Kasino Devlog #3 — I Finally Released It
9/12/2026 • devlog
Kasino Devlog #3 — I Finally Released It
In Devlog #2, Kasino had finally reached alpha.
The important word there was playable. The core game loop worked from beginning to end, I had difficulty options, a main menu, scoring, and enough of the game together that it finally felt like Kasino instead of a collection of unfinished systems.
Since then, I've crossed a much bigger milestone:
Kasino is now publicly playable on itch.io.
That doesn't mean the game is finished.
Far from it.
Kasino is still actively in development, and there are plenty of things I want to improve, add, rebalance, and probably completely change as I keep working on it. But releasing it means I've reached the point where other people can actually play what I've been building.
And that changes the way I look at the project.
Going From Alpha to Something I Could Release
Getting the core gameplay working was one challenge. Getting the game into a state where I was comfortable putting it online was another.
A game can technically be playable while still not feeling like something you want to release.
So a lot of the work after the alpha wasn't about reinventing Kasino. It was about improving everything around the core game:
polishing the interface
fixing gameplay issues
improving the overall presentation
making the web build easier to play
getting the itch.io page ready
creating screenshots and gameplay material
making sure someone other than me could open the game and understand what they were looking at
That last part is something I'm learning matters a lot.
When you're developing your own game, you already know how everything works. You know where every button is, what every rule means, and what the player is supposed to do next.
A new player doesn't.
Getting Kasino released has made me think much more about the experience from their side of the screen.
Kasino Is Now on itch.io
The biggest change since the previous devlog is simple:
You can actually play Kasino now.
I'm currently distributing the web version through itch.io, which makes it easy for someone to try the game without having to install anything.
For a project like Kasino, I really like that.
You can open the page, launch the game, and start playing.
The version that's online today isn't the final version of Kasino. I'm treating the release as another stage of development rather than the finish line.
Instead of:
Build → Finish → Release
Kasino is becoming more like:
Build → Release → Learn → Improve → Release again
And I think that's going to be healthier for the project.
The Core Game Is in a Good Place
One thing I'm happy about is that I don't feel like I need to completely rebuild the foundation anymore.
The core of Kasino is working.
You can sit down, play the card game, make decisions, score points, finish the match, and play again.
That's important because it means I can start spending more time on the things that make the game better, rather than constantly trying to make the game simply work.
There are still bugs and systems I want to improve, of course, but I finally have a foundation I can build on.
Kasino Also Became the Start of Levye Studio
Another major change happened outside the game itself.
While preparing Kasino for release, I decided to create a proper identity for the games I'm making.
That's how Levye Studio started.
Kasino is now the first released game under the Levye Studio name.
That meant doing a bunch of things that have almost nothing to do with writing game code:
creating the Levye Studio identity
designing the logo and branding
setting up the GitHub organization
creating social accounts
setting up YouTube
preparing the itch.io page
making screenshots and promotional material
starting to think about how I actually present my games publicly
I originally just wanted to make games.
Now I'm slowly learning everything that comes with shipping them too.
And that's probably one of the biggest things I've learned from Kasino so far.
Writing the game is only part of making a game.
Moving Kasino Across Platforms
Kasino has also gone through a pretty interesting technical evolution.
The project didn't start as a polished web game.
I've worked on different versions of Kasino and experimented with different platforms along the way. Eventually I moved toward a C++/Raylib version that could also target the web.
That web build became especially important once I decided to release through itch.io.
Being able to keep the game in C++ while compiling it for the browser means I don't have to maintain an entirely separate web version of Kasino.
There's still work to do here, but having the same project capable of becoming a native game and a browser game gives me a lot more flexibility going forward.
Presentation Matters More Than I Expected
Another thing I've spent more time on is presentation.
Menus, backgrounds, buttons, card placement, HUD elements, transitions — individually they can seem less important than gameplay.
Together, they completely change how the game feels.
Kasino is a fairly simple card game mechanically, so the presentation has to do a lot of work.
I want the table to feel good to look at.
I want playing a card to feel satisfying.
I want taking cards to be immediately understandable.
I want the game to have enough personality that it doesn't feel like somebody simply placed playing cards on a green rectangle.
I'm not completely there yet.
But that's one of the areas I want to keep pushing.
Release Doesn't Mean Finished
This is probably the most important part of this devlog.
Kasino is released, but Kasino is not finished.
There are still features I want to add and plenty of areas that can be improved.
Now that the core game is in a good place, I can start looking beyond basic functionality.
I want to improve things like:
animations and transitions
sound and feedback
tutorials and explaining the rules
AI behavior and difficulty
UI polish
visual effects
accessibility and usability
mobile/browser experience
overall game feel
I also have ideas that go beyond simply polishing what's already there.
But I don't want to add features just for the sake of making the feature list longer.
The next stage is about making Kasino a better game, not just a bigger one.
Now Comes the Useful Part: Feedback
Up until now, I've mostly been building Kasino based on what I think works.
A public release changes that.
People can actually play it.
That means bugs I never noticed can show up immediately. Things that seem obvious to me might make absolutely no sense to someone playing for the first time.
And somebody might use the game in a way I never expected.
That's valuable.
The itch.io release gives me something I've wanted for a while: a version of Kasino that I can point people toward and simply say:
"Try it."
From here, I can use that feedback to decide what actually deserves my time.
What's Next?
I'm not starting Kasino 2.
I'm continuing to build this Kasino.
The next updates will focus on polishing what already exists while gradually adding features that make the game more complete.
I'm also going to continue working on the public side of Levye Studio — gameplay videos, development updates, screenshots, and eventually more games.
iOS & Android Are Part of the Plan
One of my bigger goals for Kasino is to eventually release it on iOS and Android.
A card game like Kasino makes a lot of sense on a phone. Matches don't require a huge screen, the controls can work naturally with touch, and it's the kind of game I can see people opening whenever they have a few minutes to play.
But I'm not rushing the mobile release.
I want to reach a point where I feel that Kasino is good enough for those platforms before putting it on the App Store and Google Play.
That means more than simply getting the game to compile and run on a phone. I want the interface to feel right with touch controls, the different screen sizes to be handled properly, the game to perform well, and the overall experience to feel like a real mobile game rather than a desktop or web game squeezed onto a smaller screen.
For now, the web release gives me a good place to keep developing, testing ideas, fixing problems, and getting feedback.
When I'm happy enough with the game, iOS and Android are the next major platforms I want Kasino to reach.
Kasino has already changed a lot since I first started working on it, and I'm sure the version I'm playing a few months from now will look different again.
That's part of the reason I want to keep writing these devlogs.
It gives me a record of how the game actually evolved.
One Milestone Down
Devlog #1 was about building Kasino.
Devlog #2 was about finally reaching alpha.
Devlog #3 is about shipping it.
Not finishing it.
Shipping it.
There's a big difference.
Kasino is finally in a place where people other than me can play it, and now I get to find out what happens when a personal game project becomes an actual released game.
There's still a lot I want to do.
But for now, Kasino is out.
And development continues.
