I get pitched a lot of different games, as you can imagine, and a lot of them can start to look very similar after a while. So when a game drops with a genuinely interesting art style and an engaging premise, I tend to take note.
Heaven Crawler is an upcoming action-roguelite with a distinct Fumito Ueda-inspired art style and a thoughtful narrative twist. It’s heading to Kickstarter soon, with the dev team of Carbon Machina and Critical Slash looking to build the following they need to get funded and finish their game without too many compromises.
And so, after taking a look at the project and what they’re cooking, I put together the following interview Q&A. In the team’s answers, we get some insight into their design process and what the developers are hoping to achieve, as well as some thoughts on the Kickstarter process as a whole. I hope you enjoy it!
First of all, please tell us: what is Heaven Crawler?
Heaven Crawler is an action-adventure roguelite dungeon crawler where you play as a child ascending a Babel-like tower built to reach the heavens.
Armed with mechanical limbs and customizable equipment that transform the way you fight and explore, you must crawl your way to the top to bring your mother back from the dead.
Your inspirations are nice and clear: when did you realise you wanted to bring roguelite design and Zelda-like gameplay together?
There is a community of modders that randomises key items in classic 3D Zelda titles, and it has been fascinating to see how such a simple change can completely open up the gameplay and create new ways of approaching the world.
That idea of discovery, experimentation, and adapting to what you find really resonated with us, and naturally connected with roguelite design.
Zelda has also always been a quintessential coming-of-age experience for us. Especially with Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, the games explore surprisingly deep and sometimes dark themes beneath their sense of adventure.
That mix of wonder, loneliness, loss, and personal growth felt like a natural foundation for what we are building with Heaven Crawler.
The location, the tower, feels like an exciting part of the setting. What can you tell us about it?
The tower is called “The Womb”, and it is a man-made liminal structure, a bridge between heaven and earth, built by humanity in an attempt to overcome the greatest limitation of all: death.
It represents one of humanity’s oldest dreams: the desire to live forever, and the hope of bringing back those we have lost.
However, when the child finally arrives, something is wrong. There are no humans left.
The structure has become an overgrown, almost impossible monument, held in place by colossal chains anchoring it to the ground. Inside, the only inhabitants are animal-like and humanoid machines, some welcoming, others hostile.
A big part of what makes Heaven Crawler special is the journey of uncovering the secrets hidden within The Womb, layer by layer: discovering what happened to humanity, how the structure came to be, and what it truly means to reach the heavens.
What can you tell us about the visual design and how that came together?
Our visual style is still a work in progress, but we are aiming to bring that early 2000s flavour into a new generation.
Not as a retro style, but by capturing the bold artistic choices from that era: heavy bloom, deep shadows, strong silhouettes, and rich atmospheres, now enhanced by modern tools and lighting workflows.
A big part of the process has been looking back through video game history and our own childhood favourites to find what we call the “universal videogame kid archetype”.
That naturally led us to inspirations like EarthBound, INSIDE, and ICO, alongside anime and films such as Girls’ Last Tour, Fullmetal Alchemist, Made in Abyss, and Spirited Away.
There is also a lot of personal influence in the visuals. Places based on our childhood, familiar spaces, objects, and even the environment itself are heavily inspired by our own reality.
Our goal is to recreate the feeling of entering an abandoned house: that mix of wonder, awe, mystery, and the feeling that you probably should not be there.
We are really interested in the contrast between the spiritual and the mechanical, which is a core theme of Heaven Crawler.
That is why the child is animated by hand, giving him a more organic and human feeling, while the enemies use procedural animation, making them feel more artificial and machine-like.
You’re preparing to launch a Kickstarter campaign. Why did you go down this route for funding?
We are currently still in our pre-Kickstarter campaign, gathering followers before launching the full campaign in the future alongside a story trailer and public demo.
This game is our debut title as an indie team, and it has been eight years in the making.
From Mick, our Tech Director, working on it during nights, weekends, and holidays, to the moment we fully gathered the team two years ago.
We want to make the game the best version it can be and compromise as little as possible.
We believe there are people who will see what we are trying to create and connect with it the same way we do.
We want to keep it as indie and authentic as possible, and we believe Kickstarter will help us achieve that.
What have you learned from the Kickstarter process so far that you think other people would find interesting?
It is much more time-consuming than it first appears.
It is a full-time milestone for the team, not just a side project or the indie-guerilla approach we initially imagined.
Followers are incredibly important, but there are also many things behind the scenes that are easy to overlook, such as reading the documentation, reaching out to the Kickstarter team, and planning your campaign properly.
For anyone wanting to do a Kickstarter, we highly recommend reading the documentation, watching the available resources, and studying successful campaigns in depth.
I’ve seen a Steam page for Windows and Mac versions, but do you have plans to look beyond PC?
For now, we are focusing on PC for launch, with a Steam Deck port coming shortly after.
This is because we are PC gamers ourselves, and we understand the expectations players have for an action-adventure roguelite because we share those expectations.
We want to focus on delivering the best possible launch experience on PC first.
We look forward to announcing future ports when the time comes.
The Kickstarter campaign for Heaven Crawler can be found here!
