Trixel Creative - Restitched: Recapped! | June + July 2026 part 18

July was full of new progress from our small team of hobbyists, and we're excited to show you the highlights of what we've been up to!

Read on to see how we're shaping Stuffy's world...

Missed the previous month's Recapped post? Catch up here:

Celebrating Pride 2026

In June, we celebrated Pride month (as we do every year!) with custom Restitched artwork displaying a diverse range of Stuffies:

Soundtrack Preview #24 | 'The Brutalist'

A new Patreon post is now free/public! Check out a 30-second music preview of 'The Brutalist'.

Listen to "The Brutalist" for free on Patreon

Restitched: Outfit Contest | Wardrobe Demo

Grab your needle and thread, because it's time to create a stylish ensemble in this new community contest! We'll choose 3 lucky winners to receive a real-life (Limited Edition) Stuffy Plush Toy, free Patreon access, and more!

Using the free Restitched: Wardrobe Demo, create your take on a "Custom Superhero" ...then, upload it to the Steam Workshop with "[WDC]" in its title! You'll have until Saturday, August 22, 2026 @ 11:59 pm (GMT +1) to submit an entry!

Read the rules/guidelines, see prizes, and how to enter:

Trixel Creative Logo Update

In 2022, we announced a 'shooting star' design. The goal of this logo was to capture a sense of ambition ("reaching for the stars"), creativity, imagination, etc. -- It's been four long years since that logo, so we've decided to give it a minor facelift!

Our new logo follows more conventional design standards, including grid, ratio guides, and more. Our previous logo did not. This ensures a more symmetrical logo, scales well at small sizes, is easily animated, and stands out as being uniquely Trixel Creative.

As we head into the late stages of development for Restitched, we figured now would be the best time to roll out our improved look!

Connectors

Our progress this month has consisted of Linus prototyping Connectors, then passing them into a 'polish pass' process. We're still bug fixing and refining their look, but things are going well, and we're stoked to have these in-game!

Default 'thread' connections will look like Stuffy's own needle 'n thread, and are wrapped around thumbtacks stuck in opposing surfaces:

The plans for elastic, springy, and other connector types will also be themed. For example, elastic may resemble a patterned bungee cord.

We're also prototyping a way to output multiple threads from a single connector. This would allow one anchor point to support multiple child anchors. For now, we have to do this by placing multiple pin types from the Craftbook. Though we intend to consolidate it all into one, so it's much easier to build with.

Logic Progress

The game's important logic features have progressed again this month. Because logic is such a complex task, we have 2 coders focusing on it. Their combined efforts have created back-end support.

From this foundation, we can now focus on adding actual logic scripts and getting logic pieces placeable and connected in the game world.

Progress has already started on allowing logic pieces to parent to surfaces and have their nodes input and output signals.

Object Settings Adjustments

We've passed over all our object settings and changed their behavior to be more game-like. We want to avoid the overwhelming options that a game engine or tool would present. Instead of precise decimal numbers, we've forced some sliders into a 'whole number' range. This means you can offset a camera by a simple 1, 2, 3 points and not 1.12, 1.26, 1.43, etc...

For settings that usually require more precision, we've left it as a decimal number. But, for instance, the rigidity value of something doesn't need to be a decimal and will work perfectly the same as a whole number! This is overall easier for the average player.

Multiplayer Development

One of our newer coders, Alexander, has joined us after shipping his own game on Steam (You can check it out here)! His goal has been to work on multiplayer support.

We've developed Restitched for several years with the intent of online multiplayer. A framework has been built around this idea, and it influences a lot of our game design and coding decisions.

We've built Restitched in such a way that it can support any networking solution and isn't heavily reliant on a single one. So if we decide to switch from FishNet to PurrNet, we could do that with less hassle than otherwise.

Speaking on multiplayer implementation challenges, Alexander had this to say:

The player and the other physics objects all need to function as offline objects if no networking is active.

However, with both Fishnet and Purrnet, synchronizing anything using the solution's native means putting network components onto prefabs, which causes issues and of course starts incoprorating dependencies.

One thing we can do is restructure these networked objects such that the things that are synced are instead routed through some optional networked script, rather than existing on the object itself.

