Skeleseller news & patch notes

Hello again, everyone!

I've spent some time improving the game. Here are the most recent patch notes:

• Added launch options on Windows and Linux. Players had reported issues with the Nvidia OpenGL driver, so now you can change to a different rendering engine. There is no universally correct choice, so if one doesn't work for you, please try the other.

• Fixed a bug where achievements earned during the demo weren't saved to the save file, so they wouldn't be granted upon loading the full game. This is why more players have an achievement for beating the second elite monster than they do for beating the first one. 😅

• Fewer customers will now desire an item at any given time. It used to be a maximum of 4 in Story Mode; now it's 2. This should result in items selling more quickly, which may make the game slightly shorter, so I'll have to keep an eye on this. The rationale behind this change is that players generally wanted more battle windows to be able to earn different loot.

• Changed the currency symbol for French and Spanish from an "O" (for "or" and "oro") to a "$" so that players don't think that currency amounts are 10x what they actually are.

• Added a sheet-music button to the title screen so that players can find this on their own. Note: I only have English strings for this button so far; sorry, everyone.

• The lever is now highlighted when you first buy the Extractor Training perk. There was already a hand pointing at the lever, but some players thought it was pointing at the extractor itself.

• Fixed other minor bugs not worth detailing.

If you find any other bugs, feel free to post them in the discussion forums or on Discord.

Have fun playing!

-Adam

UPDATE (March 26th, 2026): Valve has agreed to fully refund anyone who bought the game at full price! Please see more details here; this is only available for the next month.

Hey everyone,

Thank you very much for playing Skeleseller and leaving largely positive reviews! Even the negative reviews mostly said they had fun, so I think the biggest, most easily felt change I can make is to lower the price of the game to better meet player expectations.

The original price (in USD) was $9.99, which I've lowered to $7.99 (still with a 10% launch discount). Prices across each region typically fell by the same ~20%, but I got specific feedback about Brazil, India, Poland, and Türkiye, so I dropped those prices by an average of 37.5%.

If you have any questions about this or think that your region's pricing is still too high, please contact me on Discord.

Thanks again!

-Adam

P.s. I lowered the price a couple of hours before this post and just forgot to write this announcement. 🤦‍♂️

It's been two years in the making, but today's the day—Skeleseller has finally launched! 🎉

The demo will remain available for anyone who still wants to try the game before buying it. It represents the first ~30 minutes of Story Mode, which should last for a total of 4-5 hours in the full game. Also, your progress should carry over from the demo (if it doesn't, feel free to reach out over Discord or the Steam forums).

Something to keep in mind: this isn't an idle game in the sense that you're supposed to walk away from your computer and let it progress while you're gone. You can do that, but "idle" here means that you don't directly control the characters. You'll find the game much more enjoyable if you're paying ~90% attention to it. 🙂

Some extras:

• There's more content after Story Mode in the form of a very casual roguelite mode.

• I plan to put the OST on YouTube for free so that everyone can enjoy it.

• The game comes with free piano sheet music for the entire soundtrack (find it in the "Extras" folder).

I hope you all enjoy the game!

-Adam, Creator of Skeleseller

Hey everyone,

Skeleseller launches very soon. I'm excited (and nervous 😬) and I've still been working hard on everything. This post coincides with updating the demo and the release versions of the game here on Steam, but it's mostly minor changes that aren't worth detailing.

Some content creators on YouTube and Twitch have been covering the launch version of the game if you'd like to check it out. For example, here's Idle Cub's 3h16m video, which I had a lot of fun watching.

I hope you'll all enjoy the game on Tuesday! I plan to celebrate the launch on my Twitch stream. 😁

Cheers!

-Adam

We're just barely over two weeks until launch! 😬

I've been working hard on improvements:

• Improved the town-menu UI and the notification/tip UI.

• The intro fade-ins and fade-outs now look much nicer.

• Fixed Steam Deck issues with windowing modes and the splash screen.

• Improved performance (maybe only slightly this time 🤫).

• Fixed many minor bugs.

There are other fun improvements in this patch for the full version of the game that you'll have to discover on your own when it launches! 😁

If you haven't joined Discord already, please consider joining.

Hey, all! Writing these quickly since there's not a ton to report:

• Changed renderers due to a performance issue that is possibly caused by high-poll-rate mice (more info here, although this affected more than just Windows). On the plus side, while we're using the OpenGL renderer, this means that the game should just run for everyone.

• Improved performance even more. The game allocates less memory, meaning there should be fewer FPS drops. For a slightly more technical explanation: the allocations were causing the garbage collector to run more frequently than it should have.

