2025 was a great year for Future Vibe Check. We went from a quiet project to finally turning the speakers on to share what we've been working on. If you’ve been with us since the start or just joined the recent Playtest in December, I want to give you a big thank you. You are the rhythm section of this development that keeps me going.

We patched bugs, built key features, and started to better understand what makes FVC special. Here are the highlights:

• The Alpha Launch: We kicked things off with a Alpha demo and joined a series of festivals which helped us get started on the journey. Thank you to the Six One Showcase[www.sixoneindie.com], Orbital Potato, Secret Sauce, Humble Games, and others [gamecritics.com]who helped us spread the vibe this past year.

• The MIDI Revolution: We ripped out the old sound engine and replaced it with full MIDI support and Soundfonts. Now we have >300 instruments and real musical expression. Pretty soon we will have the BEST node based composition and procedural music system ever made :)

• Creative Mode and Sharing: We launched v1 of our creative sandbox mode where you can make music with all our tools available and share them to the community. I'm still amazed at some of the things the community has built.

• Sessions and Procedural Everything: Terrain, resources, and threats are now procedurally generated. No two runs will sound (or play) the same.

• Quality of Life: Reworked belt logistics, HUD, menus, tooltips, indicators, and more. We cleaned up a lot of UX/UI noise to allow you to better enjoy the music. Still much more to do here in 2026.

The hard foundational systems (automation logistics, object placement, save/load architecture, MIDI integration, composition systems, procedural music) are largely done. We have the ingredients, now we need to make a tasty meal.

2026 is all about game design iteration, progression, and polish.

• Hybrid Design Iteration: FVC is taking a lot of risks being a hybrid game, so expect more updates to test and iterate on game loops to get things right. A large playtest update is incoming within a month with the areas below being worked on.

• Better Music Faster: Our pacing of the early-to-mid game still needs work. We are working on a way for players to start with better music early so they hear the magic of the procedural generation quicker. We want you to focus on crafting how the music expresses itself (e.g. do you want a rousing lead vs a solemn melody?) rather than crafting each individual music item.

• Sessions and Replayability: We plan to continue to test more concepts related to making FVC highly replayable with shorter "jam" sessions. Next on the list is dynamic production goals while you are playing, inspired by the Orders system from games like Against the Storm.

• Crafting & Gathering Complexity: We want to strike the right balance of supporting musical exploration working in concert with base building and logistics. Our current playtest has different scenarios that explore ways this can go—we would love more feedback on this!

• Onboarding: Our tutorialization is still a struggle for many players. This will be a big focus area to improve in the first half of 2026.

• Playtest and Community Credits: Reminder —if you participate in the playtest and fill out the feedback form[docs.google.com], you get your name in the credits. We are building this together, and I want your name on it if you help us get to to the finish line.

2026 is about finding the perfect Vibe together.

Much Love,

— Unwise

Hey Vibers! I’ve finally emerged from cooking in the development cave with the largest FVC update yet now accessible via a Steam Playtest on our store page. Playtest Access (here). The playtest update lays the foundation for the game to evolve to find the perfect Vibe!

NOTE: This is separate from our previous Demo which will be released again in the new year. Use the playtest to play the latest!

• >300 new instruments to use! All backed by MIDI and Soundfonts for better sound!

• Real Music Expression: Now, you can control the duration of a note and how hard it is hit. You can even set it to sustain until the next node as well

• Explore 20+ new scales and use improved generation of leads, melodies, and chord progressions!

• Multi-Node Control: Now, you can multiselect nodes (shift + click) to modify duration, velocity, and travel time using curves. Also included is support for saving sequences and using them to speed up your builds.

• Chords: Improved tools like the ability to custom set your own chords on a chord node alongside strumming, arpeggiation, reverse strumming and more!

• Sessions and Generation: Implemented a new system for players to choose modifiers and goals for each session.

• Procedurally generated terrain, resource placement, and threats! Want the world to be majority water? Want to branch your signals at no cost? Now you can with session based modifiers.

• Multiple Scenarios: Included 3 scenarios to test (item crafting, node shooting, and music upgrades). Your feedback on these scenarios will really help us tighten up the game loop for the next iteration of the game. Each plays a bit differently with mechanics around crafting, gathering, and defense.

• Defense Loops: Improved projectile infrastructure and vibe stealer game loop. We now have 4 types of stealers. Stealers that steal karma, items, power, or reduce the value on a node. This includes all new systems for spawning and movement for vibe stealers. Defend to the Beat!

• Indicators/Tooltips: New tooltips and improved indicators across all key systems.

• Menus: Reworked nearly every menu in the game to be clearer and have consistent styling.

• Object Placement: Improved copy/paste settings (now settings are maintained on the copy ex pitch value), fewer wire/network restrictions, ability to disconnect specific wires, and support for more factories to be repositioned and rotated after placement.

• Tons more….. player location saving, autosave improvements, performance improvements, visual improvements, etc

• The two big foundational pieces (MIDI and Procedural Generation) are now done. Woo hoo! With this new foundation, we plan to iterate much faster on the game design, loop, and economy. This is why we decided use the playtest feature on our Steam Page vs a demo to be clear that the game is in an iterative testing phase.

• Expect more engagement and new builds frequently with new features and game loops to test going forward :). Your input will directly impact the direction we take the game in the future! We plan to formally release a new demo (with a big marketing campaign) in the new year.

• If you complete the feedback form here expect a shoutout and credit when the game is released! Feedback Form[docs.google.com]

Excited to see what you make with the new systems! Fun times ahead.