For that last part, both Fishnet and Purrnet have presented a variety of challenges...

The Purrnet component I've mentioned before, which is the NetworkRigidbody, is extremely promising, but Purrnet is having trouble working with things in scenes that Purrnet itself is not being told to load, and that's just the latest problem.

To summarize, this is pretty difficult, especially given the project of this current scale, but I am making good progress and hope to reach a point soon where players and objects are synchronizing!

Shortly after, a video was shared showing the first synchronization of players and test objects in a level:

Basically, it would be by far the easiest way of doing things to have the networking solution active at all times, including when youre playing by yourself, so that if you want to link up with someone you can just do that right away.

It would this be the case that some things would 'depend' on the networking being there, a few prefabs. But then when you need to start networking, it's all there and ready.

If that's not the way to go, then loading levels, including one that has had bombs explode physics objects into multiple pieces, would have to have deterministic loading, so that both server and clients would know the exact order of the hierarchy.

This is all for whether we want to go the 'easy' way (networking active at all times, some parts of the game depend on it) or different harder ways.

Improved Mesh Bevels

Long on our to-do list was to revisit mesh generation after its 2023 refactoring. We wanted depth-extruding bevels, chamfered edges, and easier bevel editing from our dev tools. We also want dynamic scaling of bevels based on the mesh's scaling in levels, and a dynamic rounding system for corners.

We can now also choose to generate new collision data around the new bevels, or keep the setting off for simpler colliders. We only turn this on for bevel types that have extreme rounding. Otherwise, Stuffy would float in the air when standing on corners!

Explosive Mesh Cutting

We've reused code from our level editor to create real-time mesh cutting in a level during gameplay. This creates a large circle radius around bombs and other explosives. Any procedural Building Material within that circle is deleted.

Gift Unlocks System

Jake has added a new Unlocks system. This is still a work in progress, but we are in the process of adding unlock data to player save files and setting up dev tools to let us unlock things by default, unlock all at once, search for specific asset IDs, and more.

The idea is to keep special Gift Box settings in our copy of the game. This data would exist in the level saves, but cannot be accessed by players. We'd make our own levels with these hidden Gift Box settings. For example, setting it to the 'Props' dataset and choosing to unlock ID# 200. This would give the player a Banana.

This is the basis of our item unlocks feature. It encourages players to progress the story levels to get new assets to create with!

Ability Buffs Feature

Powerups have a lot of challenges and are out of scope for our launch. Instead, we've added a simpler but useful 'Ability Buffs' feature. These are floating pickups that grant temporary or permanent enhancements to Stuffy.

For now, we offer a Removal buff and a Double Jump buff. You can set the timer on buffs to last for x amount of seconds, or stay on indefinitely. Only the player who collects the buff will receive its ability!

We think this would be useful for stronger combat, more traversal, speed advantages in races, invulnerability to lethals, and more.

Core Object Settings Exclusion

As developers, we can now exclude certain 'core' object settings from the Settings Panel UI. Some objects don't truly support wall jumping, being climbable, threadable, or pushable. In these cases, we now disable those choices entirely.

This is good for things like floating lights that are invisible. The player shouldn't be able to thread them, push them (it would do nothing), or wall jump, etc.

Rebalanced UV Projection Scale

We recently also updated the texture projection, which our previous Recapped explained! This means more reliable texture mapping on things of differing depths.

This month, we went further with that fix by also unifying the scale of all procedurally generated meshes. This means brushed materials will now have a UV scale closer to Unity's standard 1.0 value.

That change means we have an easier time setting up new materials, reusing them for other assets in the game, and lethal overlays will scale correctly when applied on top of something.

However, it also meant manually updating the scale of all existing materials in the Craftbook! This took a couple of days because we have at least 200-300.

Switched to 'Discrete' Physics

We've moved levelobjects to the Discrete physics setting. Originally, we were using Speculative physics. The difference is that Discrete is matter-of-fact and lightweight, whereas Speculative tries to predict future movement. This wasn't playing well with our layers system, as you'd often see ghost collisions when dropping things in front/behind each other.

Neither solution is perfect, but Discrete offers more reliable physics and is recommended by experts for physics sandbox games!

