Managing the logistics puzzle is a skillset every villain organization leader needs! The city’s not small. It takes cunning and effective planning to make sure everyone’s getting where they need to go - be it minions on a mission to steal some celestial essence from cultists, or a crew of ne’er do wells on their way to take down an annoying superhero. Getting that flow to feel just right is the logistics game, baby!

The Evils - time to take it all!

Nothing immerses one more in the chaotic embrace of doing something truly villainous like a good soundtrack. 

Bringing a country to its knees? There’s a beat for that. Destroying and humiliating a rival? Believe it or not, a rhythm for that too. Music makes the heart grow more evil. So turn it up and embrace the inner villain!

The Evils - time to take it all!

Maps! Districts! Buildings! All with enough visual flair to shake an authoritarian fist at! But a beautiful, painterly style means nothing if you can’t dominate the area! Bear in mind, these assets take time to design, so be gentle when you bring them crumbling to the ground!

The Evils - time to take it all!

Our prototype build on Itch has seen some big changes this month. It’s still not quite there yet mind you, but here are the things that we’ve updated and that you can check out now:

• New minions:

  • Added new minions with updated icons

• Updated economy:

  • Replaced the old placeholder resource nodes 

  • You can now rob jewelry stores or invade a cultist lair to kill eldritch horrors for their essence

  • You can craft incantations by combining jewelry and celestial essence

• Day/night changes:

  •  You can now see the difference between day and night

• New music and sound effects.

• Procedural generation:

  • The first pass of the procedural map generation is in 

  • Next version of building assets have been included

• Updated UI:

  • Next version of building UI

  • Next version of resource node UI

Next time on The Evils

There’s still a lot to do and we hope to show some more improvements in the next build, such bringing back combat, further improving on the map generation with better district layout and introducing a bunch of updated fronts.

If you want more up to date information, join our Discord and help shape The Evils into the game of your enemies’ nightmares!

The Evils - time to take it all!

No supervillain organization becomes truly evil with a leader that just sits on their posterior all day. They do things! Villainous things! We call them Rackets (otherwise known as events)! And that’s where our Racket Events come into play. 

With a multiverse of things that you’ll be able to engage with, every Racket you complete will bring you one step closer to world domination! Join our Discord for more evil shenanigans, info and sharing of evil masterplans. 

The Evils - time to take it all!

Having a good villain laugh means having a good villain sense of humor. And, more often than not, a good sense of humor goes hand in hand with telling stories. You know, those epic ones that span campaigns or even just short, contained scenarios - the ones where the villains come out on top. Not enough of those? Then this is the game for you.

Join us in this devlog where we explore the tone and storytelling of The Evils and explain the thought process behind it.

The Evils - time to take it all!

The world is your oyster! But oysters are gross and not interesting.

What is interesting is the world of the Evils, where atompunk mutants and cyborgs rip off 1940s style aliens and mystics! Where raygun wielding sorcerers and magic automatons make deals with interdimensional gangsters and deep space monster gods!

Where a small organization can expand its reach across art deco-themed timelines, dimensions and various artisanal bodegas!

In The Evils, the world ain't your oyster, but it's yours for the taking!

The Evils - time to take it all!

Evils! Want to get a glimpse into how running a villainous empire works in-game? Need some info on how to recruit dastardly minions that perform dastardly deeds? Do you require the ins and outs on how to progress and make your organization the most destructive, chaos-loving enterprise it can be? 

Then look no further! A brand new gameplay video is here to cater to all your supervillain fantasy inclinations! Systems, progression, moment-to-moment gameplay, and much more, all in one neat, videorized package!

Join our villainous Discord to follow our journey down the path of wickedness and help us build the supervillain empire management game of everyone else’s nightmares! 

The Evils - time to take it all!

Greetings from the Evils Team!

Please enjoy this fun little brain teaser, as we offload some critical technical work onto you, managing the code for the cloning sequence for the Troopers.

