[sceaven]

Scarred By Heaven is a beat-em-up about an otherworldly murder mystery, aiming to combine unique 2D brawling with a strong narrative and a small but rich sandbox.

I'd appreciate any feedback. :)

An early access version is now available on Itch.io!

You can read more info on the game there, or on my website!

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MAJOR LINKS

Website

Itch.io Page

Character Bios

Blog

My Ko-fi

[sceaven]

Hello, apologies for my absence here, but I've still be working on the game! I've recently finished the fourth boss, Friday.

A more detailed blog post is on itch.io.

[sceaven]

Version 0.5.1 Released!

The first update to Scarred By Heaven has been released! The most significant addition is fully revamped battle sprites for Sakiko, but there's also a handful of smaller bug fixes and gameplay tweaks.

You can download the new version on itch.io!

Patch notes are listed below, if you're curious.

Patch Notes

Combat Changes

New Saki sprites!

Changed the flash effect enemy attack wind-ups from being a white flash, to being a sprite-darkening flash with a white outline, to distinguish it clearly from the flash effect that happens when enemies are struck by the player's attack. 

Typhoon now has increased force and a 'wall-splat' effect when used to hit already airborne enemies, causing it to deal bonus damage to the target if they hit a wall, and significantly more collateral 'body hit' damage if they hit another enemy. It previously had little use in juggle combos besides showing off, especially compared to just saving the SP to re-launch the enemy once they hit the ground, so my intention was to mend that a little.

The SP cost of Spirit Stasis has been reduced from 140 to 100, and the amount of time an enemy is trapped in stasis has been reduced by a few seconds. I thought the 140 might be a little steep, and that it was maybe a little boring to be allowed to freely hit a defenseless enemy for so long, so I'm hoping this change makes it weaker, but easier to use more frequently.

Light attacks while grappling an enemy can now be performed at a much faster rate, though now slightly reduce the remaining length of the grapple with each hit. The net effect should be that you can still deal roughly the same amount of damage in a grapple when mashing it, but in an overall shorter time span, hopefully making it feel more fun and less disruptive to the pace of combat.

Added a 'hold to skip' option to all the opening combat tutorials.

Side Content Changes/Miscellaneous Additions

Fishing Minigame:

Changed the Easy difficulty setting to increase invincibility frames after getting hit, rather than just increasing HP, hopefully making it a bit more approachable.

Adjustments to the player and bullet hitboxes.

Enemy bullets now correctly display above the enemy's sprite rather than below it.

Other:

Minor dialogue changes in some story cutscenes.

Bug Fixes

Fixed 'Cheap Cologne' accessory causing the game to crash.

Fixed a crash related to forfeiting Lightning Rounds...

Fixed a crash related to the claw machine.....

Fixed 'Dye 4 U' not being marked as a location on the map screen.

Fixed some missing overworld collisions in West Jadewater and the beach.

Fixed an issue in which the camera wouldn't fix onto the player correctly after a certain story cutscene.

Removed the currently unused 'Spring Water' item from vending machines.

Fixed the 'Butterfly Earring' accessory becoming available too early in the story.

Hopefully fixed an issue in which enemies could occasionally get stuck inside walls and teleport outside of the arena.

[sceaven]

Early Access Release!

I'm excited to say that Scarred By Heaven has finally released into 'early access' with the launch of the '0.5' version of the game!

If it's your first time hearing about it, the game is story-focused beat-em-up with a sandbox of side content, inspired by series such as 'Yakuza'​/'Like A Dragon' and 'Persona'.

You can download it for free on itch.io or my website!

I would call this version of the game fully functional and accurate to what the final version of the game will be like, but it only contains the first 3 chapters of the story.

There's an estimated 6 - 8 hours of main story content in now, including three boss fights, as well as a handful of side things to explore. The remainder of this part's story will be added in future updates, and save files from this version will be able to be transferred to the full release!

It's very invigorating to finally have a piece of the game definitely finished and playable after such a long development. Of course, I'd really appreciate feedback and bug reports if you do play it.

Thank you, and enjoy!

