Dev ➤ Test ➤ Repeat | February 2026

If you just wanna see the games showcased at this event, click here.

I live in Denmark in the Copenhagen Area. In Copenhagen we have this volunteer run bi-monthly event going called Dev ➤ Test ➤ Repeat (click the link to join their Discord server!) which more or less is what it sounds like on the tin. You develop some kind of game (usually), you come to this event, you test it with people and then you take that feedback with you home to do some more development, rinse and repeat.

For those of you who don't know what this is it's primarily run by two fine people named Alexander Birke and Kristian Hedeholm and has been going for a while now. The event is completely free of charge. I'm a regular attendee for this event as I think it's an important community event that we should keep alive. This time we were at the Ghost Ship Games offices in Copenhagen.

We also get free Pizza with every event!

The Showcase

As always, some digital games, some physical games, some that are barely games at all yet, some newcomers and some familiar faces. It's always nice to come around for the showcase whether you never tried it before or not and this time around we actually had an overwhelming amount of new people showing up compared to repeats when Alex asked around the room. Love to see that!

Thug Arena

The first game I made my way by today was Thug Arena. I was immediately reminded of the first Grand Theft Auto from 1997 as I was sat down in front of screen with a top-down view of a simplistic 2D environment of streets, dead people and rampaging police cars trying to ram into some of the other players. And yea, that's right, this is a multiplayer game where multiple people are trying to rack up as many kills as they can before they inevitably die to other players. The more people you kill the more NPC police cars will show up to kill you back. You could either do so by stealing a car and ramming them or finding guns in the level. Talking to the developers, a pair of brothers, I learned that the game was actually inspired by the first GTA as I suspected and that the goal is to just have a fun chaotic game to play with your mates.

The game is made in Godot which is not something you see so often at these events, however the frequency is going up! Definitely keep an eye out for updates on this online-first arcadey shooter as they plan to get it out to the people by July 2026!

Rebase Interactive

• Creators: Rune Juul Brunshøj, Asger Juul Brunshøj
• Platforms: PC, Linux, Steam
• Join their Discord

Armada

The next game I got to play was called Armada. I sat down with Jan-Marc, one of the developers, and was taken through a game of Armada (that I lost!). You are presented with three lanes in space and each lane can hold three cards on either side. As you play, you get to buy cards from the middle of the map and build your deck turn by turn, which your opponent then also does. Every lane has rules decided by what space system is in that lane and you can play three cards per lane. Every turn you build up resources to buy new ships and the goal is to kill the other player before they kill you similar to card games like Magic the Gathering and Hearthstone. The game is a couch/hotseat type of setup where each player takes turns but otherwise can sit next to each other to player a match against each other. Something that we don't see all that often anymore! While I didn't expect to beat the developer at their own game I still put up a decent fight and could tell their was a lot of depth and thought put into the games design. If you've ever played Magic the Gathering's "Booster Draft" format and you liked it, or got sick of having to buy new cards all the time to even get to play, then this is definitely for you!

Suprisingly this game was made with a custom engine built from scratch using a very lean framework (wgpu) to interface with the hardware in Rust! That blew me away as that is not something we see at these events almost ever nor all that much in the broader indie scene. The other developer, William, told me what kind of affordances this gave them and how he felt that when you had the option of making your own engine you get to build out as you go compared to using something like Unity or Godot, where you have to shave away as you go and some times do hackfixes when you can't. He did however also, laughingly, say that there many challenges to face especially with graphical fidelity and hardware targets. But he is very positive that they'll get this space card deck builder game out of the hanger, and into the hands of players in due time.

They hope to get the game out on Steam Early Access by Q2 2026.