• Fixed bugs (including one that let people duplicate adventurers 🙃).

• Unlocking the Quick Move Menu now lets you use keyboard shortcuts without even having to click an item.

We're almost exactly 3 weeks away from launching. 😁🎉

Please consider joining Discord if you haven't already: https://discord.gg/Gjaqt9k53R

Hello!

Lots of work went into this change, but in the essence of saving time, I'm only listing the big stuff:

• Improved performance. This should be noticeable on the Steam Deck especially, but there's still work to be done.

• Improved controller support.

  • The virtual cursor should now work on Linux.

  • Analog buttons should now work for all key bindings without double-press issues.

• Fixed all sorts of bugs that aren't worth detailing. 🤫

Hope you all enjoy! Please let me know if you encounter any problems.

Hi everyone,

I just added Steam Cloud support! If you start a new game now, it should carry over to the launch version of the game on March 17th. If you want to transfer your old data, you just have to copy a single file (instructions are here).

Your save file should roam across all three supported platforms: Windows, macOS, and Linux. If you encounter any issues with this, please let me know via Discord. 🙏

Other than that, this version contains a bunch of polish and bug fixes. The biggest change besides Steam Cloud is better controller support (including an actually working virtual cursor on Linux!).

Remember: launch is March 17th. I'm super hyped! 😁

-Adam

Hi, everyone!

Skeleseller launches on March 17th, which is just 46 days away. The demo is pretty solid and will still get some minor updates (mostly bug fixes or quality-of-life improvements), but there's only one news section per game on Steam, so I'm going to start using this space to share patch notes for the launch version.

Given that no one actually has access to the launch version yet, there's nothing to say in this post, but the next one will include the changes. I plan to start sharing keys with press and influencers.

On that note, if you know any YouTubers or streamers who might be interested in the game, please pass the Steam page along! 🙏

Looking forward to launch! 😁

-Adam

Lots of small/nice changes in this version:

• You can now drag items that customers desire directly onto the customers. This had been a point of frustration for a while. 😅

• The game should look slightly better overall; the proper filters have been applied to text and buttons such that both pixel art and text should look crisp.

• Notifications now have sounds, a hover color, and no longer "jitter" when dismissed.

• Sliders now have cute skulls on them. 💀

• Improved controller support

  • You can now scroll using the left stick.

  • The camera doesn't always move at maximum speed, so nudging an analog stick slightly is better.

• The sound that plays when creating a building is now bassier. It sounded sort of tinny before.

Skeleseller now has a release date! It is Tuesday, March 17th, 2026. That means it's 74 days from this post (at least in my timezone 😛).

Lots of minor changes to announce—there will probably be a few other such changes before the release date which cover polish-level tasks:

• Added a better sound when building a building.

• Improved performance.

• Improved Seek Food so that leveling it up quickly doesn't punish you in terms of cooldown.

• Added a graphic for when the Golem uses Earthen Shield.

• Made the Mage projectiles (Fireball and Ice Blast) match the casting animation.

• Decreased the cost of the second adventurer from 35G → 30G. This is quite minor, but it will signal to players that they should get their second adventurer before unlocking the Canyon.

• Made item displays (in the warehouse and shops) easier to click.

• Fixed minor bugs.

Hope you enjoy!

Hi again!

Just a reminder that the full version of the game is what's getting the most updates, but it's not public on Steam yet. 🤫 As such, we only have a few minor items regarding demo improvements:

• Changed the "!" text into a pixel-art graphic.

• Fixed the waving flag on top of the guild. It used to "wobble".

• Dialogs should now appear in the correct positions on Windows as opposed to at the top of the screen.

Please consider joining the Skeleseller Discord!

It's looking like Skeleseller will launch in March of 2026, which just gives us another few months to get ready. We're still working hard to make sure everything is perfect!

People have responded very well to the demo. ~8600 people played with a median playtime of exactly two hours. 🎉 Thank you all so much!

Unfortunately, giving away two hours of the game for free is a tough sell given that the game won't be super long at launch (~10 hours in total). As a result, the biggest change in this patch is that the demo has been pruned down to about ~30 minutes of playtime.

Other changes:

• Added controller support. You can control most of the game through a virtual mouse cursor now.

• Allowed remapping keybindings (and controller bindings).

• Workers will now reserve items on the ground or in the warehouse so that multiple workers don't try to pursue the same item.

• Workers now have a small chance to prioritize harvesting above their other actions. They could always harvest before this, but only as a final priority.