[sceaven]

December Progress Report

Hello again, and Yuletide greetings. This post is just a summary of all the work I got done throughout the month, which has mostly involved tidying things up, and getting a lot of side content implemented.

The game's Early Access release is looking far closer than I expected, and I'm estimating it to be ready sometime in January! 

Dungeoneering Minigame!

The largest individual thing thing I've gotten done over the past week was adding a new large minigame, the 'dungeoneering' game, which is a dramatized representation of Saki being forced into playing 'Knights' with a young child who has a very strong imagination.

...Honestly, I think I got a little carried away with it. I tried to give it a rogue-like-ish format of randomization and 'runs', where you rush through a collection of pre-created but randomly shuffled rooms on a time limit, trying to gather as much loot as you can. I wanted to keep the mechanics and enemies very simple, so the challenge can come more from trying to play perfectly and optimize every room.

I've been pretty set on the concept of a sidestory in which the stoic Sakiko is overwhelmed by babysitting since I started making the game, so this was a fun way to realize that. Making maps with the simple tilesets kind of took me back to my RPG Maker days...

Miscellaneous Work

After that was finished, I spent most of my time going through a large checklist of all the little things I want to get done before release. This has been stuff ranging from replacing placeholder sprites, to adding more accessories, to adding an animation for getting hit by a car. It's mostly stuff that's unfortunately hard to document in any interesting way, though, so here's a few screenshots and clips...

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A new minigame at the beach.

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A new unlockable ability for combat, 'Laminar Weaponry', which allows you to pick up weapons from the environment while performing unarmed attacks and immediately attack with them to continue your combos!

You can actually see a bug at about 0:27, though, where the startup animation for the pole's thrust plays twice. It's a problem unique to Laminar Weaponry where mashing the button immediately after picking up the weapon sometimes causes attacks to cancel themselves and restart. I don't really know what's causing it at the moment, but I actually kind of like it, since it can sometimes briefly let you perform a lot of light attacks in very quick succession, which feels very cool. I might look into a way to make it work that way intentionally, lol.

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...And as a bonus, some old code I unearthed after wondering why a menu wasn't working correctly...

Personal Notes

I hope the holidays have been treating you well, if you celebrate any. They've unfortunately been pretty stressful for me because of work... but I should finally be getting a two week break starting new years day. My first non-sick time off in 16 months...!

2025 has been an objectively pretty good year for me. My two resolutions were to finally get my driver's licence, and move to a new apartment, which I both did by June. I've actually felt quite listless and strange since then, though. Maybe because I've been missing the sense of adventure that comes from challenging those out-of-the-norm life goals? I tend to be too much of a homebody, and sometimes it feels like this apartment is going to eat me. I think my goal for 2026 will be to try and visit more new places.

...It's late and I have work tomorrow, though, so I should probably wrap this up. Have a nice new year, and please be remorseful if you go shopping on Boxing Day!

Thank you! - HSTopaz

[sceaven]

November Progress Report

Hello again! This post is just a quick summary of all the development work I managed to get done in November.

Chapter 3 Finished

The majority of what I did was coding and animating all the cutscenes for the game's third chapter. It's not been finished, meaning all the main story content for the planned 'Early Access' release is complete!

Unfortunately, I don't actually want to talk much about it, because there's obviously a lot of things I'd consider to be spoilers... but it's out of the way now, and it means I can goof off with side content for a while instead.

Major Overworld Maps Finished

I finished detailing the last two major overworld locations: the 'Downtown' area and its nearby mall.

Downtown is the largest single 'room' in the whole game, so I saved it until last so I'd have plenty of assets to recycle from all the other areas. It was still a pretty exhausting task, and there's still small bits of polish to add, but I'm glad to finally be (mostly) done with it, and done with outdoor environments in general for the time being.      

Difficulty Presets

And the last boring but important addition was finally creating a system for difficulty presets. It's strangely satisfying to me in making the game's combat feel 'complete'.

Though making the menu did make me notice that one of the game's rarely-used fonts has a problem that causes the letter T to get stretched by 1 pixel, even though all the other letters are fine... 