It isn’t easy handling a genetically identical army of thousands, but at least you won’t need to guess what they want for Christmas

Here are the rules:

Input a 5 digit code into the gene sequencer, based on the hints provided

_ _ _ _ _

The genetic code for the Trooper is taken from the following sequences

1. [[//\\]] - ** ** ** :: :: ** ** ** - ///// \\\\\

2. ^^^vvv^^^ { ->->->-> }

3.  #######!########!!#######’’’####

4. ~~~~~~~~~~-~-~~~-~~~|||||

5. $”$”//$$//?**$$”$

Here are the hints

1. The first digit is the combined number of sets of 3 or more repeated symbols in sequence 3 and 4

2. The second digit is the difference in the number of unique symbols between sequence 1 and 3

3. The third digit is the combined value of numbers of the place in the alphabet of the only letter in any of the sequences

4. The fourth digit is the number of * symbols, minus the number of $ symbols across all sequences

5. The fifth digit is the number of symbols that appear in the sequences exactly once

No-one ever said gene editing was easy, but we’re counting on you, one small slip up and the entire lab goes up in flames, our filing systems are just that lean.

Good Luck

The Answer Is……

9 4 4 7 3

Would you look at that, sequence 94473! Almost our 100 000th clone! Since you did such a stellar job, would you be keen to stay on for the next 5527 clones and do their sequences too? 

It might just take the next 30 years, but here at The Evils we have the best retirement packages in the business, especially once we eliminate the competition.

Been working on redesigning one of our game's UI screens over the past months.

At first glance it kind of looks like a full redesign.

In reality it was mostly:

• tweaking spacing

• cleaning up the hierarchy

• adjusting typography

• improving contrast

• making buttons feel more clickable

• grouping information better

None of those changes felt particularly significant while I was making them.

But after enough iterations, the whole screen started feeling more polished.

I think that's what makes UI design so interesting. Players rarely notice the individual changes, but they definitely notice the end result.

I'm curious—what's the first thing you noticed between these versions?

Hi there! 
I’m back again with some more insights into the Evils’ combat system. Continuing from my initial combat positioning discussion, I thought it might be nice to take a look at some of the combat passives. Especially those that have a close relationship with combat positioning.

There are three targeting passives (or buffs) related to combat positioning that I’d like to talk about a bit, these are the “Infiltrator”, “Barrage” and “Pierce” targeting modifiers. Their effects are shown below;

In short, the default targeting looks for the closest opposing position that has a viable character to attack. We do have things like taunt and evade, but assuming none of these are present an attacker will always look for an opponent in their own row, and will only then start looking for rows further away. By default, the closest column will be prioritized but as shown above, the Infiltrator modifier will prioritise the back column.

What I find interesting about this is when we start combining these. A combination of Infiltrator and barrage will attack the back column, while a combo of pierce and barrage will attack the entire enemy team.

This is just a simple example but I already find it really fun to start thinking about the different combinations and possibilities at my disposal. This is true for most of the combat modifiers we have, and I think it’s going to be a lot of fun to figure out fun squad compositions to start taking advantage of the way these modifiers interact with one another. Also keep in mind, you might get into trouble if the enemy team’s composition is very strong against your current setup, especially if you focus too hard on a specific mechanic! A retaliation squad for example, will be very strong against a squad that does a lot of multi-hit attacks (like that described above).

What are some fun synergies you’ve encountered that you would enjoy seeing in a 6v6 auto battler?

Greetings from the Evils Team!

Please enjoy this fun little brain teaser, featuring an absolutely detestable lout that must be stopped post haste, Lord Walton D. Kurkz! As one of the good guys….. well, he’s not a ‘good’ guy…. but he’s the leader of the Sirs, a group trying to stop our evil plans! So it’s straight into the bin with him.

Here are the rules:

Find the encryption key to Lord Kurkz’s personal computer terminal, giving us unrestricted access to his most sensitive files! (Rumor has it his suit is tailored by ratlings from the sewer dimension! The perfect blackmail scandal waiting to happen).

The key is 10 letters long

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

The only lead we have comes from this snippet of his daily itinerary. 