• Rearranged targets in the Quick Move Menu to optimize for the default hotkeys on the keyboard.

• Bosses now occupy regular locations and will show on the battle map before you've beaten them.

• We now automatically select the adventurer to hire when there's only one option. This had confused several players before this change (sorry! 😢).

• We set up for localization. The game now supports 8 languages other than English. The only problem is that we've only got translations for a tiny bit of French so far. 👀

• Rebalanced some adventurers and skills.

We've still been working hard on post-demo content (now called "BONE Mode"), so there aren't many changes for the demo, but we're excited to share the new battle portraits with all of you!

• Note: this new version will break your old save files. If you want, reach out on Discord and I can try to restore your progress.

• Visual changes

  • Added portraits for each adventurer.

  • Improved the look of the life-regeneration bar when waiting for full health after a battle.

• Added a new spell to the enchanter: Faux Potions. This produces magical potions to fuel your extractor.

• Added a tooltip to the extractor to make it clear how the accumulated values work.

• Fixed an issue where you could use the Quick-Move Menu with keyboard shortcuts before unlocking it.

• Fixed a bug where loading from a save file would always give you two customers even if you had upgraded how many visit your town.

• Improved the title screen

  • Added button sound effects to the title screen. They were previously silent. 🤫

  • There used to be a discrete button for "Load Game". It's now baked-in to "Story Mode".

Just some minor fixes for today:

• Fixed a bug with graphical tearing in some of the UI.

• Changed wording of Hard-Working Adventurers to make it clearer how it works for new players.

Loading the game through the title screen used to prevent you from seeing any signs, meaning you couldn't build anything. This obviously hampered progress quite a bit in a town-building game. 🙃

This has now been fixed! Please let us know about any bugs you encounter via Discord.

It's been about two months since the last update. We've been hard at work on post-demo content, so the patch notes may seem a bit light, but trust us when we say that the full game is going to be great! 🎉

• Overhauled the UI. The panels, tabs, and various elements should look a lot nicer now:

• Added custom character portraits for all NPCs (e.g. if you click the Garbage Slime, you'll now see this):

• Loot now flies from the portal into the warehouse rather than teleporting there.

If you want to playtest all of the changes we've been making, please join us in the Skeleseller Discord!

Whew, it's been almost a month since the last update...! We've been working hard on Skeleseller, but the focus has shifted to getting ready for launch, meaning the demo won't be getting very many updates. Still, there's a slew of changes we think you'll love:

• Elite battles now have custom styling! The border is made of bones with snakes wrapped around them. This should more clearly indicate to new players that elite battles are special (more than just "why is this battle window big all of a sudden?").

• The intro now has a poisonous snake instead of a poisonous slime. This was for consistency with the Skelerap. 👀

• New locations are now unlocked with explicit buttons on the locations themselves rather than a dedicated "Upgrade portal" button. This allows the battle map to take up even more space in the UI.

  • The "Unlock" button flashes green to make it stand out more.

• The Guildmaster's hiring dialogs have been consolidated. Gil used to ask if you want to pay to hire a new adventurer, then he would present you with the choices separately. Now, you can see the choices without paying money, and the act of choosing is the purchase.

• All NPCs are now corporeal and will cast shadows correctly.

• Very slightly buffed the Paladin.

• Improved CPU performance of the entire game. There was a frequent function call that we rewrote to be much faster.

• Improved VRAM usage slightly (battle windows no longer have a need to be upscaled).

• Text in the town will no longer cover battle windows.

• The tip about "keep battling to grow Skeletown" now automatically hides after only 2 battles (it used to be 3, causing many players to manually dismiss it).

• Some brown mushrooms around town are now special in some way...

The biggest changes in this patch have to do with skills:

• You now unlock two skills upon hitting level 2, that way you have a choice of where to put your first skill point.

• Skills that haven't been unlocked now show in the skill area so that you can tell how many you will get.

• The tooltips for skills tell you what level you get the skill at and how to level up (so it will tell you to beat an elite enemy → build the farm → use Wisdom Sludge).

This should add clarity and choice for players, so let us know what you think! 😁

There are also some minor improvements:

• Fixed a sprite-bleeding issue that could happen on the coin and brain icons.

• The fishing pond's tooltip now indicates that you can click the pond to directly open the battle map.

• The tip system will no longer show the tips about building the armor or weapon shops if you already have them.

See the "!" on the Rogue and Mage? That means... you've got skill points to spend! This has been a thorn in many players' sides for a while, and now hopefully no one ever has to wonder about spending skill points again.

