Dark Queen of Samobor Blog

A look at 75%?

A look at 75%?

We've now reached 60% of our funding goal!Thank you to everyone who has backed the campaign so far. Our goal remains the same: $10,000, which will help us push through the final stage of development and bring Dark Queen of Samobor to release in early 2027.In this post we want to show you a new enemy type from the Mountain biome.So... Meet the Zvoncar The Zvoncar are inspired by a real folk tradition from Croatia. For centuries, mountain villagers wore costumes made from animal hides and carried large bells, believing the noise would drive away evil spirits and protect their communities.In the world of Dark Queen of Samobor, things have taken a darker turn.After falling under the influence of the Dark Queen, the Zvoncar now serve her cause. Their bells no longer ward off darkness, they strengthen it. In combat, Zvoncar fight alongside the Queen's forces as melee enemies, but their greatest threat comes from their bells. When rung, they can channel dark magic to heal nearby allies, making them a priority target whenever they appear on the battlefield.We'll be revealing more enemies, creatures, and locations from the world of Dark Queen of Samobor throughout the campaign. Thank you for following along, everyone! - Downtown Game Studio team
POSTED Wed, June 2026
50% funded!

50% funded!

In just over 24 hours, we've reached 50% funding! We're grateful for every pledge and each one brings us closer to the finish line and helps us deliver the best version of Dark Queen of Samobor when it launches in early 2027. Since the develpment kicked off in early 2024, it's safe to say the game has improved quit a bit. It's crazy to look back at some of our early prototypes and see that the game has come from this:And this:To this:And this:We started in Spring of 2024 and now just a bit over 2 yers later in June 2026, we have a playable game. A beta version with many features still to be implemented, but we're finally at a stage where we're excited to share the game with all of you and gather your feedback. Most of our main mechanics are in place (but some require more polish), including all the special abilities (demo shows only 2), most of the levels content, and majority of enemy types (demo shows only 4 out of ~20).  That said, there's still a lot left to do. We're continuing to improve combat and movement, add new content, implement accessibility features, and polish the entire experience so it runs smoothly across a wide range of hardware. This is exactly what our $10,000 funding goal on KIckstarter is for. Reaching it will help us push through the final stage of development and give us the resources needed to deliver the game at the level of quality we envision. If you'd like to stay in the loop with our development and chat with us, during this campaign and beyond, join our discord server and say hi! Here's an invite: https://discord.gg/D9Qq3MBmeb Thank you everyone, and we'll talk to you soon! Downtown Game Studio team
POSTED Tue, June 2026
30% Funded!

30% Funded!

Wow!After just a few hours since we launched our campaign, we've already reached 30% of our funding goal! Thank you to everyone who backed the campaign and helped spread the word. This is a strong start and a great sign that there's interest in our game and that makes us so incredibly excited.Our primary goal remains the same: reaching $10,000 to help fund the final stage of development. These funds will allow us to finish the game and prepare it for its planned release in early 2027. Every pledge brings us closer to making the game we set out to create.As the campaign continues, we'd like to share more behind-the-scenes content with you. What would you be most interested in seeing in future updates? Content about development, story and lore, enemies and bosses, concept art, music and sound design, the team behind the game, or something else entirely? Let us know and we'll use your feedback to shape future updates.Thank you again for joining us on this journey!  Downtown Game Studio team
POSTED Tue, June 2026
Kickstarter is live!

Kickstarter is live!

Hi everyone! After more than two years of development, countless of hours of work and playtests, we're excited to announce that the Kickstarter campaign for Dark Queen of Samobor is finally live!We're now entering the final stage of development, and this is where we need your help.By supporting our Kickstarter campaign, you're helping us finish the game, expand the content, create the best possible soundtrack and voice acting experience, and bring the world of Dark Queen of Samobor to life exactly as we envision it.If you've been following our journey and cheering us on from afar - we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Your support has brought us this far. And if you'd like to help us take the final step, please consider backing the campaign and sharing it with your friends. Here is the link to our campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1857860034/dark-queen-of-samobor-an-adventure-inspired-by-slavic-myths Oh... and our demo is live! :) Give it a try and give us your honest feedback - we cannot wait to hear what you think. Thank you everyone, and talk to you soon! Downtown Game Studio team
POSTED Mon, June 2026
Behind the Scenes: Camera of Dark Queen of Samobor

