing for an expedition, heading out into the unknown, and coming back with something that lets you push further.
Our trading system went through a dramatic evolution relatively early on. The original prototyped version was much more like a 4X trading system, with the spreadsheet underneath the game much closer to the surface. Our art team suggested we look at shopkeeper games like Potionomics and Recettear, which was a breakthrough. I’m not sure the diehard fans of those games are going to come looking for us, but if they do, I think they’ll feel right at home with the trading. The key was making it less about min/maxing and more about the relationships with the people you’re trading with, which felt much more appropriate for our game.
And while Curse of Resthaven is definitely not a deck-builder, cards are a big part of how we present information and interactions. Inscryption is a masterclass in how expressive a card-based interface can be, so there’s definitely a bit of that DNA in there too.
Then there’s the time loop. Majora’s Mask is still the gold standard for me. Time-loop games can be incredible, but they can also become pretty brutal and tedious if you’re not careful.
The Forgotten City was a valuable reference point. One of the things we loved from that title was that the first NPC you meet is basically your deputy, allowing you to delegate things you’ve already figured out. We borrowed/stole/pillaged this wholesale with Garet, your manservant, the first NPC you encounter on the dock every loop.
And then there’s Disco Elysium and Planescape: Torment, which are probably my two all-time favourites for narrative. North stars for brilliant writing, worldbuilding, and creating an indelible strong sense of place.
I’m sure I’m forgetting some huge influences. We’re weeks out from launch, so there’s no time to consult the team. The games I’ve mentioned would make a great playlist. So, yeah. That’s my answer.
Gameplay aside for a moment, I detected some interesting narrative themes being explored, including ideas around class and empire. What kind of stories are you trying to explore in a place like Resthaven and why?
My co-writer Matt Bernard and I agreed on the basic skeleton of the story, and then we dug in and divided and conquered. We spent a lot of time defining the world, but we deliberately didn’t want to write a 1,000-page lore bible. We wanted to understand the big things: we invented a religion, the Bestowed Order, that feels analogous to historical religions in our own world; we figured out how science and magic fit into society on the mainland, and how that changes on the colony; and we established the political structures and court politics that shape Resthaven, including the ways some of its inhabitants push back against them.
But the characters were always more important to us than the lore. We now know these people extremely well. They all have strong, sometimes contradictory opinions about the world they’re living in, and those opinions are where a lot of the themes naturally emerged. I’d much rather give the player a character who has a complicated relationship with the Empire than give them three pages of codex explaining the history of the Empire.
A big part of what we’re trying to do is create the feeling of a much larger, lived-in world without spelling everything out. We want to give the player enough to chew on so that their imagination can fill in some of the gaps. The mystery should invite you to wonder and question things, rather than constantly stopping to explain itself. But I promise there are answers. We’re not trying to be mysterious just for the sake of being mysterious (hope we didn’t lose people referencing Lost above).
Because Resthaven is a struggling colony on the brink of collapse, themes around class, empire, resistance, legacy, and duty all came out of the story pretty organically. You’re the representative of an empire that has a lot in common with the British Empire at the height of its power, and you’re arriving in a place where that power is being felt very differently by the people who actually live there. There are families who have been shaped by the colony’s history, people trying to uphold traditions, people trying to escape them, and people simply trying to survive. And then you throw an eldritch horror and an impending apocalypse into the middle of all that.
So perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds became a pretty central theme. What do people owe to their family, their community, their country, or themselves? What happens when those obligations come into conflict? And how much are you willing to sacrifice to preserve something that may already be broken?
The nice thing is that you don’t have to engage with all of that if you don’t want to. If you race through the game and only care about the main mystery, you’ll get the important stuff. But if you start asking the extra questions and pulling on those little threads, there’s a lot more underneath the surface.
The time-loop concept is a good fit for a roguelite structure. How do you give the player a sense of progression and agency when so much resets?
Figuring out what should persist and what should be washed away was one of the most challenging parts of designing the game. The team went back and forth, and we tested a number of different iterations, some much more punishing and some much more forgiving. I feel really good about where we landed.
Gold and most resources reset to zero at the beginning of each loop, but upgrades to the town vendors/producer buildings persist. So next time, you can generate more resources, produce higher-value goods, and generally make the numbers go up a little more easily. That gives you a nice sense of permanent, tangible progression without completely removing the friction of the loop.