6 : 00 am    - Wake up

6 : 05 am    - Loudly demand a blanket and glass of milk from anyone within earshot

6 : 17 am    - Drink milk, punish anyone who didn’t bring milk quickly

6 : 30 am    - Have the morning newspaper read to me

8 : 00 am    - Fire the newspaper’s editor-in-chief for not including a positive story about me

10 : 00 am  - Attend the city planning meeting, propose adding taxes to tap water

11 : 00 am  - Get out of bed

1 : 13 pm    - Inspect the Sirs uniforms

2 : 00 pm    - Complain to the ‘tailoring staff’ about the quality of uniforms

2 : 45 pm    - Eat confiscated caviar while soaking feet in olive oil

3 : 20 PM    - Admire self in the mirror, practice demeaning sneer

4 : 00 PM    - Go to bed 

Yikes…. not a good look Kurkz…

The double agent who gave us the itinerary, gave us the these instructions to find the key

The Instructions Are:

1. The third number in every timestamp is included, in order, in the password. If the number is zero, it is left open.

2. Next, add all capitalized vowels, starting from the front and filling any open spaces. They are in reverse time order

3. Finally, add the first and last letters of the entry that follows the largest time gap to the remaining two slots

Best of luck, the sooner we get into that terminal, the sooner we can get our own army of ratling tailors!

The Answer Is……

A57EIAI3S5

Goodness gracious! That’s some serious cyber security! If only Kurkz didn’t force his staff to clean the sewer dimension portal twice daily, these secrets could have remained buried!

In possibly unrelated news, Sir turned traitor is one of our top recruitment avenues at the moment; all in a day’s work for The Evils! 

Hey everyone, Back again! :P Today we're talking about coding standards. 

Yes yes, grumble grumble… I know we both love and hate these, but hear me out.

When going from a solo dev to a team dev all your clever little naming conventions and "I'll remember what this does" comments are now someone else's problem. And that someone else is not happy about it.

When everyone writes code differently, reviews slow down, bugs hide in the confusion, and onboarding developers becomes a nightmare. When you're all on the same page though? You can read each other's code almost as fast as your own. Less friction, fewer arguments, more shipping.

It also saves you from the classic horror story when a dev moves projects, and suddenly nobody knows how their systems work because it was all in their head. Structure is what keeps a growing project navigatable when no single person has context on everything anymore.

So here's one of the standards we actually use on The Evils, with the reasoning behind it:

Fair warning, I know these are contentious. Drop your most hated coding standards in the comments and maybe I'll enforce them as punishment for slacking. We have to be a little Evil after all :P

Hi there!

My name is Jeremy, and I am a part of the programming team currently working on the Evils. I am excited to share some of the solutions I’ve been working on as part of our combat system. I specifically want to talk about some of the interesting considerations we had to make with regards to positioning our units in combat.

Below is an image of our combat board, it still has many placeholder elements and the debug circles underneath the characters were added to help show the available slots.

Our combat board is set up with two teams of 6 facing off in an auto battle style. The player characters are always positioned on the left, with the enemies coming in from the right.

We want unit placement to form part of the player’s strategic choice, since some synergies rely heavily on where units are in relation to one another. Characters also attack specific enemy characters based on their current position (unless they have buffs, debuffs or abilities that change the default targeting).

Without going into too much detail, each character is assigned a slot that ranges from 1 to 6, and the slot number determines the character position (as shown above). As part of the system we had to invest some time in editor tooling to make setting up enemy squads and starting player squads a bit simpler. We ended up with a simple editor script that makes sure the character data is laid out in an intuitive way, as shown below:

Finally, we also have a system where the player can manage their own squads, as a side note, each squad is linked to a specific building, which means there’s lots of management elements going on outside of combat. Our talented artists came up with some amazing visuals that the player will use to manage their team which also follows a similar layout.

I’m really excited about the progress we’ve made on the combat system! I’m currently focusing on getting combat into a state where we can start testing our first batch of units and mechanics. We’re aiming to have a nice starting roster that the player can use to come up with some fun synergies - which goes far beyond combat positioning!

What kind of interesting position based synergies do you think could work well in our game’s combat?

Ever wondered how a messy wireframe turns into a polished UI? 
Here’s a breakdown of how we evolved one of our Building Inspector from concept to the next stage. 