Other changes include:

• Slightly increased the leveling rate early on (lower sludge costs and one farm perk is 5G cheaper)

• Added a Discord button to the title screen. Feel free to contact us there with feedback!

• Fixed some small bugs.

• Made some small improvements.

The biggest change is that battle windows can now be much larger than they used to be! They can be smaller, too, of course:

The other big change is that there's a new perk at the Garbage Slime to address a common pain point:

Beyond that, there were ~4 bug fixes that aren't worth detailing. Have fun skellin' and sellin'!

• Items are now animated when customers buy them.
• You can no longer open dialogs from NPCs or perks boards while holding an item. This should prevent people from seeing the slimes' dialogs all the time. 😛
• Before being able to start any battle, your adventurers will regenerate to full life. This used to only be the case when auto-battling, which meant people could get into new battles at, say, 50% life, and then almost certainly lose those battles.
• Items can now stack on the ground.
• You can now click the fishing pond itself to open the battle map directly to the pond, allowing you to fish more easily.
• Phantom items will no longer spawn! This bug took ~8 months to solve. It was caused by clicking an item on the same frame that a worker picked it up and resulted in an item graphic getting stuck in the town that you couldn't click and that workers couldn't pick up.

• Changed how regeneration works. Prior to this change, the regeneration time after battle was based on the party member with the lowest life. This meant that if even a single party member died, you'd have to wait ~14 seconds until the next battle. With the new system, the time is based on the average life lost. E.g. if you have two party members and the battle ends with one dead and one at full health, the regeneration time will be cut in half. This should result in battles feeling like they're running faster, but each individual battle should probably only save 1-5 seconds.
• Fixed Spicy Cooking. It was actually detrimental to unlock at first and it wasn't until level 3 that it was marginally good. Now, all values are what they say they should be.
• Fixed Shield Bash. It was also detrimental in that it was increasing the damage that the Paladin would take. 🤦‍♂️
• Added messages about invalid item destinations. E.g. if you try to drag a potion to the extractor and the farm is full, it will now tell you that. This should help new players.
• Fixed the tip about having multiple concurrent battles. New players frequently weren't aware that this was a feature, and it's because the tip that shows in the game about this had the wrong condition for showing.

• Highlighted mana red when you don't have enough to cast a spell.
• Allowed for dragging battle windows from any portion of them, not just the title bar.
• Fixed a bug where text in the town would be positioned weirdly sometimes.
• Added a sound effect when losing a battle.
• Delayed tips after beating elites so that you aren't overwhelmed by everything that's happening (a banner shows up when you beat elites, and the tip would sometimes show up at exactly the same time).

• Revamped every item graphic in the game! They now fit the Skeleseller style.
• Skills are now unlocked automatically rather than by spending gold. You get a new one every even-numbered level until you're at 7 skills.
• Fixed an issue where some shops were preferred over other shops. Namely, the armor shop should now see customers buying from it more frequently.

• Looped music on the title screen. Streamers especially would linger on the title screen for long enough that they would be surprised when the music ended.
• Hopefully fixed an issue where the perks UI would resize vertically due to the appearance/disappearance of a "●" character.
• Fixed a bug where the giant arrow telling you to open the battle map in the tutorial wouldn't show again if you closed the battle map without starting a battle.
• Applied minor balance tweaks: Paladin healing is up, Paladin Shield Bash has a lower cooldown, volcano bats do 5% less damage, and lowered the cost of a farming perk.
• Fixed a bug in the camera-panning code where you would hold WASD and open the battle map and it would still pan the town camera.

• Preload all icons to reduce any potential stuttering it would cause (it would have been pretty minor though).
• Change default of "Confine mouse to game window" to off. This feature is relatively buggy in Godot itself, and I don't want it frustrating new players.
• Fix the initial position of dialogs so that they don't show at the upper-leftmost part of the screen.
• Remove options for showing loot and battle stats. They were already on by default, and not many people seemed to try turning them off, so the options just aren't in the UI anymore. 🙃

• Made icons look crisp when the game scale is >1x. For Mac users on retina displays, you would have had the game on 2x by default, so this will be a noticeable improvement!
• Similarly, made battles much more crisp when the game scale is >1x. This was fixed a while ago but got re-broken. 😢
• Changed how the game scale can be set; it now allows for fractional values.

• Fix bug with loading a save file from 0.7.9. This save data didn't contain battle-window positions, so attempting to load on 0.7.10 would break (and do very weird things).
• Make workers act faster after dropping off an item. This is most obvious when your workers are harvesting crops.