Entropy launched into Steam Early Access on August 18, with roughly a quarter of the finished game available: two towns, three dungeons, and a starting slice of a much bigger dark fantasy world pulling from Final Fantasy 7, Fallout, XCOM, and soulslike combat. Lovely Hellplace previously made Dread Delusion, a low-poly first-person RPG praised for side content so strange and dense it rivaled the main story. That history is exactly why Entropy’s growing word count is worth paying attention to — and why it sits alongside buzzy dark-fantasy peers like the “K-Diablo” ARPG Tarae: The Unbound on the watch list.

Entropy Was Supposed to Be Leaner Than Dread Delusion

Wragg has said the plan going into Entropy was to write fewer words than Dread Delusion required. That plan did not survive contact with actual development. Once the team started building companion characters and optional storylines, the temptation to dig deeper into every character and theme won out, and the script grew right back to where it started, if not further.

This is a familiar pattern for small studios chasing ambitious scope. A team sets a leaner target to protect the schedule, then the creative instincts that made the last game good pull the project back toward the thing that worked. For a business owner watching this from the outside, it is a useful reminder that creative discipline and creative quality often pull in opposite directions, and the tension rarely resolves cleanly on paper.

Why Companion Writing Is Where the Word Count Explodes

A large share of Entropy’s writing effort goes into its companions. Some are anonymous mercenaries players recruit and barely notice. Others are story-centric party members with their own backstories, arcs, and reasons for being dragged into the plot. Writing convincing versions of both categories, at scale, across a game world four times bigger than what is currently playable, is where a script balloons fastest.

This is not padding for padding’s sake. Companion writing is one of the clearest value signals in modern RPGs. Players return to games like Baldur’s Gate 3 or the Mass Effect series specifically to spend more time with characters they like, long after the main plot has been resolved. Wragg leaning into that instinct is a bet that depth in the margins sells the game as much as the core story does.

The Business Math Behind Loving Sidequests Too Much

Every extra sidequest is extra writing, extra dialogue recording, extra testing, and extra time before the next content update ships. For a studio the size of Lovely Hellplace, that is a real scope decision with real budget consequences, not just a creative flourish. Early Access softens the risk here, since the studio can release Act 1 now, gather player feedback and revenue, and use both to justify the time sidequests demand in later acts.

That structure is smart operator thinking dressed up as passion. Wragg is not just indulging a personal preference; he is using Early Access as a funding and validation mechanism for the exact kind of content that made his last game stand out. If players respond to the side stories in Act 1, that response becomes the business case for writing even more of them in Act 2 and beyond. It echoes a point Fallout co-creator Tim Cain keeps making about why studying what actually works beats chasing hits.

What This Means for RPG Fans and Small Studios

Entropy is a useful case study for anyone building or evaluating narrative-heavy games. Word count is not automatically bloat, and a growing script is not automatically a red flag. When the growth comes from companions and side stories players actually seek out, it is closer to product-market fit than scope creep.

For players, the takeaway is simple: an Early Access RPG whose developer keeps writing more than planned, by choice, is usually a good sign. For studios watching from the sidelines, Entropy is a reminder that the sidequests you cannot stop writing might be the exact thing your players end up paying for.

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Stranded on Mars With a Sack of Potatoes

The setup is pure survival catnip. Your astronaut wakes up after a deadly Martian dust storm to find the rest of the crew gone and the mission in ruins. From there it’s you against the red planet. You scavenge gear from earlier Mars missions, harvest the world’s scarce resources, and — yes — cultivate potatoes to keep from starving, a wink at The Martian so direct it’s practically the game’s thesis. The long-term goal isn’t just to endure but to build a rocket and escape.

It’s a single-player experience through and through, which puts the entire weight of the fantasy on your isolation. That solitude is the point, and it’s what separates Sol One from the co-op survival crowd that dominates the genre.

One Developer, Real Science, a Whole Planet

Here’s the detail that makes Sol One worth watching: it’s being built by a single developer who goes by yeetgench, with a stated goal of grounding the game’s mechanics in realistic science. That’s an enormous ambition for a solo project — a full-scale Mars to explore, base building, farming systems, and dynamic dust storms that turn the environment into an active threat.

Solo-dev survival games have a strong track record of overdelivering when the creator has a clear vision, as we’ve seen with audacious one-person projects like Wordless Forest. The risk with any early access launch is scope, but a tightly themed premise like this one gives a lone developer a fighting chance to deliver something focused rather than sprawling.