In the future, we may add a hybrid solution that would keep things Discrete unless it reaches a certain velocity. This would help prevent issues where thin-layered materials can phase through each other when dropping at high speeds.

Layer Padding Adjustments

To help prevent things from rubbing against each other between different layers, we've increased the padding between each generated layer. Now there's a bigger invisible gap where no collider sits. This helps our physics system by not creating accidental impacts where there aren't any. As a result, thin layers are now slightly thicker.

Stamp Cursor -> Decor Cursor

The Stamp Cursor has now been unified into a 'Decor Cursor'. This is because it can manipulate both Stamps and Ornaments.

Originally, we kept them as separate cursors, but this was tedious and not always obvious. The new Decor Cursor will prioritize Ornaments, because there are fewer of them on a surface and they stick out. Stamps take second priority to prevent accidental pickups!

This was already implemented in the level editor months ago, but now it's also a feature of the Wardrobe. This means the cursor is consistent in both game modes now.

Surface Snapping Prototype

To help with placing things on surfaces and aligning objects without them phasing into each other, we've added a rough prototype for 'Surface Snapping'. This feature can be toggled on/off in the 'Editor Settings' dropdown menu.

The Surface Snap feature will find nearby colliders and snap your currently-held object to them until the colliders touch.

This is super useful for when you want to place Props on the floor, align platformer surfaces to each other, and more! Grid can also help with this, but Surface Snapping is a more user-friendly way without being locked into grid segments.

This feature is not properly implemented. It was a rough prototype that isn't performant or reliable at times. But this has shown us that it's a very, very useful feature for the game! We hope to implement it properly and in more places when we can.

Screen Shake Effects

Some objects now have new (or improved) screen shake effects! This includes jumping on trampolines, dying from lethals, or slashing things. This visual feedback gives more 'oomph' to Stuffy's actions and makes the world feel a bit more lively.

Player Ornaments Progress

Placing 3D models on Stuffy is now closer to a reality! We've prototyped this feature further, and it now supports loading outfits with saved ornaments. The Decor Cursor can also pick up and move Ornaments now.

Next on our to-do list for this feature:

render on players outside of the Wardrobe

appear in saved outfit icons

support jiggle bone physics

more reliable placement

fix a bug where they become hidden during placement

allow detection and recoloring via the Design Tool

Curtains Transition Polishing

The Wardrobe curtains screen effect is meant to mask loading. We don't generate light data for it, so it's all an unlit texture on the screen. However, it is a 3D model!

To help refine the look, we've matched it a bit closer to the actual Wardrobe curtains. This was mainly done by artificially shading and recoloring the texture.

Cosmetics + Outfit Progress

Some of our 3D Artists have worked on new Wardrobe assets!

New Material Shaders

We've introduced a new, custom matcap shader. This is an altered standard shader that can show reflections as a matcap texture. We're using it for reflective metals, iridiscent materials, and even velvety or sheen-like fabric.

Supporting More Recolorable Assets

Halston has added support for more recolorable assets. This includes several Building Materials, some Hardware or Props, and Cosmetics.

New + Improved Bevel Types

Various bevel types were added or adjusted to be more distinct.

Gameplay Objects

Breakable Box

A box with preset behavior. It breaks and destroys when you slash it. Currently a prototype, with no proper art or effects in place!

Trophy Capsule

A special level ending object that triggers a completion when slashed open. Currently a work in progress!

Play Mode HUD

Jake has added a new HUD canvas to the game. This is a separate UI renderer that will hold all 'play mode' UI, like checkpoints, gift collects, race timers, dialogue boxes, player scores, and more.

Gift Collect UI

When collecting Gifts, a special UI will now appear. It shows an icon for the collected asset along with its name and dataset type (prop, cosmetic, building material, etc.)

Race Mode UI

When activating and finishing a race, the proper UI will appear to show a countdown, your current time, and results. This is a work in progress, and we're still sorting out the design work!

Checkpoints UI

Activating a checkpoint will let the player know by applying an effect around the player, playing a sound (WIP), and showing a UI label. You can also see the checkpoint's current lives amount.

Note: sounds not final.

