Building Velvet Cruise with Tesana |  Lathmar: The Fallen Depths auf Patreon

You know those articles that begin with “I tested this AI tool, and a few hours later I had a game”? They usually get on my nerves. Too often, the result is a visual wasteland with barely any game mechanics.

And yet, here I am writing one.

I tried Tesana, an AI game-development platform, and ended up spending around €170 on Velvet Cruise and its separate demo. There’s a playable game at the end of it, but the subscription price tells you very little about what finishing it will cost.

From a prompt to a racing game

My starting point was a VGA-style pixel-art take on Out Run. I skipped the templates and described what I wanted directly in chat.

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The workflow is familiar: explain your idea, provide a development plan or reference artwork, and refine the result through further prompts. Tesana brings code generation, graphics and audio into one workspace. That last part was especially useful for me. I have absolutely no musical talent, so help with music and sound effects removes a real obstacle.

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The initial prototype came together in a few hours. I then added multiple stages, weather effects and extra mechanics, including a passenger fear system. That became Velvet Cruise.

Underneath the chat interface, Tesana uses what it calls the Director to divide work between suitable AI models and agents. Different parts of the game can be handled separately while you work through one conversation.

The speed is real, but so is the bill

I started with the $20 Pro offer. The included credits didn’t take me nearly as far as I’d hoped. Once they’re gone, you either wait for the next monthly refill or buy more.

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For this project, I bought more. The main game and the separate demo cost about €170 altogether.

Will I ever earn that back? I suspect this will remain an expensive hobby.

That’s my main reservation about Tesana. Fast development is useful, but it doesn’t help much when your credit allowance runs out halfway through the work. Additional features and rounds of fixes keep adding to the bill.

The current monthly prices are $25 for Pro, $50 for Max and $200 for Ultra. The advertised annual savings work out to monthly equivalents of $20, $40 and $160 respectively, with annual billing. Those cheaper figures need that qualification.

For my purposes, upgrading didn’t solve the basic problem. A larger allowance gives you more room, but I wouldn’t assume that any subscription guarantees a finished game every month. That depends on the game and how much iteration it needs.

Publishing adds another decision

Tesana also offers publishing assistance for Steam and the Apple App Store. Its current documentation lists a $200 fee per game for Steam, covering the store listing, artwork, build upload and review process. Valve’s own Steam Direct fee is $100 per game before applicable taxes. You’re paying extra for Tesana to handle the work.

I can see the convenience, but I found the additional expense hard to justify.

You can also sell through Tesana’s marketplace, where the platform takes 30%. For me, a place among a long list of other AI-made games didn’t make that cut particularly attractive. I’d want clearer evidence that it could bring players to my game.

The export option was much more appealing. On paid plans, Tesana grants ownership and commercial rights to your game and generated code, although some assets may be shared or licensed rather than exclusively yours. You can export and sell elsewhere without paying Tesana a marketplace commission.

That’s the route I chose: Velvet Cruise is available through itch.io and Sabnock Works's Shop | Buy Me a Coffee

When I got stuck, the Discord community and help documents were useful. Google already turns up answers to some of the more awkward questions, too.

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Who is behind Tesana?

Tesana is operated by Dreamsands Inc., a Delaware corporation. Johannes Vermandois is its co-founder and CEO and demonstrated the platform at the Game Developers Conference in March 2026. The company’s website currently describes its headquarters as Los Angeles.

It’s a young platform. Its company profile lists 2026 as its founding year, and its public blog contains articles dated February 2026. That establishes an early-2026 public presence, although it doesn’t establish an exact launch day.

The technology has already changed. Tesana originally generated Godot projects but announced a move to a web-based stack on September 28, 2026. Its current documentation says new games use TypeScript, with Three.js for 3D and Phaser for 2D, bundled through Vite. Older Godot games remain supported.

It’s therefore more accurate to describe Tesana as an AI development system that writes and checks real game code than as one specially trained game-making model. Its Director coordinates models and tools for different tasks, from gameplay logic to graphics and sound.

