Charles Games: Our plans for 2024 and onwards 📆

Hi! 🫧

And welcome to the first newsletter of 2024! We have much in store so let’s not waste any time and let me show you. 🦉

Last year has been, for the most part, a year of Beecarbonize. For this one, we have two releases planned and more coming later.

But before we get to the details, a chart:

These are, in a nutshell, plans for our confirmed games that will be available for everyone. Now, let’s get into particularities! 

🏰 Playing Kafka

This game has been keeping us busy a lot, it is a very Czechia-related theme after all, a light puzzle adventure to commemorate the 100th anniversary of this singular writer’s death. 

Second chapter, The Castle, takes place among the snow and starts in a village, where a land surveyor arrives for work, only to find himself accompanied by helpers he never asked for, affection he never anticipated and machinations happening in the castle he can’t understand. Is there even a job? Is, perhaps, he even a surveyor? 

In Playing Kafka, dream logic is in full swing, a game where nothing can be taken for granted. Check out our teaser trailer for the first two chapters:

Third part, the Letter to His Father is a special case, as it’s not based on a novel, but on an actual letter Kafka wrote to his father, recounting his fraught relationship with him and working through many memories of the writer's upbringing. 

Playing Kafka will be released in May 2024, on mobile as well as desktop.

🪧 Project “Velvet” (working title)

Would you play a hidden-object game about the fall of communism? Our next game after Playing Kafka will be just that, letting you explore protests that erupted in 1989 in many places of the Czech Republic during the Velvet revolution that ended the one-party rule. We want to focus on less known events and the game will feature memories of actual witnesses. 

“Velvet” is coming in 2024.

🧸 Project “Toys” (working title)

Next up is a three-year game we are creating with the War Childhood Museum in Sarajevo, standing next to our historical games Attentat 1942 and Svoboda 1945.  

Toys is a narrative game that explores the fates of a group of children during war through non-linear storytelling. It takes players on an emotional journey about children caught in war zones, illustrates their daily struggles, and lets players uncover the story of a particular group of children across multiple decades.

The game is inspired by real stories about war childhood in three different conflicts. The branching story is intertwined with light puzzles. You will experience derelict playgrounds, impromptu shelters, and streets reduced to rubble - all from the often-overlooked perspective of a child witnessing violent conflict.

There is fear and grief, but also hope and resilience, perhaps more than you’d expect.

“Toys” will release in Q1 2026.

🍬 Unannounced fourth and sweet project

We can’t say much yet, only that this game will be our very own IP. And that history as well as pastries will play some role. 

Timeline to be announced.

So, there you have it! One of the perks of doing games in the style we do is that we always have multiple projects and games in mind and on our plates – so I hope at least some of them have sparked your interest!

Now, time for our regular newsletter stuff – aka – recommendation!

Charles Games recommends… Planetka!

Allow us to highlight this small Czech game about fighting off environmental destruction, in a nice graphical style, a game that was nominated for Independent Games Festival! Which is remarkable for one-woman team composed of Tereza 🙂 Congratulations and play it on Itch.io for free!

And that’s that. Next time, I will be back with more ordinary newsletter with behind-the-scenes and like. I just wanted to give you a rundown of what’s gonna happen – because we are excited. And I hope you are at least a bit excited now, too 🙂 

Yours truly,
Ondřej
Charles Games