In the player's stats HUD (top-left corner), you can also see how many lives the currently active checkpoint holds, regardless of where you are in a level.

Main Menu Progress

Although the main menu isn't a focus of ours right now, we've done a small pass over it to add more art assets.

We've also adjusted a couple of small UI things, including a placeholder thumbnail for DLC listings.

Control Panel - "Level Stats"

We've added a new 'Level Stats' dropdown panel in the level editor's control panel UI. This isn't functional yet, and the contents of it are only placeholder ideas! The idea is to track important level requirements and see a thermometer limit.

Because Restitched is a PC game, a strict thermometer isn't easy to implement. We won't impose limits based on specific hardware, but instead create a global 'guideline' limit that tracks the budget of more resource-intensive objects in a level.

Certain shaders, logic scripts, particle effects, and backgrounds add a stronger performance cost. We hope to track this per asset type, then display it in a slider. Going past this limit may warn players that the level could perform worse on lower-end hardware. Going too far past the limit may prevent further editing.

We haven't fully planned or added this system yet, but it's a start!

Extra Pause Menu Options

Extra icon buttons were added to the pause menu UI. They're meant to open the tutorials and player management panels. This way, you can easily reference tutorial pop-ups from the level editor. The other button would be used for managing joined players, or potentially inviting them.

Extra Toolbar Slot (Level Editor)

The level editor toolbar now has support for one extra main icon, and has become longer as a result. The Wardrobe's toolbar is unaffected.

We felt an extra primary icon was necessary, given how many important tools we're adding to the editor! We didn't want something as frequent as the Design Tool to be tucked away into a dropdown panel.

New Building Material Icons

Due to popular request (and because our original sphere model broke when we changed UV scaling on materials), we've changed the icon shape for Building Materials. Now it's a plush-like cube, which still offers enough rounding to show how lighting affects the material.

Because the bevel type can be changed by the player, it's not very important to display the default bevel type in icons.

For now, we have to stick to a single consistent shape. This rounded but cube-like shape represents a combination of all bevel types and how lighting affects the surface of a texture.

Slider Percentage Behavior

Sliders now normalize the values of a setting into a 0-100% range. Prior to this, you could change sliders to values over 100%. We didn't think this was user-friendly or refined, as you could make fog "2000%", for instance!

New Player Score/Lives UI

The design for players' scores and lives has been updated! It's now more consistent with other designs, including the gift collect popups.

The UI will now also appear mid-level when a second player joins:

Note: this is older footage, so gift collects, pickup sounds, and checkpoints UI are unfinished here.

Climbable Thin Surfaces

Stuffy can now attach to thin-layered surfaces when ledge climbing is enabled. Thin ledges are likely to be a common motif in levels! You can only mantle up a ledge if it's a thick layer and if there is available space to climb up.

Directional Ledge Jumps

Ledge climbing now supports directional jumping. You can brace to jump left, right, or backward. This is an ongoing feature and is meant to add more gameplay to ledge climbing.

Depth Magnetism Tuning

Assisitve layer magnetism was explained in previous posts, but this month we've tuned it a bit more! It's now less aggressive. You can still land jumps with assistance, but it only activates when closer to the surface!

You'll need to apply more skill and precision to land precise jumps. Before this, it would pull you into layers with a strong force, even when you might not have intended to land there. We want to help the player, but not solve platforming challenges for them.

Stuffy Mass/Weight Increase

We increased the player's physics mass to allow for more influence on physics objects. Previously, it was too low to affect much. Now, Stuffy is similarly heavy to light objects in a level. Jumping on platforms and bumping into things will apply more force.

Thread Parenting Fix

Stuffy's thread was previously parented to a hand/arm bone. It caused the thread to look offset, as if it were coming from behind Stuffy's arm somewhere.

We've changed it to a dedicated needle attachment bone, so it comes from the same place the needle is usually held.

Needle Slashing Improvement

Logic for needle slashing has been improved. The trigger collider on Stuffy's needle only activates during the peak slash action, and its sounds and events are now tied to the animations. We've also added a slash particle effect, which we're still working on!

Airborne Slashing

Stuffy can now perform the slash attack mid-air! This is handy for potential air enemies, obstacles, and puzzles.