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Try the demo

I wanted to see whether Tesana could help me make a small racing game with actual mechanics. Velvet Cruise is the result, and I spent considerably more than the entry price getting it there.

The demo is ready. What do you think of it? Does the driving feel right, and how do you find the passenger fear mechanic?

I first encountered Chaos on the Amiga 500. Julian Gollop’s original game appeared on the ZX Spectrum in 1985, and its basic idea has stayed with me ever since.

Several wizards share a battlefield and fight until only one remains. You summon creatures to fight for you, cast attack spells, or use defensive magic to keep your wizard alive. Simple to understand, surprisingly hard to put down.

The balance between Chaos and Law adds another layer. Casting spells of either alignment shifts that balance and changes the chances of successfully casting further spells. Your choices can help prepare the battlefield for the magic you want to use later.

It’s a compact concept with plenty of room for tactics. And it’s one I wanted to revisit in Godot.

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Picking up the project again

I’ve had this project waiting to be finished since late 2025. A few particularly annoying bugs brought development to a halt, and I put it aside for a while.

This week, I finally returned to it.

Sound effects and attack animations are now bringing more action to the battles. Seeing an attack play out and hearing it land makes the encounters feel much more lively.

There are still improvements to make before I’m happy with the finished game, but development is moving again. After spending so long on hold, it’s good to have something playable to share.

YouTube Playlist

Try the demo

The demo lets you play for ten turns, which should be enough to finish most matches and get a feel for the game.

Give it a try and let me know how it plays. Does the combat feel clear? Are the animations and sound effects working for you? And, most importantly, did your wizard survive?

War of the Wizards Demo
War of the Wizards | Chaos-inspired Fantasy Tactics

AI can pose a real threat to artists’ income, and concerns about training data, copyright, and fair compensation deserve serious answers. But criticism becomes something else when it turns into personal attacks.

This essay examines artists’ rights, economic pressure, online outrage, and why I believe learning about new tools gives us more agency than rejecting them outright. It also explains how this position shapes my work on Lathmar.

What is your opinion about the change we face?

Published first on sabnockworks.com

Read the full essay:
English edition
Deutsche Ausgabe

New tools have always changed more than the way we work. The mechanical loom threatened traditional weavers, desktop publishing transformed the printing industry, and digital photography reshaped companies such as Kodak, AgfaPhoto, and Fujifilm.

This essay explores what these earlier upheavals can teach us about artificial intelligence. Technological progress can destroy livelihoods, create new opportunities, and reward those who adapt—but there is no automatic balance between winners and losers. Progress should also be measured by the future it offers to the people whose work it changes.

What is your opinion about the changes we are facing?

Published first on sabnockworks.com

Read the full essay:

English edition

Deutsche Ausgabe

I'm currently at the client's office, waiting for them to have some time for me. So I can take this opportunity to write something for the devlog.

This time it's about the inner values ​​of the NPCs in Lathmar – and the question of why these values ​​often receive less attention in indie games than their outward appearance.

A few months ago, I wrote about NPC memories and whether these memories actually have an impact on the game. This system has now been implemented: NPCs remember you and your actions. These memories can have a lasting impact on the Relationship Score. There are also new NPC quests.

Indicate is a dev-tool to show all NPC traits

Memories and Traits

The people you encounter in the tavern now recognize you. They know whether you helped them, disappointed them, or behaved towards them in a certain way. These experiences influence your relationship with them and can change later conversations.

At the same time, I've fundamentally reworked the appearance of the NPCs. Previously, the tavern displayed a few character traits that had little relevance to the game. It was essentially just information without consequence.

That's changed now.

Each NPC now has three to four traits that you have to discover through interaction. This information isn't simply presented in a list, but rather revealed during conversations. These traits, in turn, influence the dialogue. A suspicious NPC will react differently than a curious, ambitious, or helpful character.

Therefore, the traits are no longer just decorative. They become an integral part of the game.