Behind the Scenes: Camera of Dark Queen of Samobor

Hey, everyone! In this post we want to talk about some of the tricks we use to get that cinematic feeling in Dark Queen of Samobor. If you caught our last dev blog, you already know how much we rely on triggers to make the world feel alive and reactive. Today we'll take a look at the role they play in our camera work. Our camera is fully manually directed, and every angle, zoom, and perspective shift is intentional and placed by hand. This is one of our favourite tricks. The game is a sidescroller by default, but nothing stops us from swinging the camera into a completely different perspective when the moment calls for it. For example, in the scene where you're running across a frozen lake, everything seems fine until the moment you run through a trigger, and the camera pulls up and rotates to a top-down view, revealing something you couldn't see before: something enormous sleeping just below the surface. It recontextualises the whole scene in an instant. Perspective shift: in-gameAnd here is how the same moment looks from inside the engine. Also, pay attention to how the camera shakes at the end, to add more drama to the moment. Perspective shift: in-engineAnd here is one more scene in which we shake the camera in a similar way. In this sequence, you run to avoid spikes closing in on you from the ceiling, and we shake the camera to achieve the effect of impact:Shaking the camera for impactAt certain moments, we lock the camera to a fixed point of view, letting it stay still while you move freely, and allowing it to switch to the next position only once you reach the next trigger. This gives you a wider view of the environment and lets you focus on what matters, like solving the puzzle at hand.Camera with a fixed POVAnother thing we lean into is zoom. Pulling the camera out at the right moment makes the world feel huge and the player feel small, which is exactly the vibe we're going for in a lot of scenes. You might remember the dragon skull we mentioned in the last blog post or you might have seen it in our trailer, the one that snaps shut behind you. Well, the skull moment has a camera trick to it too. As you run through it, the camera zooms out, and suddenly you get the full scale of the thing. It's enormous. And the zoom allows you to actually feel that.Zoom out: in-gameHere is how that same moment looks from inside the engine, you can see the camera repositioning as you enter the skull:Zoom out: behind the sceneZoom doesn't only work for big dramatic scenes. Sometimes pulling the camera in slightly also does the trick. When you're standing still in idle, we use a slow zoom in on the character. It's subtle, but it shifts the energy slightly and adds a moment of tension before whatever comes next. Then, the moment you start to aim, the camera slowly pulls back out, giving you a better view of your target. It's one of those small details you might not consciously notice, but you'd notice if it wasn't there.Zoom in & out for tension and visibilityAll of this sounds elegant in theory. In practice, it involves a lot of "why is the camera doing that" and tweaking values by tiny increments until it feels right. Getting a perspective shift to land cleanly, especially one as dramatic as side-view to top-down, means thinking about what the player sees at every frame of the transition. It's fiddly, careful work, but when it clicks, it really clicks. And that's all for this one! Hope you enjoyed another peek behind the curtain. More dev blogs are coming, so stay tuned.And as always, thanks for following along! 🖤Downtown Game Studio team
POSTED Wed, May 2026
Kickstarter Announcement

Kickstarter Announcement

Hello, everyone! Today we have a special announcement. Dark Queen of Samobor has been in development since early 2024, and after pouring everything we have into it, we're approaching the final stretch. The development through these years has been funded mostly by ourselves, with additional support from Croatian public institutions such as the Croatian Audiovisual Centre and the Tourist Board of the city of Zagreb. However, to push through the finish line with a game we will truly be proud of, we need your help.We are excited to announce our Kickstarter campaign! Our page is already up with the campaign launching very soon, and it would help us a lot if you would check it out and consider hitting that "Notify me on launch" button. Here is the link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1857860034/dark-queen-of-samobor-an-adventure-inspired-by-slavic-mythsProducing all the details in Dark Queen of Samobor’s story, art, gameplay mehanics, and animations needs a lot of work, especially for a tiny team of five such as us. The funds raised and the attention gained by this campaign will greatly help our further development efforts. As much Dark Queen of Samobor is a true passion project for all of us, its complexity puts a huge weight on our team’s shoulders. A successful Kickstarter campaign will allow us to speed up the remaining development until release, create a few additional features and content that we’d love to implement for you, and allow us to work with some of the icons of Croatian film and theatre as our voice actors. Dark Queen of Samobor would not exist without all of you, and you being here is part of why we keep going. When you finally get to play it, we hope you feel that.From the bottom of our hearts, from all of us at Downtown Game Studio, thank you!Let's bring Dark Queen of Samobor to life together.Downtown Game Studio team
POSTED Wed, April 2026