Fix Stories: Hound Riders and the Fight to Stay Original

Building Hound Riders without losing what makes it its own

For this Fix Stories feature, Morgan of Morganic Games shares how Hound Riders went from a two-week prototype and guerrilla convention demos to GameBCN — and what happens when other games suddenly ship mechanics remarkably close to ideas you were already building.

Morgan is the art director, writer, composer, and lead designer of Hound Riders. In his own words, he explains the project’s beginnings, its unusual road through events and incubation, and the painful moments when other games appeared with mechanics strikingly close to ideas the team was already developing.

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Hi all! I’m Morgan, art director, writer, composer, and lead designer of Hound Riders.

If you were to ask two years ago, I would have told you I wasn’t even a fan of deckbuilders. I was happily designing visuals for a roguelike metroidvania. Yet, here we are, working full-time on a deckbuilder-RPG.

Our goal is for players to enjoy not only dynamic, bloody combat, but also exploring the Scarlands atop a giant hound. You will meet quirky, dark characters, face randomized events, and make hard choices from a role-playing perspective. It is a challenge to break through the current “oh, another deckbuilder” feeling that permeates the market. However, I am a strong believer in authenticity as the foundational factor that keeps any kind of artistic expression afloat throughout the market’s ebbs and flows.

From Guerrilla Mode to GameBCN

The project truly came to life in 2025 when my long-time friend, Pablo, joined. I had the foundations ready: mockups, core mechanics, and even the birth of our studio, Morganic Games…and Pablo was eager to prototype it in Godot.

Two weeks later, our prototype was ready. We immediately went into guerrilla mode. We attended our first convention, Guadalindie, showing off this toxic-green, gritty world for the first time to random attendees and dev friends, right from Pablo’s Steam Deck on whatever empty table and quiet corner we could find.

Later, we crashed IndieDevDay in Barcelona, again in guerrilla mode, because our first demo build wasn’t ready until it was too late for us to get a booth. I am not usually fond of networking, but something great came out of the visit: we applied for GameBCN’s incubator program and got selected. It was a massive self-esteem boost. Out of more than 150 video games from different countries, our project was one of the final 6 selected.

The “Ouch” Moments of Game Design

Keeping a game unique is a funny battle, and right before we entered the incubator, we found out that the universe sometimes decides to copy your homework before you even submit it.

We’ve had three major “ouch” moments where recent high-profile releases did exactly what we were designing in real-time:

1-The Timeline System: I was working on character timelines as meta-progression when the Slay the Spire 2 beta dropped, introducing “Epochs”. Our system was nearly identical: you’d get 1 or 2 “Calendar Events” stored in your timeline every run, never to show up again.

2-The Risk/Reward Defense: In my original designs, players could either load bullets into a gun cylinder slot, or leave slots empty as a way to gain Evasion bumps (representing “Reaction Time”). Then Pluto came out with a defense system where leaving spell ring slots empty bumps up your shield.

3-The “Tip Over” Mechanic: I wrote down a status called “Tip Over” inflicted by bullets. If the status stacks surpassed the enemy’s remaining HP, they’d instantly die. Days later, I unlocked the Necrobinder in StS2 and discovered her “Doom” status.

Finding out about those three “ouch” points in almost real-time was both painful and hilarious, but it hasn’t stopped us. Now, inside the GameBCN program, the project is being heavily optimized.

Alright, so what’s next?

We are currently in the pre-vertical slice phase. There is still a massive amount of design space to explore, and we have plenty of unique mechanics that we are eager to both explore and tighten up. Thanks to GameBCN pushing our boundaries, we are actually attending this year’s Gamescom to see if we can find a publishing deal or just get into some interesting conversations. We are really looking forward to shaping Hound Riders into the exact experience we want to deliver.

If you want to experience the tactical combat for yourself, you can already play the Hound Riders demo on Steam. Don’t forget to add it to your wishlist if you like what you see! You can also follow our journey and check out our development updates on Discord and Instagram at @houndriders_. See you there!

Hound Riders

Release: 2027 (Steam Playtest access currently available by request)

Genre: Tactical Roguelite, Deckbuilder, Strategy

Developer / Publisher: Morganic Games / Morganic Games

Platforms: PC — Steam

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Fix Gaming Channel: Fix Stories gives developers and creators room to share the stories behind their work directly in their own words. Morgan’s submitted story above has been preserved in his voice and formatted for publication by Fix Gaming Channel.

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