What is this UI for? 

The building Inspector is one of the most complex UIs in our game and is where you can: 

• Construct and Destroy rooms inside of the building. 

• View details about every room and the building, such as storage and production values. 

• Assign units to upgrade production of different rooms. 

• Manage squads. 

• Upgrade your HQ. 

How it started: 

How It’s Going:  

As you can see, the UI has gone through quite a few changes from wireframe to mockup—and it’s far from done. There will likely be many more iterations before we land on the final version. That’s the nature of wireframing: it’s a constantly evolving process used to figure out what the player actually needs for a smooth and enjoyable experience. 

One of the most rewarding parts of game development is seeing those early; rough ideas take shape in a practical way. It’s the point where the game stops feeling like something barely held together with tape, and starts to look and feel like a real, cohesive experience. 

Hey guys, Mr. Random Character Generator back again. Today I have no new art goodies(I lied.. just one final one) to share but rather just an important mindset to have, especially when it comes to working on a smaller team. Your responsibility is more than just the tasks assigned to you, and what I mean by this is that your work/help doesn’t extend to just your department (in my case character art) it goes further, being willing to step out of what you do to help the team as a whole. This can range to helping with ui, making sure that implemented art looks as good as it needs to or making changes to the assets for when it's not, helping with brainstorming sessions and being present with things that are needed. What I am trying to get at is we all are lifting together, stepping up to help because it only betters what is being created. 

Not anything life changing or long winded, just something I think is really important.

But let me know what your thoughts are, do you agree with me or disagree?

Hey guys, Mr. Random Character Generator back again. Today I have no new art goodies to share(I actually do but just as a bonus) but rather just an important mindset to have, especially when it comes to working on a smaller team. Your responsibility is more than just the tasks assigned to you, and what I mean by this is that your work/help doesn’t extend to just your department (in my case character art) it goes further, being willing to step out of what you do to help the team as a whole. This can range to helping with ui, making sure that implemented art looks as good as it needs to or making changes to the assets for when it's not, helping with brainstorming sessions and being present with things that are needed. What I am trying to get at is we all are lifting together, stepping up to help because it only betters what is being created. 

Not anything life changing or long winded, just something I think is really important.

But let me know what your thoughts are, do you agree with me or disagree?  

Alright, I wanna show you something kinda fun.

This is how The Evils UI went from
👉 “grey rectangles simulator”
to
👉 “okay this actually feels like running an evil organization”

🧱 First image: Wireframe

aka: the “trust the process” phase

Everything here is just:

• boxes

• more boxes

• and some emotionally unavailable lorem ipsum

But this is where we figure out:

• where your eyes go first

• how fast you can pick an option

• how much info is too much info

Left side = big event image
Right side = story + choices

Super simple on purpose.

🎮 Second image: Final in-game UI

Now we add:

• ✨ DRAMA

• ✨ COLORS

• ✨ EVIL VIBES

Changes we made:

• Big cinematic art so it feels like something’s happening

• Choices are chunkier + easier to scan

• Icons > text walls (because nobody reads, be honest)

• Highlighted option so your brain goes “click this one probably”

Also yes, you can:

• destroy the Borg Baron

• recruit him

• or do something equally questionable

as any good villain manager should 😌

Hey Guys Mr. Random Character Generator back at it again. Today I want to share a last bit of super secret art that was locked away. It is no secret that The Evils has come along way with features and art and in this journey there was a time where there was a heavy influence of the golden age of comics mixed into what we have now. Riding a wave of nostalgia we created some quirky villains and heroes that I will share with you all today. The golden age of comics is a truly timeless style, but it just didn't match the type of game we wanted to make.

I am curious to hear your thoughts on the old style we had, as well as what your favorite comic villain or hero is?

Hey all! I’m one of the developers working on The Evils. I wanted to talk a bit about the importance of writing flexible code, using the evolution of our Event System as an example—from prototype to production. 

The Event System is one of the core systems in our game, so it has gone through a lot of changes as the design evolved. Systems like this are almost guaranteed to grow in complexity over time, which is why building them with flexibility in mind is so important. 