Critical Giants

• Creators: William Bang, Jan-Marc Heckman
• Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, Steam
• Join their Discord

Unforsaken

As I was walking around in the busy room I spotted something that looked like Warcraft 3 from a distance. I decided to investigate and found Unforsaken, a Rogue-like RTS inspired by old RTS Blizzard games like Starcraft and Warcraft. I had to defend my base against waves of enemies that would come running to try and take down my base in this particular mission. I was shown that I had a hero unit which could kick some serious ass as Astrid, one of the developers, pointed to their favourite. I spawned in a hellish eldritch monster that gave my units a vampiric aura to get health from damaging nearby enemies and my hero unit had an ultimate attack that drained every enemy in the vicinity for health continously, melting away their healthbars quickly. After talking with both of the developers present I was not surprised to learn that they had grown up with Starcraft and were really into these types of games. It showed in the demo I got to play. The game is made with Godot and Linn is the tech wizard who makes it all possible while Astrid perform the arts. There was also another part of the team whom I didn't get to meet today, but perhaps another time!

Last year they talked to a bunch of publishers at Gamescom which were interested in funding the game. They have a representative who is going to showcase a demo of the game at GDC later this year as well which will hopefully increase the chances even further that they get funding so they can go full-time to work on this love letter to old RTS games. They are going to hold a playtest in the near future, so be sure to go to their website and sign up to be notified and follow their socials!

TinyHag Games

• Creators: Linn Berntsson, Astrid Åkesson
• Platforms: PC, Steam
• Check out their Website

Yokanzi's Blade

This game was brought on the scene by a solo developer. The pitch was a "first person stabber" game which seemed intriguing. You have a card in one hand and a knife in the other and you have to traverse levels while fighting weird and some times non-sensical enemies. The developer was highly inspired by "Moon Logic" from old point and click puzzle games where you some times had to do some really out of left field weird things to solve problems. If you don't know what that feels like, look up videos of or (better yet) play games like Escape from Monkey Island. The levels are kind of bare and the enemies flat and irratic as they try to take you down. It looks really trippy though and gives vibes of games like Binding of Isaac. You can find items that you have no explanation for and just need to try and figure out through trial and error.

He revealed that he started the development of this game all the way back in 2019. He described himself as a "serial prototyper" (been there, still doing that!) and it wasn't until he hit this idea at that time that he really locked in and started working on it over time. He aims to have the game out for people by Q4 2026.

Ceracon Games

• Creators: Daniel Hyatt
• Platforms: PC, Steam

Sea of Rifts

If you have read my blog before then this name should be no stranger to you anymore. I have talked about this game in several of my previous blog posts but today Alex, the head developer, pulled me aside and excitedly said "Today I swear I will make you write that new things has happened to the game since last you saw it!" and right he was. For the uninitiated; Sea of Rifts is an open world RPG set in an endless ocean of possibilities. You can be a pirate, a goods hauler, a lawful citizen helping the local marines or something entirely different. It's entirely up to you. However these seas are full of dangers and mysterious inexplicable events that come from worlds beyond and one wrong decision could sink you and your crew. The game has gotten torpedos, sea mines, new quests that introduces you to the world, better navigation, better aiming, new target locking, weapon groups to fire certain weapons together or apart, tons of performance improvements and the crowning achievement; You can now sail backwards! I may or may not have inspired that after I got my ship lodged right up where the sun don't shine on one of their Titan enemies during a previous playtest (ask me if you see me!). It was my first time playing the game on a Steamdeck and it ran amazingly well! I have myself gotten to play with the torpedos and sea mines and the potential for whacky and tactical marine warfare has increased a lot with just those two additions.

And of course Alex left me hanging at the end and revealed a little teaser; They are working on introducing living weapons and he refused to elaborate what that entails! (how frustratingly...enticing). After a bit of chatting with Alex I learned that they are not currently aiming for any new platforms due to the workload it would introduce on the already very small team however the Steamdeck is an amazing minimum spec peace of hardware to test on, both for the Linux compatibility but also just the fact that if it runs well on the Steamdeck? Then it'll run well on anything.

