First of all, we are incredibly grateful for your support on our first game release, Cosmic Crusaders! So far, we’ve seen 177 views, 20 downloads, and 15 browser play sessions since launch, and we appreciate the feedback from everyone who has played. If you’d like to check out Cosmic Crusaders, you can play in your browser or download the game for Windows/PC and Mac systems by clicking here, and if you’d like more background information behind its development, please read our last newswire post by lead developer Jai Vyas.

Today, though, we’d like to talk to you briefly about the future of Daydream Studio and its titles beyond Cosmic Crusaders. We have spent a couple months internally discussing this future, and we’re excited to let you peek behind the scenes.

So, without further ado:

First: A Fresh Coat of Paint

One place where we knew improvements had to be made was our company branding. The old logo was always meant to be a temporary design, but agreeing on a replacement was easier said than done. Many ideas were thrown around, including a version of the sun logo with sparkles inside it, a version where the cloud fully contained the sun and sparkles, and a serif font design for the wordmark.

In the end, however, we decided that the old logo wasn’t all bad. We grew quite attached to the sun inside of our original design with the rays surrounding it, deciding that this was the most iconic part of the old logo. This led us to simply take this sun design, smooth it out a bit, make the yellow color slightly lighter, and make it our new logo.

The new wordmark is using a pre-existing font this time, rather than the original hand-written text. We’re using a font called Raleway, which is publicly available on Google Fonts for personal and commercial use. This font is quite elegant and fits our brand quite well.

We’ve also redesigned the sky gradient to be less harsh, as we liked the general idea, but sometimes struggled to implement it properly in certain contexts. The new gradient gives us more flexibility in terms of what colors we can pair it with and is easier on the eyes. You’re seeing the new gradient now as the background of this very page, but you can also check out how it is being used across our social media platforms, such as Bluesky, X/Twitter, and Discord.

Now that we’ve given the company’s branding a fresh coat of paint, it’s time to decorate that room with a renewed focus on our first flagship game project.

Secondly: Let’s Count With Your Hands

We have not previously discussed Count With Your Hands, our first flagship title, publicly outside of a social media post looking for playtesters back in February. We can now say that our initial playtest program was successful, and the game’s scope has grown since our initial plans came into fruition near the start of this year.

We’re excited to share the first public screenshots of our prototype, alongside our first logo for the game, created by our talented everything-guy Jai Vyas. This is just the first step towards our completed game, as we’ve expanded the game’s story and planned gameplay mechanics. We’re very excited to share more with you as we bring our daydream into reality!

For updates on Count With Your Hands, please follow the game’s official social media pages on Bluesky, X/Twitter, and Instagram, and join the official Daydream Studio Discord server.

To view the below images in their full resolution, right click/hold on the image, then click/tap “Open image in new tab”.

Thirdly, A Quick Clarification and a Thank You

We also wanted to quickly update you on our previously announced hosting plans in our one-year anniversary newswire post. We have decided to shelve these plans due to the expense and lack of full time staffing needed to run a reliable hosting service. We apologize for the change of plans. We have instead fully committed to creating games that we’ve been daydreaming about, and we hope you’ll stick around for that.

Finally, thank you very much for reading this Daydream Newswire post. We sincerely appreciate your support of Daydream Studio and our projects!

Sincerely,

The Daydreamers

Cosmic Crusaders is out now for free, and you can download it and try it out for yourself at https://daydreamgamedev.itch.io/cosmic-crusaders.

This project is a fast-paced, retro arcade space shooter where you upgrade your ship to survive scaling waves of enemies inside a dynamic boundary.

How It Started

Cosmic Crusaders was originally meant for practicing parallax backgrounds in the GameMaker engine and was never meant to be built into a playable game. Its development started in August 2023 with around 5 days of development. The game consisted of a large playable space with the background consisting of 3 layers of stars that move at different speeds to create that parallax effect.

global.draw_star_layer(sStarsFar, 0.01, ship_x, ship_y);
global.draw_star_layer(sStarsMedium, 0.05, ship_x, ship_y);
global.draw_star_layer(sStarsClose, 0.1, ship_x, ship_y);

Then, the player and an enemy were added, and it sat in a folder on a hard drive for three years.

Daydream Studio

In April 2026, Daydream Studio began reviewing past prototypes the members have worked on, searching for a simple project to polish and release. We ultimately selected Cosmic Crusaders to be that project. However, the game was far too barebones for an immediate release and completely lacked a core game loop. Because of this, we decided to keep developing the project until it reached a fully playable, releasable state.