But the most important progression is knowledge. You’re trying to solve a mystery and break a curse. Every loop should give you something new: a new questline to go down, or a new topic unlocked to ask around about.
You might start a loop with a Lead (quest) that says, essentially, “Something is weird about this person.” By the time you reset, you might have uncovered three or four new pieces of information about them. Those updates persist, and eventually you can put enough of the puzzle together to complete the Lead.
That was really important to us. We didn’t want the player to ever feel like, “Oh great, I have to do all of that again.” You know things you didn’t know before. You’ve opened up new possibilities. The town is more developed. And you’re getting closer to understanding what’s actually happening on this island.
So there’s a nice tension between the things that disappear and the things that don’t. Your bag of gold gets wiped out, but you keep the knowledge. And knowledge is ultimately the most valuable resource in the game. The goal is for the player to become more and more powerful as a detective. By the end, you’re not necessarily stronger because you have a bigger sword or more hit points. You’re stronger because you understand what’s going on better.
The new demo includes a chunky slice of the early game, including a full cycle of the timeline. What will players discover?
This demo is the actual opening hours of Curse of Resthaven. The first demo from this summer was a remix, mainly because the game was still very much under construction. We had to build a compelling slice of the mystery around the parts of the town and systems that were ready and polished, while carefully avoiding all the stuff that was still held together with duct tape, Elmer’s glue and thumbtacks.
The new demo, which will be part of Steam Next Fest, comprises the first full six-day cycle, and the first day of the next one. You can meet all of the townspeople, start pulling on the central mystery, and get a taste of the interrogation, trading, town-building and expedition systems. Depending on how deeply you dig, you can make a pretty significant dent in the story, but I think most players will come away having made a few meaningful discoveries and, hopefully, wanting to know what the hell is going on.
One of the fun things about the demo is that it introduces all three of the game’s timelines. Early on, you make a choice that determines which of the potential villains and storylines you’ll pursue. You can reach a resolution in an individual timeline (the credits roll), but there are still unanswered questions. You need to experience all three to uncover the true ending. NieR Automata was a big inspiration for us in that respect.
The three timelines have some very different events that occur over the course of the week, so I really like that the demo itself gives people something to talk about and compare.
Mostly, though, we wanted this version to feel like a proper invitation into the game. It’s a substantial, representative chunk of Curse of Resthaven, but it still leaves a lot of the island and its mysteries waiting for you. And then, on October 29, the rest of the curse is unleashed.
The demo progress will carry on into the game, which I thought was a nice touch. What can you tell me about the challenges of launching such a big demo that connects to the main game, so close to launch?
I think we cheated a little by just making the demo a gated first chunk of the actual game. There’s no smoke and mirrors. What you play in the demo is the beginning of the real game, and, like you mention, your progress carries directly into the full release.
It’s a bit scary for us. The beginning of a game also comes with onboarding and tutorializing, which can feel a bit like making the player do work. But in a game with as many mechanics as ours, it’s required. However, in an era where full playthroughs somehow get posted at launch, I don’t think there’s much point in trying to fool people with clever marketing, or an extremely curated slice anyway. We’re confident that the game will just speak for itself.
There are still some things we’ll polish after the demo launches. We’ll be working right up until launch, and then continuing to patch and polish afterwards. Thankfully, the game is beautiful and, mercifully, very stable at this point.
The other nice thing about doing it this way is that, with a mystery game, it makes no sense to start people in the middle. The opening is deliberately mysterious and a little enigmatic. You’re meeting these people, arriving in this strange place, and slowly realizing that something is very, very wrong.
Those first discoveries are the hook. We didn’t want to manufacture one for the demo. We just wanted to let people play the beginning of the game and see where it takes them. I’m really excited to let people loose on it.
Finally, Curse of Resthaven is launching soon – just in time for Halloween. What do players need to know, and where can they play?
The nefarious powers of the island of Resthaven demand Steam wishlists as sacrifice!
Seriously, though, Curse of Resthaven launches October 29 on Steam for PC and Mac, as well as PlayStation and Xbox. We’ll be announcing the release timing for the Switch version very soon.
Like our first game, we wanted Curse of Resthaven to be a great experience on every platform. We developed it primarily on PC and Mac, but honestly, it’s probably most fun with a controller in your hands. The console versions are a blast, not to mention Steam Deck.
So if you like mysteries, gothic weirdness, suspicious townspeople, and spending Halloween investigating an eldritch curse, we’d love to welcome you to Resthaven.