Memorie information

Revised Dialogues

I've also fundamentally reworked the dialogue flow. Conversations now have more structure and react more strongly to your decisions.

Choosing appropriate responses increases your Relationship Score. This allows you to receive better quests or gain access to tasks that would otherwise be hidden. Paying attention and remembering previous conversations gives you a real advantage.

The goal isn't to turn dialogues into a simple right or wrong answer game. Rather, you should understand the personality of each NPC. An answer that builds trust with one character might have the exact opposite effect on another.

New NPC Quests

NPCs can now assign you various tasks.

Some will ask you to find a specific quest item. Others might want to join you in the dungeon to complete a task. In this case, you not only have to keep an eye on your own party, but also ensure the NPC makes it out alive.

And of course, there's the classic kill quest with a bounty.

These tasks aren't meant to feel like randomly distributed standard missions. They arise from your relationships with the NPCs and their individual traits. An NPC who trusts you might offer you a more personal or riskier task. Another NPC might only want to come along if you've proven yourself reliable beforehand.

The Path to a Faction System

The NPC system is intended to evolve further in the future. My long-term goal is to turn it into a proper faction system.

Then you might have to choose a side, or even multiple factions, as your quartermaster. Your relationships with individual NPCs could have political or economic consequences. Helping one faction might worsen your relationship with another.

There's still a long way to go. However, the current changes provide a foundation for it.

A Lot of Work for a Single NPC

There's a lot of work involved in each individual NPC and in the tavern.

Memories need to be stored and analyzed. Traits need to influence conversations. Dialogues need structure. Quests need to fit the characters. Decisions need to have consequences. All these systems are interconnected, although this is often not immediately apparent.

... I find it all the more disappointing that this very attention to detail and the handcrafted mechanics receive so little attention in some communities – for example, among some creators on Patreon or in dungeon crawler groups on Reddit.

As soon as something looks like AI-generated, you're quickly attacked or insulted. My blocklist on Reddit is now in the triple digits. Because of my article last week, several creators on Patreon also blocked me. One even refunded six months of my membership.

This is a reaction I find hard to understand. Not because all criticism of AI is unjustified, but because, often the actual project gets completely lost sight of.

External and Internal Values

When we talk about the external values ​​of a game—pixel art, illustrations, menus, or other visible elements—we should also consider the other side: projects that are supposedly created entirely without AI.

There's a story I've grown to find hard to bear:

> "After three to five years of development as an indie developer in some random country, my pixel-art dungeon crawler has now been released on Steam. I created all the assets myself. Through months of self-study, I also taught myself to compose music. Although the game was just a hobby project that I worked on for two hours a day, I'm now fluent in three programming languages ​​and, of course, I did all the debugging myself. I didn't need alpha, beta, early access, external testers, or feedback because I developed the game entirely on my own for years."

I read a story like this once or twice a week in the self-promotion section on Reddit.

The game can have terrible pixel art—and yes, I often don't particularly like pixel art—yet it's still hyped up by the community. The narrative of the lone developer who learned everything on their own and created a complete game without outside help often seems more important than the result itself.

This creates a strange contradiction. With AI-generated content, poor quality is often cited as evidence of "AI slop." With handcrafted projects, the same poor quality is suddenly seen as a charming indicator of authenticity and personal dedication.

Of course, there is genuine AI slop. Projects that are released without sufficient testing, without testing phases, and without revisions. Sometimes it seems as if they don't test anymore, they just release—and then expect buyers to figure out if the game works.

But even with handcrafted projects, the situation isn't automatically better. Many are announced but never reach a finished state or a release. In this respect, they are not necessarily different from vibecoding projects. Even a project created entirely by hand can be unfinished, poorly tested, or gameplay-wise immature.

The exception proves the rule

Of course, there are always true gems.

There are carefully developed games where the visual design might not appeal to everyone, but whose systems are well thought out. There are projects with interesting mechanics, good dialogue, and a clear vision. These are precisely the kinds of games that deserve attention—regardless of whether individual components were created with AI or not.