Why a Familiar Formula Can Still Win

The survival-crafting genre is crowded to the point of exhaustion, so a new entry needs a hook that cuts through. Sol One’s hook is borrowed cultural shorthand: everyone already understands “The Martian, but you play it.” That instant legibility is a real advantage in a marketplace where getting a player to grasp your game in five seconds is half the battle. Ambitious survival sequels like Outward 2 lean on brand recognition; Sol One leans on a blockbuster movie’s premise instead.

Early access also lets a solo developer fund and refine the game with community feedback rather than betting everything on a single launch day — a pragmatic model that has salvaged plenty of promising indies.

Worth a Spot on Your Wishlist

Sol One won’t reinvent survival gaming, but it doesn’t need to. A lonely, science-minded Mars adventure with a killer elevator pitch is exactly the kind of early access experiment worth keeping an eye on. If you like your survival games isolating, methodical, and a little cinematic, this one’s an easy wishlist add before it lands this week.

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• Road to Vostok Review: A Solo Dev Survival Hit Worth Watching

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Here is the hook for value-minded players: the game usually costs $15, but it is on sale for $12 until August 8. That is a remarkable amount of hand-crafted game for the price of a couple of coffees.

A Second Episode That Barely Looks Like the First

Episode One was a tight, stylish detective brawler set across a few dense city blocks. Episode Two blows that scale wide open. You now get car chases, sprawling new districts to prowl, medieval broadswords to swing, and a stack of new guns to experiment with. Side by side, the two episodes feel like different games sharing one universe.

That willingness to reinvent mid-development is rare. Most studios patch and polish; New Blood rebuilds. It is the same restless energy that makes so many indie Steam projects worth watching, as we saw with the solo-dev survival hit Road to Vostok.

New Blood’s Immersive Sim DNA Runs Deeper Than Ever

Underneath the comic-book violence, Fallen Aces is a proper immersive sim, and Episode Two leans into that harder than before. You can pickpocket goons, pop locked doors, flip light switches to slip through the dark, and distract enemies rather than fight them head-on. Weapons degrade, so every pipe and pistol is a resource to manage, not a permanent fixture.

Levels are built around vertical exploration and open-ended objectives, with multiple routes through every scenario. Whether you want to bludgeon your way through the front door or ghost across the rooftops, the systems support it. That depth is what separates a New Blood shooter from the crowd of throwback FPS titles, in the same way Luna Abyss carved out its own lane in a busy genre.

Why $12 Makes This an Easy Call for Shooter Fans

Early access always carries a warning: the game is not finished, and content arrives in chunks. But Fallen Aces has earned trust. The opening levels were praised for tense stealth, gloriously slapstick combat and a genuinely fun pulpy story, and Episode Two adds hours more of the same craft.

At $12 for a game this stylish and this deep, the risk-to-reward math is firmly in the player’s favour. It is one of those Steam finds — like the wonderfully odd Dinoblade — where the price tag undersells the ambition on screen.

Related on BizzNerd

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The Bottom Line

Fallen Aces Episode 2: Shadow of Death is a bold, generous update that reshapes an already excellent shooter into something bigger and stranger. For $12, immersive-sim fans and lapsed noir detectives alike should not think twice. Grab it before the sale ends and watch New Blood keep transforming its game in real time.

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How a Brass-Knuckles-Only Shop Prints Money

It is a runaway success in the small-store-tycoon space: a gun store sim where the actual firearms are almost optional. Stock the shop exclusively with brass knuckles — typically a low-tier, low-margin item — and you can still make serious in-game cash. The mechanics emphasize foot traffic, shelf placement, and pricing psychology over weapon variety. Customers walk in with budgets and impulse signals; sell them anything sharp or heavy and they leave happy. The economy rewards volume sales, smart restocking, and just-in-time supply chain decisions. It feels less like a power fantasy about weapons and more like a tightly designed retail puzzle in a setting that gives the puzzle some edge. Early access reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, and the brass-knuckles experiment is already inspiring its own subgenre of self-imposed challenge runs across YouTube and Twitch.