Development

To turn this simple roaming sandbox into a fun, fast-paced experience with an actual game loop, the route that made the most sense was to shift to a wave-based format. We introduced a boundary zone and an upgrade shop where players could upgrade their ship between rounds. Once the core game loop was solid, we focused on adding depth: a main menu, multiple difficulties with a local save/load system, dedicated settings menus (video, gameplay, and audio), and sound effects paired with dynamic combat music to set the mood. To fully flesh things out, we even added a sandbox mode where players can completely customize the game; tweaking base stats, modifying upgrades, and spawning enemies or asteroids at will. Features like these are exactly what elevated the project into a truly releasable title.

The Final Stretch

As we got closer to the due date, the team focused on fixing bugs, exporting the game for Windows and Mac platforms, designing the itch.io page, and executing a marketing push that included teaser posts and a release trailer.

Stay Tuned!

We are really excited about releasing this as our first published game, and hope you stick around to hear more about our future in making games you’ve been daydreaming about.

Who We Are

Daydream Studio was created as a group of like minded developers and designers interested in creating exciting games that push the envelope. We’ve taken on several people to the team from many differing locations across the last year to ensure that our games have the proper talent working on them. Daydream is comprised of people that believe that video games are capable of incredible things, and we cannot wait to share what we have in store.

What We’ve Been Up To

Daydream Studio has been hard at work to both create games and develop an affordable hosting solutions service. As time passes, we feel confident that the experiences we’re creating will be memorable and endearing to many audiences. With an ever-growing team, Daydream Studio is demonstrating that it is capable of leveraging diverse talent across time zones as production of our action adventure game picks up in speed and scope. Make sure to join our Discord and follow us on social media to stay up to date with our game development and server hosting!

Game Development

Action Adventure

What It Is

We’re creating an action role-playing game with an emphasis on replayability and a dynamic world. There is a mystery about how the world came to be how it is now, which creates an exciting experience as you piece it together through lore and interaction with characters. Plethoras of side quests and collectible items ensure that no progress in the game feels like a grind, but instead an exciting adventure.

Development Progress and Plans

Daydream Studio has been focusing most of the development and design work on ensuring that this game comes out not only when we want it, but also in a way that satisfies both us and our fans. Development has been generally smooth, and we have confidence that this will be maintained as we progress.

Long-Term RPG Project

What It Is

Our RPG with a focus on a rich story and tense bullet hell combat. A lot of time was put into creating an interesting world that props up characters that will captivate players. The combat system is entirely unique, leveraging the best qualities of the RPG genre in tandem with a focus on precise feeling bullet hell action.

Development Progress and Plans

Despite being the first game we intended to make, it has proven itself too large to be a viable start. Development on this game has not been a high priority as our action game has been taking precedent over it as a result of this. When that action game is nearing release, however, we intend to focus all of our efforts into making this RPG.

Server Hosting

Behind The Scenes

Since the beginning of Daydream Studio, we have paid for a powerful server that runs our internal software for the company, including for game development. However, these server costs are beginning to add up, so our infrastructure team devised a plan to help offset these costs: running a server hosting solution.

Since then, we’ve began setting up various parts of the hosting infrastructure, such as Paymenter for payment management, Pterodactyl to host “shared” servers such as private game servers, and Virtualizor for provisioning full virtual private servers (VPS). At this point, all of this work has almost been completed, and we plan to launch our hosting service, Daydream Host, soon afterwards.

Launch Plans

To make sure that we limit the scope to keep things stable around launch, we currently only play to launch with a virtual private server (VPS) service and a shared-resource game server solution for games such as Minecraft and Team Fortress 2, allowing users to quickly and easily manage their own servers, whether it’s for some friends or for a larger project.

Future Plans

In the future, we plan to offer other kinds of services, such as semi-managed dedicated servers for bigger needs, alongside shared web hosting for easy-to-deploy websites, database hosting to host data (potentially for those websites), Discord and other bot hosting services, and more.

Stay tuned for future announcements for Daydream Host!

Conclusion

Thank you for reading through this blog and following us on our journey so far! We have an open and public Discord server dedicated to our games and development. Also, we have accounts on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok where you can keep up to date on all things Daydream!

If you want to be a part of the team and have development skills – we’re hiring for just that! Apply here, and help us make unforgettable experiences.