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Devblog #1: Origins of Zaehbet, Draad

Time to Read:

3–5 minutes

Hello folks! Welcome to my first (and hopefully not only) devblog. If for some reason you decided to randomly click on a strange link on the internet, I am Boxronite, the developer of Zaehbet, Draad. In this week’s devblog, I will be going over the most basic origins of Zaehbet, Draad, and its behind-the-scenes development.

In the spring of 2026, I was somewhat working on a now abandoned game that never saw the light of a single test-build (if you’re curious, the idea was to create a Factorio-like game with a focus on agriculture). But then, after a playthrough of 7 Days to End With You, a semi-consistent viewership of The Etymology Nerd, and Duo threatening to murder me in my sleep, I had the bright idea to create a game about translating a conlang (I later learnt that this was not a unique idea, but we’ll get to that later).

Since I was (and still am) a student crushed under the relentless march of academia, this phase of development was made up of me sometimes opening up a Google Doc, vomiting out a couple ideas, and closing the tab. It was during this time that some of the most basic points of Zaehbet, Draad were fleshed out, such as:

  • The Setting (set in the past of a lot of existing lore I’ve made)
  • The Characters (you and suspicious cyborg lady)
  • The Plot (did you think I would actually reveal anything yet?)
  • The Gameplay (what if we took away half of your brain cells?)

Also, around this time, I had the idea of adding a mode to Zaehbet, Draad where the language would be swapped for something entirely different (such as Spanish), essentially turning Zaehbet, Draad into Duolingo. I may still do something with this idea, but that’s a long time down the road, past actually finishing the game and releasing it.

Screenshot of a document editing interface with notes about a game setting, detailing a character named Kroval and aspects of the game environment.
One of the earliest, first versions of the design document (lore and characters have (probably) since changed). Also, I promise that the demo is more interesting now.
Sketch of a character in a lab coat with an ocular prosthetic eye, labeled as 'medical scrub'. The character is also shown with a broken prosthetic limb and the legs off-screen. Additional annotations indicate elements like 'S.O.L. Armband' and 'Military insignia'.
Very rough, very early concept art

It was also at this time that I settled on the how of, well, how I was going to be making Zaehbet, Draad. While I could’ve used a more traditional Visual Novel engine like Ren’Py, I ultimately decided to use Unity, as it allowed me a lot more freedom in any and all of the wacky stuff I would get up to.

In addition to Unity, I chose YarnSpinner as my method for handling the game’s dialogue. Now, to be entirely honest, I have kind of forgor why I initially chose YarnSpinner. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that it had built-in Unity support and I was able to do whatever I wanted with it? Reasons for choosing it aside, that was what I ultimately went with as the base of dialogue for Zaehbet, Draad.

Fast forward a couple of months (and my computer literally cracking), and I now had the time and ability to begin actually creating Zaehbet, Draad instead of throwing ideas around in journals. You can see this in the sudden and somewhat continuous block of GitHub commits in my profile.

A heatmap chart showing activity levels from March to September, with darker shades indicating higher activity and lighter shades indicating less activity.

Development was going well: I was getting code out, I was having fun, I was spending my time during the summer being productive between this and an internship. More and more key systems of the game were getting made, such as getting YarnSpinner to cooperate with the translation, behind-the-scenes data structures, and building the Sentence Builder. (I should probably get a better name for that. Suggestions?)

However, when I was turning my attention to marketing the game, I had the realization that, no, I’m most certainly not a special little gem. I’m average and generic and one of many other, probably better games around the same concept. You had 7 Days to Spend With You (what initially inspired me) as well as Chants of Sennaar, Heaven’s Vault, Epigraph, and I just recently got contacted by the dev of Gata Guressi.

But, well, I already spent all of this work, and it’s a tad bit late to abandon it and start over again. So, here I am trucking along to get this out, and hopefully not disappoint too many people…

Anyways, thank you for reading my crazed ramblings for this week. The next devblog will be dropping next Friday, September 24 at 7:00 pm UTC. The polls for the next topic will be closing Monday, September 24 at 7 pm UTC, so make sure to vote or leave a comment for the topic I’ll cover next. (Votes will be combined from across platforms, so nothing’s stopping you from voting twice or thrice.)

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