Air Drag Behavior

Stuffy will now resist some forces differently, resulting in better behavior while in the wind range of Fans or other objects that require 'air drag'.

This means Stuffy will resist it more when falling with high velocity, rather than dropping to the bottom of the wind and then slowly rising again.

Movement Tuning

DeRose and co. are still making great progress at fixing Stuffy's movement! A character that interacts with so many systems in so many ways, all in a sandbox physics playground, can be a challenge. We have to account for slopes, moving platforms, being crushed, magnetism assists, layers, secondary abilities, and much more.

To make it easier for the team to tune values and iterate quickly, we've set up a 'scriptable object' in the engine. It lets us quickly change values at runtime to get Stuffy feeling just right!

There are loads of options for Stuffy's behaviors in their main script. It's overwhelming to sort through, so this more 'essential' list of values helps us keep a clear mind when tweaking their behavior.

Front/Back Flips

Front and back flip animations were added to the project, and may be used for things like Trampoline jumps! For now, it's been used as one of the double jump animations.

Obstructed Wall Press

Stuffy now presses against walls with a new animation, and it conditionally changes the direction of the head based on your facing direction.

Animation Blending Improvements

Various improvements were made for Stuffy's animation blending. This includes directional needle 'n thread holding + pulling, throwing the needle, retracting it, hopping down from surfaces, strafing while the thread is held, and more.

New Idle Emote

A new idle emote was added, which makes Stuffy sit down for a while! When they're done, they'll stand up again. Moving them on your own will also exit the idle state.

New Emotes

A couple of new emotes were added to the game, including animations for a 'Sassy No' and more.

Sound Animation Events

We've added 'event markers' to more animation clips. These tell the code when to fire off a sound effect. Stuffy now plays footstep/impact sounds based on surface type for more movement animations, along with ledge climbing and crawling.

As a bonus, we fixed an issue where footstep sounds weren't correctly synced to the animation! We assumed it was a code issue, but it was actually incorrect markers playing at the wrong frames of the animation, as it was leftover from an older running clip.

Note: this clip is from before crawling sound events were added.

We've also added sounds for when Stuffy yawns or coughs during the emotes/idle animations!

New Menu/Theme Music

We've found some very nice licensed music for our main menu. They perfectly capture the vibe for the game! These are the first major tracks not from our own composer.

Physics Impacts Sounds (Detection Improvements)

Some light code adjustments have improved the detection of physics impact sounds. We still need to add more sound variations and adjust pitch! When an object rolls and has its other corners hit the same surface, the impact sounds will now play instead of being ignored. Before, it would ignore the extra impacts because some part of the box was still touching the ground.

New Trampoline Sound

After some community feedback, we've changed the Trampoline bounce sound to be a bit more 'springy', with a subtle boing sound overlaid.

Story Levels Forum

We're not yet ready to build story levels, unfortunately! We need to finish the level editor and all main features before we can combine things for fun levels. We're getting much closer to that goal than ever before, so we've set up a forum in our dev server to track specific levels' progress and details.

We'll use this forum to organize progress on future level design, and to outline each level's goals and core mechanics. We've already laid out the details of each level in the first story world: "Attic Atelier"!

Level Ending Object

We need a special object for ending levels. Something Stuffy can slash open to trigger a level ending! This needs to stand out as a unique object. Something coveted, shiny, and important.

We've conceptualized a few ideas of how it could look, and now we're in the process of adding it to the game!

Breakable Boxes

As we lean more into preset gameplay objects, we've decided to add a Breakable Box. This crate-like object will resemble the TNT box so they can be stacked modularly, but it's meant to look a bit more frail and interactive. We're still refining the design of this one.

"Trixel Spotlight" aims to highlight exceptional community content, including fan art, commentary, and game creations.

Note: Featured content does not endorse, confirm, or deny any ideas, misinformation/speculation, and is simply a way of bringing attention to community efforts!

Thanks for joining us as we look back on recent development highlights! There's still a lot we weren't able to fit into the post, like various fixes and changes, feature discussions, and so forth.

We hope you've enjoyed another glimpse into development! See you next time!

Don't forget to join our Discord server! It's where all things Restitched are happening!