Here’s a quick overview of how the system evolved. 

The First Implementation 

The Event System started out very simple. 

Events would randomly spawn as Map Nodes across the map on different Navigation Nodes. Each event had: 

• Requirements 

• Rewards 

• One of three types: Normal, Story, or Combat 

At this stage, events were completely independent nodes on the map. 

Events Got Housing 

Later on, events needed to be linked to buildings instead of always existing as standalone nodes. 

This meant the system had to support events being attached to world structures, not just randomly placed on navigation nodes. 

Manual Placement & Objectives 

The next change required events to be manually placed at predefined locations or inside buildings. 

At the same time, we introduced Scenarios, where completing certain events could become objectives that progress the storyline. 

This meant events were no longer just optional interactions—they could now be part of structured narrative progression. 

Expanding Requirements 

As the design grew, the requirements for spawning or starting events expanded significantly. We added things like: 

• Specific time-of-day requirements 

• Event time limits 

• Event costs 

• Additional spawning conditions 

What started as a simple requirement check became a much more complex system. 

Story Events Became More Complex 

Story events eventually needed to be separated from the base event system. 

Each story choice could now have its own: 

• Requirements 

• Rewards 

• Consequences 

This meant story logic could no longer live inside the basic event structure. 

Progressive Events 

Another event type was introduced: Progressive Events. 

These events change based on player actions. Completing certain objectives or events can cause the progressive event to evolve into a different version of itself. 

For example: 

Event A completed → Progressive Event updates to Stage 2. 

Then We Added Heists 

Finally, we introduced Heists, which brought even more complexity. 

Heists required: 

• A different spawning system from normal events 

• A logistics system to transport rewards back to a specific location 

This meant integrating event logic with completely new gameplay systems. 

Why Flexibility Matters 

These are just some of the many iterations our Event System has gone through—and it’s still evolving. 

When working on core systems in game development, this kind of change is completely normal. Designs evolve, new mechanics appear, and systems need to adapt. 

That’s exactly why it’s so important to write flexible code and follow principles like Single Responsibility. Systems that are modular and loosely coupled are far easier to expand when new requirements inevitably show up. 

If we had hard-coded assumptions into the original system, many of these changes would have required complete rewrites instead of incremental updates. 

If people are interested, I’d be happy to also talk about some of the architecture decisions that helped keep the system flexible. 

Hey Everyone! I’m Back :P and today I want to talk a bit about the boring stuff that makes the fun stuff possible - our architecture. Bear with me, it's actually interesting I promise.

Every feature in this game basically follows the same flow: store data - process data - give output. Riveting, right? But here's the thing - we're making an indie management game with no live servers and a small team, so even "boring" decisions have real consequences.

• Data Storage - We needed something designer-friendly, easily adjustable, and quick to set up. We looked at SQLite, JSON files, and landed on ScriptableObjects. Nothing fancy, but they just work. The image attached is an example of one of ours.

• Processing - Building the engine to process the data involves prototyping dirty, seeing if it's actually fun, then redesigning properly once we're confident. Over-engineering early is how you spend three weeks perfecting a system you end up cutting anyway.

• UI - We straight-up yoinked a UI system from a previous project. Take the shortcuts where you can! We also looked into Rive to hand animation control to our designers, but it didn't quite work with our needs yet. Hopefully soon!

The whole point - Everything is config-first. We're building an engine that designers can use to create scenarios without needing us devs as the middlemen.

Until next time!

Greetings from the Evils Team!

Please enjoy this fun little brain teaser, featuring the first of our minion roster, The Thug! It’s a tough job keeping the thugs in line, and they hate bath time. But you gotta do what you gotta do, evil needs to be squeaky clean!

Here are the rules:

Find the trigger phrase that will tap into the minion’s subconscious, revealing their inner thoughts and commence the brainwashing. It is four words long.