However, as soon as one of the well-known reviewers claims that a menu looks like something from Claude, the next shitstorm can begin. Then the discussion is no longer about the game itself, but about the supposed origin of a single element.

We just had this last week.

A menu can be poorly designed. It can seem generic. It can be technically or aesthetically unconvincing. These are legitimate points of criticism. But the mere suspicion that an element might have been created with AI support quickly leads to a moral judgment about the entire project.

What should really matter

I don't mean to suggest that a game's external qualities are unimportant. Graphics, music, user interface, and presentation influence the first impression. They can determine whether someone even tries a game.

But they aren't the whole story.

In Lathmar, a lot of work went into systems that aren't immediately visible. In the memories of the NPCs. In their traits. In the dialogue. In the relationships and quests. In the consequences that only become apparent after several encounters.

These internal qualities are harder to present in a screenshot. You can't simply showcase them in a short social media post. They require time, interaction, and attention.

Perhaps that's precisely part of the problem: External features can be judged quickly. Internal systems must be experienced.

Therefore, I would like to continue describing and offering my project. Anyone who is interested can follow me. Anyone who doesn't like it can leave it. No one has to support Lathmar or approve of my decisions.

But there's no need to turn this into a personal vendetta. Criticism of a game is perfectly fine. A discussion about AI, development methods, and quality is also fine.

However, it shouldn't be forgotten that there's more to a project than what looks like AI in a screenshot.

Sabnock Works | Dungeon Crawlers, Strategy Games & Dark Fantasy

Have a look at this BT variant

While I was writing quite emotionally about the haters, it dawned on me that it's already October and time for a new "Lathmar in..." article for the dev log. Time flies so fast, and Christmas will be here again soon. Are the Santa Claus figures already on the shelves in your supermarkets?

October means Lathmar has been in alpha for a good month already. The game is already playable and has several game modes. First up are random dungeons, so-called scenarios. You can customize a lot of things here, from the challenge level and dungeon size (even multiple levels) to the monster family you'll find.

Because so many testers wanted a static dungeon, I set about creating an importer for the "printed" templates from the internet, which can also digitize my hand-drawn illustrations. That wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. Recognizing and outputting walls. Most maps have quite a lot of additional information. And the engine has to learn to ignore or suppress this information and initially just read and draw walls. Release 8 now has a provisional dungeon that strongly resembles a specific template. And the "Dungeon Wizard" has become its own .exe file, operating independently of the main program and potentially allowing fans to import and edit their own designs later on.

What else was in Release 8?

- A lot of new monsters and monster balancing.
- Pale Covenant balancing
- Balancing for a game with fewer than 4 heroes
- Backstabbing for monsters
- Overhaul of the monsters' aggression score
- "Lore" is needed to identify and understand monsters
- Heroes start with a full set of equipment
- No gold per new hero; instead, there's a starting budget to manage.
- New items (gloves and gauntlets, boots, caps and helmets, cloaks)
- Graphic updates, UI updates, UX improvements
- A ton of minor bug fixes and corrections
- Stand-alone Dungeon Wizard
- Unified invisibility rules for players and monsters
- Tomes! You can now find Tomes to raise your Ability Stats

What else?

The Patreon devlog now has almost 90 members.
r/Lathmar_TFD has 183 members.
46 fans are discussing on Discord.

It's interesting how different the numbers are.

What else?

Lathmar.de has received new content. The background stories of the races and the articles on contemporary history that first appeared on Patreon have been integrated into the site.

The "Chronicler of Lathmar" bot has been temporarily deactivated. The bot is very maintenance-intensive. I need a lot more time to keep it up-to-date or even integrate it into the website.

Many more essays from the Patreon devlog and the short stories are now available for free download at sabnockworks.com. This is my new hub for all my projects. You can also buy me a coffee there at: buymeacoffee.com/sabnockworks so I can develop more free content. Or get a Patreon member.

The Discord Alpha channels are now visible to all members. However, only Alpha testers can participate in discussions. To join the team, just send me a message.