The Quiet Rise of Small-Business Simulators

The success of small-business simulators has been one of the quietest gaming trends of the last few years, and this title is the latest to ride that wave. Games like Supermarket Together, Gas Station Simulator, and the newer crop of niche-shop sims have proven there is a massive appetite for ‘pretend I am running a small business’ content. For entrepreneurs in the Bizznerd audience, that resonance is not accidental — these games scratch the same itch as actually running a side hustle, without the financial risk. Developers are leaning in, building tighter economic loops, layering in employee management, and adding light narrative stakes. The brass-knuckles-only run is exactly the kind of player-driven experimentation that demonstrates a sim’s flexibility: when the systems work, players will invent their own challenges, and those self-imposed runs become the strongest possible word-of-mouth marketing.

Chill builders take note: we also covered Plentiful, the relaxed god game Steam builders will love.

Why Tycoon Games Keep Outperforming on Steam

Steam’s data on simulator sales has been unmistakable for years now: niche-shop and tycoon games consistently outperform expectations. Behind the trend is something deeper than nostalgia — it is the gamification of small business ownership in an era where actual entrepreneurship feels increasingly out of reach for many players. A $20 store sim lets you experience the dopamine of building something profitable without the burnout, the tax filings, or the customer-service nightmares. For developers, the formula is now well understood: tight economic loops, satisfying restock animations, and just enough chaos to keep things interesting. This gun store sim’s brass-knuckles loophole is a perfect microcosm — emergent strategy that the developers probably did not plan for, but that players love discovering, and that turns into free marketing every time someone screen-records it.

The Bottom Line

Whether this title becomes the next breakout hit or fades into Steam’s simulator backlog depends on how the developers handle the next few patches. But the brass knuckles experiment proves one thing clearly: in 2026’s gaming market, a simple but well-designed economic loop is still one of the most powerful hooks available, and players will always find the funniest way to break it.

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Airborne Empire Exits Early Access With a Bang

Airborne Empire is the follow-up to Airborne Kingdom, a game that earned a devoted fanbase for its serene but strategically demanding take on city building. Where most city builders anchor you to the ground, the Airborne series puts your entire civilisation in the sky — a floating, wind-powered kingdom that must balance population, resources, and structural weight as it drifts across a procedurally generated world.

The 1.0 launch comes with a major content addition that expands the systems players have been working with throughout the Early Access period. The simultaneous 50% discount on the launch price makes this one of the more generous full-release value propositions in recent memory — a direct reward for new players who waited and a celebration of the community that helped shape the game during development.

City Builders Are Having a Moment — And Airborne Empire Is Well-Placed to Capitalise

The city-builder genre has been experiencing a renaissance. Titles like Manor Lords, Frostpunk 2, and a wave of smaller releases have demonstrated that players are deeply interested in complex, systems-driven city management games. Airborne Empire’s distinctive airborne premise gives it an identity that stands apart from the medieval and industrial settings that dominate the genre.

Arriving at 1.0 with positive Early Access momentum and a price-cut strategy is a smart commercial move. Many games lose player interest in the gap between Early Access and full launch — but a major content update paired with a discount announcement creates genuine news momentum, bringing both lapsed players and new audiences back to the product page at the same time.

For the developer, this is the inflection point that will define the game’s long-term commercial success. The Early Access period generates goodwill; the 1.0 launch converts that goodwill into sustained sales.

What Successful Game Sequels Teach Us About Brand Trust

Airborne Empire’s path to 1.0 is a textbook example of how to leverage an existing brand in a niche genre. Airborne Kingdom built genuine affection among a community of players who appreciated its relaxed but thoughtful design philosophy. That equity did not disappear — it carried forward into the sequel’s Early Access and has now helped position Airborne Empire as an anticipated release rather than an unknown quantity.

This dynamic is something entrepreneurs across all industries should recognise. A first product that earns trust and loyalty creates a runway for follow-up products that smaller competitors simply cannot access. The sequel benefits from the original’s reviews, its fan communities, its word-of-mouth, and the goodwill built up over years.

The discount strategy at launch is also worth noting. Rather than protecting the full price point, the developer has chosen to grow the audience rapidly at a lower margin. In a market where community size often determines long-term viability — through updates, DLC, and eventual sequels — that is frequently the right call.

Airborne Empire is a rare sequel that appears to have genuinely built on what made its predecessor special. At 50% off during launch week, it is difficult to imagine a better time to see what all the fuss is about. The sky is not the limit — it is the starting point.

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