Really looking forward to when the game comes out and if you can't wait for that they are hosting regular playtest events from their Discord server where you get to play the latest builds and help them find bugs, give feedback and constantly improve this labor of love. All in all you could say that it all seems like smooth sailing from here.

Out of Bounds Games

• Platforms: PC, Steamdeck, Steam
• Check out their Website

Rivers

I have mentioned this game a couple of times before but only because I didn't get to play but saw it as I walked past and played other games. I finally got to play it, and just in time as this might be the last time you see this game in this form for a while. All of the games pieces had been 3D printed by Kim, the creator, himself. I had to play against someone else and the goal of the game is to build rivers, using tiles, from end of a small board to the other. You draw cards that dictate how you can place specific tiles or how you can use other effects like swapping tiles or making them not count as "connected" to mess up the enemy player or help yourself. Both you and your opponent benefit from the same river formations so you have to be smart about how you play! I got quite into it and my opponent was also sweating bullets as we had a battle of the minds. As we went back and forth on how we placed the tiles we got to a close finish where I eventually lost by one move as I just couldn't get the right damn card to win! It was a lot a fun and it's clear that Kim put a lot of thought and care into the design to make a compelling experience.

He is now going to put the game back in the workshop and work out the kinks he has discovered, rebalance and make things like easy-to-read rules and improve presentation. He'll be dragging the game around to any boardgame convention he can manage to get into and to public spaces to play with people who don't have a background in games to get a different perspective on the experience. I'm glad I got to play it before it was too late and if you see a purple guy inviting you to play Rivers, then don't hesitate. You won't regret it.

• Creators: Kim Andersen
• Platforms: Tables, mostly Follow Kim on LinkedIn

Scarlet Republic the TTRPG

This was one of those games I didn't get to play but I did get to watch some of it and then have a chat with the creators afterwards. Like roleplaying games of old players were given papers with characters that had stats and traits and then a map to give an indicator of what the physical space of this game was like. Little tokens were used to signify player positions and Fergus Doyle was manning the Game Master station while three players were ready to play. Scarlet Republic borrows elements from Blades in the Dark for it's system and storytelling and uses percentile dice for dice rolling. It's very much inspired by the (now discontinued) Scarlet Republic project to make a tabletop version. The genres were described Italian renaissance mercenary squad in a fantasy setting. Today was primarily a test of the combat system however Fergus and Olmo are confident they can get a compelling narrative and story out to the people that means a lot more than the system itself.

From what I got to watch the players were engaged and having a good time with the little slice of the universe they got to play out and the combat was flowing in ways that simulationist systems typically don't see as much like in Dungeons and Dragons where fights can really drag on as you get into the weeds of the math. Fergus let me know that the next step for this project is making a magic system and in the next couple of months get people together to make their own characters, sit down at the table for 4-5 hours a session and do the full roleplay. They wish to test more of the social interactions, character development and see what player motivations emerge.

It'll be cool to see where they take this IP in future.

• Creators: Fergus Doyle, Olmo Rauba
• Platforms: Tables with tops, most likely

Join in

There were so many games I didn't get to play. Simply too many games and too little time! Please check out some of the pictures I took at the bottom. If you are in Denmark and around the Copenhagen Area you should definitely come by! Just join the Discord Server and look out for the next event announcement: Dev ➤ Test ➤ Repeat. Even if you don't have a game to show, come be a tester. Someone's gotta do it right? It's not just a testing event, it's also an amazing opportunity to network with other fellow developers. Most of the people who showed up today are indie developers part of a caring and close knit community. Even if what you have isn't much, still bring it and have some people test it! That's how you can figure out if you are going in the right direction with your idea, or if you need to tweak and redesign some things.

Test a lot, and test often. Especially with strangers who will give you the honest truth!

Hope to see you there. If you see me, please don't hesitate to come and say hello! You are also welcome to hit me up on BlueSky any time!

(psst! The event is free, there's free drinks and pizza and industry people often show up too!)