...I don't know how to fix it, so I just changed the name from 'Standard' to 'Average'. 

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...And that's about it. Thanks for reading.

- HSTopaz

[sceaven]

Some non-game development artwork. An original character from a small fantasy side project of mine.

[sceaven]

I've mostly finished detailing the last two major overworld, the 'Downtown' area and it's nearby mall. Downtown is the largest 'room' in the game, and so I saved it until last so I'd have plenty of assets to recycle for it. It should be the last outdoor environment I have to make for a while, thankfully...

[sceaven]

Happy Halloween! I’ve just finished coding and animating the unsettling third boss, ‘Iris’.

Without getting into story spoilers too much, they're a nontraditional fighter who uses disjointed spears, doesn't really have any combat experience, and doesn't want to fight. They’re probably my favorite character to draw at the moment, and were a lot of fun to animate and design moves for. 

[sceaven]

Visit Original Link

My ambitious shot at the third boss fight's theme. I wanted it to sound grindy and malevolent, but combine it with some more sensitive piano bits to convey the sense of a confused identity. I'm not fully sure it worked as much as I hoped it would, but I'm still happy with the result for now.

[sceaven]

I'm finally close to finishing Scarred By Heaven's third chapter!

I've spent most of the month making cutscenes and environments, as usual, and also finished a new enemy type, the 'Batter Thug'.

All that remains is to finish the third boss, 'Iris', and make the last remaining cutscenes. After that, what I loosely consider 'Act 1' will be finished, and I think I'll finally feel confident in publicly releasing an 'early access' version of the game. It's a very exciting milestone...

[sceaven]

Some more mostly finished city environments I've made over the past few months. The outdoor overworld is getting pretty close to complete, now.

I have a new blog post on my website that's more detailed on how the game is progressing at the moment, if you're interested. Thanks.

[noxether]

Play for Peace - Games for Palestine 2025 Charity Bundle: 382 items for $8.00

Hewwo everyone! The PLAY FOR PEACE Games for Palestine 2025 Charity Bundle is live (and contains several of my zines & games)!!

8 USD for 382 items from 248 curators! EIGHT! DOLLARS! which directly go towards the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in support of direct humanitarian aid in Palestine.

The bundle runs for another twenty days-- so around September 23rd, give or take a timezone.

-> https://itch.io/b/2979/play-for-peace-games-for-palestine-2025-charity-bundle <-

Give it a purchase, and spread it far and wide! You know you want to!

Charity artwork donated by harecygnus to help promote the bundle.

[Image description: Several hands are assembling a puzzle which forms the Palestinian flag. The Palestinian flag is black, white, green and red. Text reads, "Play for peace. Games for Palestine charity."]

[sceaven]

Having fun with tickets and prizes at the arcade.

One of the long-planned side attractions of the game that I've recently gotten around to adding!

...And hello again! Sorry for slacking on posting for a bit.

The good news is that the reason for that is that I was so fixated on working on SBH that I didn't feel like making any posts, and that I've actually gotten a lot done in my online absence, including finishing the game's second chapter and most of the overworld map.

I'll try to post more soon. Thanks.

[sceaven]

Visit Original Link

Some more of my amateur music composing work. This is the music for the first boss fight, Livio, and my first time making a theme for a specific character.

I wanted to do something with a slow build-up that suddenly shifts into something much more intense partway through, to capture the dynamic of his easygoing exterior and surprisingly competent interior. It ended up with a kind of cool, 'windy' feeling to me, if that makes sense.

[sceaven]

Visit Original Link

Some of my amateur music composing work for the game's OST. The only reason I'm calling it a 'demo' for now is in case I want to change something about it later, haha.

This is the battle theme used when fighting creatures in the shadowy "Otherworld" city, so I wanted it to sound dark and unnerving, while still being something that gets you pumped up to fight. It's a pretty simple song, but I think it's my favorite I've made for the game so far. I'm looking forward to making more strange, imposing songs for the Otherworld later on…

[sceaven]

Some smaller pieces of side content I've been working on lately as a break from coding cutscenes...

Full blog post here!