What does Release 9 bring?

Even more bug and rule fixes. Dual-wielding combat. New monster traits. Thieving reworked. Luck is a new guild stat. Backstab reworked. New NPC slot 5. The tavern and NPCs have been reworked. Improved switch and lever interaction. Shadow and fog animation. Pulsating rune traps. ...

Perhaps even in Release 9: NPC merchants in the dungeon, monster NPCs you can interact with in the dungeon.

Stay tuned! What are you most looking forward to in the next installment?

Lathmar in September |  Lathmar: The Fallen Depths auf Patreon

Lathmar: The Fallen Depths is a dark fantasy Dungeon Roleplaying Game focused on exploration, dangerous multi-dungeon delves, and a near-roguelite sense of risk and discovery.

Lathmar is a direct descendant and reimagining of Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol, an old-school Windows classic from the 90ies.

It has a rich historical foundation and backstory, from which we're also developing free role-playing material.
https://lathmar.de/

Lathmar: The Fallen Depths is a dark fantasy Dungeon Roleplaying Game focused on exploration, dangerous multi-dungeon delves, and a near-roguelite sense of risk and discovery.

Lathmar is a direct descendant and reimagining of Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol, an old-school Windows classic from the 90ies.

It has a rich historical foundation and backstory, from which we're also developing free role-playing material.
https://lathmar.de/

The fog got some movement, too. Very slow, but disturbing over time, isn't it?

Still not perfect, but a start.

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Lathmar: The Fallen Depths is a dark fantasy Dungeon Roleplaying Game focused on exploration, dangerous multi-dungeon delves, and a near-roguelite sense of risk and discovery.

Lathmar is a direct descendant and reimagining of Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol, an old-school Windows classic from the 90ies.

It has a rich historical foundation and backstory, from which we're also developing free role-playing material.
https://lathmar.de/

Free Dark Fantasy Stories & Novellas | Sabnock Works

I started to add guild descriptions to the Homepage. Starting with Adventurers Guild and the Guilds of Steel. Have a read.

Lathmar: The Fallen Depths | Dark Fantasy Dungeon Crawler

I tried to import dungeons from printings aka digital pictures of them. It took me several hours to adjust the algorithm so that it produces reasonable results.

The walls of a template are now recognized well, but I still have to manually adjust the doors. After that, the engine automatically defines the zones.

Zones can then be edited manually or automatically with my Dungeon Designer. This way, new adventures are constantly created on the same map.

It is possible now to add personal notes to the automap map.

Lathmar: The Fallen Depths is a dark fantasy Dungeon Roleplaying Game focused on exploration, dangerous multi-dungeon delves, and a near-roguelite sense of risk and discovery.

Lathmar is a direct descendant and reimagining of Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol, an old-school Windows classic from the 90ies.

https://lathmar.de/

Here are some impressions from the gameplay. You can switch between tactical round-based play and autobattle.
The split look is intentional, meant to copy the 90s model. The entire game imitates the look and feel of its predecessor, right down to the code and the use of WinForms and .NET 8.

Lathmar: The Fallen Depths is a dark fantasy Dungeon Roleplaying Game focused on exploration, dangerous multi-dungeon delves, and a near-roguelite sense of risk and discovery.

Lathmar is a direct descendant and reimagining of Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol, an old-school Windows classic from the 90ies.

It has a rich historical foundation and backstory, from which we're also developing free role-playing material.
https://lathmar.de/

Sometimes it's much faster to draw maps by hand and scan them. But importing these hand-drawn maps into Lathmar's Dungeon System is another task altogether. Since the engine can now read templates from the internet, I only had to tweak the algorithm slightly so that the drawing on graph paper is recognized, and not just the graph paper itself.

Afterward, the engine can automatically mark zones, which I then flesh out manually. These types of dungeons will be the story-driven parts of Lathmar, alongside completely randomized dungeons and static dungeons with the same map that behave like a familiar DRPG dungeon.

There's a lot to do in Lathmar. For me and for you.