"AI is an outdated and quite dangerous thing for the brain," — Slava Gris from RedblackSpade on the highlights of 2025

We continue to summarize the events of 2025 with game developers. Up next is an interview with Slava Gris from RedblackSpade, the creator of games like Reflection of Mine, Catmaze, and Fearmonium.

How did the year 2025 turn out for your team? What did you manage to achieve, what are you proud of, and what, on the contrary, did you not manage to complete?

Slava Gris, RedblackSpade: I'll start with the fact that I don't have a team: I work alone. This year, I managed to achieve what I set out to do - to continue working solo and announce my new project, Fevercide. I didn't plan to complete it in 2025, and indeed, I didn't finish it. So everything is going according to plan.

What conclusions did you draw as a development studio by the end of 2025?

My main conclusion is that AI is terribly overrated. For several years, studios of various kinds have been integrating AI into the development process, but the results have changed nothing fundamentally: game development hasn't become cheaper (for some reason); the quality of popular projects hasn't changed, and they haven't started releasing much more frequently. Players regularly express open hatred for AI in games. Developers with a good head on their shoulders are very cautious about this issue: they either don't use AI at all or mask it to the maximum, which only slows down the development process.

However, this is my perspective on the PC game niche. Perhaps things are different in the amazing world of mobile and browser games, but I'm not particularly interested in knowing the details.

My conclusion is that given the extensive research conducted this year on AI's negative impact on critical thinking, creativity, and cognitive skills, AI is an outdated and quite dangerous thing for the brain, which is clearly better not used.

Have the practices for interacting with publishers/investors changed? Has it become easier or more difficult to work with them?

Slava: The practice hasn't changed at all - I didn't like publishers then, and I still don't. Nobody contacted me during the announcement, but once the game appeared on IGN, I received several offers from publishers. I didn't even review the offers: it's immediately clear that publishers are still clinging to relatively well-known projects to spend as little money as possible on marketing, since a significant part of the work has already been done by the developer. As before, to find a "cool" publisher, you need to independently gather a couple of tens of thousands of "wishes" before they'll want to latch onto the game. However, I always question: if I've already done the main work of the publisher, why do I need them at a stage when statistics show that the game will pay off anyway?

How did the year turn out for the niche/genre you work in?

Slava: I work in the Metroidvania genre. This year, it was shaken by the release of Silksong. The release of this game crashed both Steam and eShop. By the time Silksong was released, 4 million people had added it to their wishlist. This is interesting from this perspective: the previous part (Hollow Knight) sold about 10 million copies in Steam. The general statistic is that 30% of players never even start the game they bought, and only 10% finish it. So: only about a million players got everything the previous project could offer, but a much larger number of people were interested in the sequel.

The moral here is that you shouldn't fear "oversaturation" in any niche as long as people remain very eager to purchase more and more, even without fully experiencing the enjoyment that already released games can bring them.

What strengthening or emergence of trends in your niche/genre do you expect in 2026?

Slava: I hope games become shorter. Nowadays, more and more projects (including in the Metroidvania genre) are becoming absurdly large, taking 30, 50, or 100 hours to complete. Considering that 90% of players don't finish the game, all the final chapters are made for just a few players and for those who will retell them on YouTube. In the single-player game industry, in my view, this is a big problem: we create a ton of content that almost no one sees. I'm glad that the game Constance somewhat succeeded this year (it sold 15 thousand copies on the first day, which is a very decent figure for a niche 2D Metroidvania) and, judging by the reviews, no one criticizes the game for its length. It takes just six hours to complete. And that's great.

What are your plans for next year?

Slava: All of 2025, I sat in my room working on Fevercide. I really hope that 2026 will pass the same way. There's nothing more enjoyable than creating your own world.