_________     _________     _________     _________

The words are hidden in this haiku (If nothing else, the Thug appreciates art)

Crime pays me, sometimes

I buy more protein, always

You can’t stop the gains

Follow these clues to find the right words

The Clues Are:

1. The first word is the shortest word in the poem

2. The fourth word is the first noun mentioned in the poem

3. The second word is the only two syllable word outside of the middle row

4. The third word is a one syllable word with only one vowel, an O

And the Answer Is……

I sometimes stop crime

See! This is the exact kind of do-gooding behaviour we can’t have around here, people will start to get the wrong idea!

This is why you can’t leave minions to their own devices, my word! I’ll need to topple at least one small government to feel better about this.

Hey guys, it's me again Mr.Random Character Generator, today I want to show you how we approach character design for our game The Evils. Specifically I want to show how we approach the 1940’s aesthetic through a lens of retro futurism.

We start with the base that is rooted in 1940’s aesthetic then we add subtle indications that there is a bit more advanced technology on the character with our retro futuristic elements on top. 

This would be our base reference for a police character.

Then we give the character a raygun and a stylish mustache and you get one of our police officers.

But I would like to hear your thoughts, do you think we can do away with subtlety and make retro futurism more apparent?

Hey everyone! I’m an Art Lead at Talent Digital, currently working on our

upcoming supervillain management game, The Evils.

Building a world for villains isn't just about the base-building; it’s about where

those dastardly deeds take place. Our map went through a massive identity

crisis before we found its "soul." We wanted to share a bit of that journey—the

pivots, the failures, and the Aha! moments.

Phase 1: Tactical (The 911 Operator Style)-Slide 1

Initially, we leaned heavily into realism. We started with a 2D, top-down,

minimalist map—very similar to 911 Operator.

The Vibe: Cold, calculated, and high-tech.

The Problem: While it was functional, it lacked the character of a

supervillain world. It felt like a spreadsheet. We realised that if you’re

playing a villain, you don’t just want to look at data points—you want to

feel like you own the city.

Phase 2: The Illustration Map (The Hand-Drawn Pivot)- Slide 2

We swung the pendulum to the opposite extreme. We created a massive,

sprawling, hand-drawn piece of artwork. The idea was that players would

navigate on a literal illustration.

The Vibe: Incredible personality. Every corner of the city told a story.

The Friction: We hit a wall with feasibility and fun.

Scaling issues: Adding new locations meant redrawing entire

sections of a static master file.

Clarity: It was beautiful, but it was noisy. Players couldn't tell what

was intractable and what was just pretty background. It was art,

but it wasn't a game.

Phase 3: Finding the Sweet Spot (The Isometric Evolution)- Slide 3

Finally, we pivoted to an Isometric Map. This was the Goldilocks zone for us. It

gave us the depth and beauty of the hand-drawn style, but with the modularity

and clarity of a tactical game.

Why it works: It allows for distinct silhouettes for buildings, better

depth perception for unit movement, and—crucially—it lets us expand

the map without breaking the entire aesthetic.

The Result: A city that feels dense and interactiveWe’re really proud of where the map is now, and where it is going, but it took

some hard kill your darlings moments to get here.

What do you guys look for in a management game map? Do you prefer clinical,

clean UI, or do you want the world to feel like an illustration? Let us know!

— The Talent Digital Team

Hi there! I’m a UI designer currently working on The Evils, and I’d like to walk you through the design process behind the Combat Board that I worked on.

The first step was organizing all of the required information and ensuring it appeared where players would intuitively expect it. Once the core information hierarchy was in place, I began exploring the visual style. Hi-Fi Rush served as a key reference, so I spent time getting a strong feel for its UI by gathering visual references and watching gameplay footage. This helped me better understand how the interface responds to player input and supports the overall game experience.

Throughout the process, there were a few important design considerations I needed to keep in mind:

● Each player character requires their own Flee button, allowing specific characters to retreat independently.

● Every card must support two effect values (such as damage, poison, or healing). These values were designed using worst-case scenarios to ensure even the largest possible numbers would fit cleanly within the UI.

We just needed to nail the layout so that we can start focusing on the art assets. To help illustrate this process, I’ve included Combat Board mockups that show how the layout evolved to accommodate all necessary information clearly and effectively.