Latest update · November 2026
From the page to the first playable chapters
October took the game from the page to play. The first three chapters of The Outcast Knight now run end to end in a development build, every location in them has been signed off, Luna was regrown by procedural rules, and every race now loads in the character creator. Around the game, Lightspire: Cards went from Steam Next Fest to Early Access, the books had their biggest continuity pass yet, and the website gained a wiki.
The first three chapters play end to end
The opening of The Outcast Knight is now a connected run through its first three chapters. The tavern cutscene hands over to a walk and talk with Usso through the slums, then on to the graveyard, the trade market and the first boss fight, with checkpoints, saving and loading throughout, about 43 minutes in all. Usso keeps your pace, tucks in behind you where the lanes narrow, and the conversation waits if you run ahead. Every line is still a placeholder and some characters are stand-ins, but the whole stretch plays from start to finish.
From concept art to engine
Each location in the opening chapters started as a painted backdrop for Lightspire: Cards. In October they were rebuilt in Unreal Engine to match, with props, lanterns, fog, weather and full lighting, and by 19 October every one of them had been signed off. Only animation and voices are still to come. Pick a location and drag across the picture to compare the painting with the current render.
The first area after the opening. Arcades, stalls and bunting are placed by the same procedural rules as the rest of the city, shown here at night.
A kit for every place
With the opening signed off, the work moved outwards. Building kits are now under way for the rest of Lightspire's locations, from the cathedral and the citadel's 150-metre spire to the undercity, the city walls and the lands beyond Luna. Each kit is judged on its shapes alone first, as grey clay. Lighting will then be done once, for the whole world, rather than place by place.
- location kits started
- 94
- location kits started
- already building in the engine
- 62
- already building in the engine
- grey clay boards rendered for review
- 153
- grey clay boards rendered for review
- gates in Luna's city walls
- 26
- gates in Luna's city walls
Luna, grown by code
Most of Luna, Lightspire's capital, is now laid out by procedural rules rather than placed by hand. Each rule is tried on a map in about 30 seconds before a full rebuild of about 45 minutes. The Citadel, the arena and other key places are still built by hand, which is why it's most of the city, not all of it. Step through the eight saved stages below, from the placeholder grid to the latest pass.
- streets grown by one script, about 210 km
- 3,329
- streets grown by one script, about 210 km
- houses placed along them
- ~31,000
- houses placed along them
- houses turned into yards by one density rule
- 8,005
- houses turned into yards by one density rule
- modular pieces, reused 112,233 times
- 29
- modular pieces, reused 112,233 times
Drag the picture to compare with the stage before · Blockout, not final art
Stage 8 of 8
Break the grid
The latest pass broke up what was left of the grid with 354 dead-end closes, 1,391 new houses and 37 small squares.
Built by rules, down to the wear
Luna's slums are now built by rules too. Every wall is a seed plus a wear number from 0 to 3: turn it up and the gaps widen, boards go missing, ends snap and the damp line climbs from 35 centimetres to over a metre. Chimney smoke is stacked flat cards leaning downwind, and street-level windows hide a shallow dark room about 70 centimetres deep, because only what the camera can see gets built. Same street, same camera: four days separated the first version from the one we showed on 22 October.
Storyboarding the opening
The game opens where the first book does: Fi and Usso mourning a friend in the Dwarven Hearth, with a cold hearth and only lanterns for light. The shot list comes straight from chapter one: black, then the glow of Usso's pipe brightening as he draws, focus pulling through the smoke to Fi, a slow creep up his beard, and a pull back to the empty room. Every shot is rendered from that plan in the engine, so the storyboard is the cutscene. Since then the Hearth has had its full lighting pass, and the characters are next.
Usso's face, from a phone video
The first face-capture test turned a single phone video of our own performance into Usso's expressions in Unreal Engine, head turns included. It's a test on a plain background rather than the finished cutscene, but it's how Fi and Usso will be performed.
Weather and the hour of day
A first pass at a time-of-day system sets the sun, moon, sky and fog from a clock and a weather preset, so the same street can be shot at dawn, midday or midnight, in mist or drizzle. Around it, the world has started reacting: hanging cloth sways in the wind, and pots, jugs, barrels and crates in the opening streets break apart under a sword swing or a roll.
Stone that has seen rain
The first stone market looked brand new, with one texture on everything. The building kit now gives each part of a facade its own stone, from five stone scans, and writes the rain into its rules: run-off streaks hang under every sill, cornice and arch, and damp creeps up about a metre from the street. Every piece is generated, so no two bays match.
Every race now loads
The character creator has had its first full play test with every playable race loaded: Human, Elf, Dwarf, Highlander and Fae. The catalogue holds 127 heads, each available on 25 body shapes, across lineages such as Luna and the Sunward Reach, the Fae of Luminglade and the Elves of Luna's old houses. Since then every head has been given its own skin, every Dwarf head has been refitted, and faces now blink while idle. Hair, skin tones and some head shapes are still being worked on. Ancestry decides where your family comes from, never your faith, class or allegiance.
Feelings worn on the skin
Every Fae in Lightspire wears their feelings on their skin. Calm, their element barely shows; as emotion rises, so does the element. One value drives skin, hair and particles across all four Houses, Phoenix, Kraken, Gorgon and Sylph, and it now works on every Fae head in the character creator.
Lightspire: Cards is out in Early Access
The free Lightspire: Cards demo ran through Steam Next Fest from 19 to 26 October, and on 27 October the full game launched in Early Access on Steam, with its 31-chapter campaign drawn from the books, Skirmish and multiplayer. Before launch, saves gained backup recovery, battle rewards can no longer be lost or doubled, and the tutorial got a clearer way in. Early Access means the game keeps growing with player feedback.
The books behind the game
Books 3 and 4, The Highlander and The Godless Priest, had their biggest revision yet. A continuity pass checked both against each other and against the published books, scenes that had been drafted more than once were cut down to a single telling, and work began on a shared in-world calendar, so all four books agree on where everyone is, and when. The Highlander came out about a fifth shorter, and tighter for it.
A wiki and a family tree for the whole saga
The website gained a Lightspire wiki: 223 pages on characters, places, faiths, history and races, plus the RPG's classes and weapons, with a spoiler tick for each book. The family tree was rebuilt to hold all 116 characters across the four books, before and after the story, with a new layout that keeps every couple's children beneath them. Lightspire accounts can also now sign in with Google, Microsoft, Apple or Steam.
The mocap series found an audience
Our short videos on filming combat with two cheap cameras travelled much further than we expected. The explainer on how two cameras see in 3D has now reached nearly 400,000 accounts on Instagram. The follow-up tested the method against an animation we already had, and with two cameras the result lands about five centimetres off on average. Since then a new post has gone out almost every day, from city rules to the books. More of the series is on our channels.
- accounts reached by one explainer
- 395,963
- accounts reached by one explainer
- views of it on Instagram
- 586,990
- views of it on Instagram
- Instagram followers across October
- 46 → 755
- Instagram followers across October
- average error with two cameras
- 5.1 cm
- average error with two cameras
Next on the bench
- →Finish a kit for every location, then light the whole world in one pass.
- →Bring the opening's animation and performances up to the new locations.
- →Swap the remaining stand-in characters for their real versions.
- →Finish hair, skin tones and loading in the character creator.
- →Keep improving Lightspire: Cards through Early Access.
