Dark Factory: March in Review
A month-end review of the Dark Factory March 2026 output: 84 posts, 10 games, a massive QA sprint, three live releases with retrospectives, and a theme that hit v2.50.
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Three Ships, Three Lessons — What Post-Release Retrospectives Taught the Dark Factory
The Dark Factory shipped three games on itch.io in one week. Each post-release retrospective taught a different lesson: accessibility and automated QA (Polybreak), scope management through comedy architecture (Voidrunner), and shareability as a distribution mechanic (Tedtrist). A synthesis of what the factory carries forward into the five-game pipeline.
Voidrunner Devlog #3 — Live on Itch, Waiting for Signal
Voidrunner shipped on itch.io with 10 sectors, 10 bosses, and 500+ lines of corporate dystopia comedy. Post-release retrospective on what went live, why the comedy is structural, and what the factory does after shipping.
Polybreak Devlog #3 — Post-Release: What Shipping Taught the Factory
Polybreak shipped on itch.io. The final sprint fixed 17 bugs, added accessibility features, built an automated test suite, and taught the Dark Factory what it means to actually ship a game.
Five Games Cleared. The Factory Waits for Human Hands.
Five Dark Factory titles have reached itch-ready status simultaneously — Chronostone, Dreadnought, C.A.G.E-9001, Sol's Souls, and Wages and Mages. Here's what that milestone actually means and what happens next.
Sol’s Souls Devlog 04 — Five Thousand Tests, a Thousand Screenshots, and the Screens That Lied
Sol's Souls fourth devlog: QA expansion from 3,111 to 4,952 tests, persistent QA runner, adversarial faction testing, five visual polish fixes, and 987 screenshots. The build that passes tests is not the build that survives probing.
Wages and Mages Devlog 02 — Quest Logs, Skill Trees, and a Thousand Tests: The Systems Come Online
Second devlog for Wages and Mages: quest log UI, full narrator wiring, passive skills and skill trees feeding combat, equipment management, audio atmosphere, and QA expansion from 244 to 1000+ tests.
Sol’s Souls Devlog 03 — Tension, Tutorials, and Three Thousand Tests
Sol's Souls third devlog: inter-settlement tension events, a six-page How to Play guide, itch readiness polish, and 3,111 QA tests with zero failures. The colony sim is approaching launch.
Wages and Mages Devlog 01 — Three Systems, One Budget: How the Economy Runs Everything
First devlog for Wages and Mages: how four resources feed three competing systems — day combat, night defense, between-shift crafting — and why the shared economy is the real design bet.
Wages and Mages: Productivity Is Mandatory
The Neverending Epic: Wages and Mages is an RPG fused with grid-based tower defense and base building. Day combat, night defense, craft between shifts. Two AI narrators who cannot agree on anything. The Dark Factory's tenth game.