Welcome to the very first entry of the G&L Dev Diaries! To be honest? We are absolutely blown away. The number of people who have joined our community in such a short time has completely floored us. Thank you for being a part of Glads and Lads! Today, we’re going to talk about who we are, why we hate greedy publishers, and how the idea for our mascot was born. Enjoy the read!
Who is behind Glads and Lads?
We are Gamefluence studio, but above all else—we are a group of gamers and enthusiasts of all things gaming. Our office discussions are a wild mix of memories from WoW raids, item drops in Tibia, and hundreds of hours spent in Path of Exile or Souls games. We also have fans of card games and tabletop RPGs in the team. Age-wise, most of us are millennials; we remember the dawn of the internet, and we’ve watched the online gaming industry evolve from the front row.
It was this diversity that allowed us to spot the gap that hurts us all the most...
… We want to play games, not pay to skip them 😎
The War on Pay2Win
Around the coffee machine, one topic kept coming back: the death of MMOs by greed. Every one of us has experienced it. Your favorite game, where you spent years, suddenly introduces:
- Mounts with stat boosts for real cash.
- A hairstyle giving +10% attack that costs as much as two coffees.
- Mechanics that ensure without a credit card, you’re just "background dressing" for the whales.
We’ve had enough. We decided to create something the market is missing: an MMO that takes the best parts of the classics but maintains fair progression, without the constant threat of hitting a paywall.
Style Evolution: From realism...
The beginnings were... wild. We knew what kind of game we wanted to create mechanically, but stylistically, we were still searching for our own path. The starting point? Browser classics like Gladiatus or Shakes & Fidget. They were the hits of their time, games we loved as kids, but now we know they can simply be done better. We took that "good old days" essence from them, but decided to take everything else in a completely different, more ambitious direction. We want to take that great vintage vibe and bring it to a place those titles never reached.
...to comic books!
These first graphics are proof of how long our journey has been. We chose a comic book style for two reasons: it gives us incredible creative freedom and—let’s be honest—we’re not a corporation with an infinite budget. Instead of letting ourselves be swallowed by the kind of ambitions that bury the biggest studios in development hell, we focused on giving our game a soul rather than just a shiny coat of paint. We looked for a style that would let us spread our wings without worrying about astronomical costs. When Bartek—our lead artist—showed us the first Swords and Sandals-esque sketches, the office went silent. It was a bullseye. We felt like we were 12 years old again, sitting in front of a CRT monitor. We knew this was it.
The Secret of the Green Armor
Why did our first gladiator put on green armor specifically? The answer is simpler (and more symbolic) than you think. Green is the color of hope and a symbol of a new beginning for the MMO genre…
… Just kidding! The green armor is actually our tribute to Swords and Sandals, a game for which we feel like the spiritual successor. That specific color palette has a unique charm that every player from that era recognizes instantly. Our artist Bartek liked the motif so much that the green gladiator has already become a living meme in our studio. We have a feeling he’ll be staying with us for the long haul as our official mascot!
We have a quest for you!
Our gladiator doesn’t have a name yet. We want YOU to choose it!
- Hop onto our Discord.
- Drop your name suggestion.
- The suggestions with the most reactions will make it to the final poll!
Writing the history of Glads and Lads together
At the end of this first post—a huge thank you. Seriously. We are stunned by how fast our community is growing and the energy with which you anticipate every "leak" or screenshot on Discord and socials. It gives us a massive motivation boost to stay up late working on code and graphics.
We want these dev diaries to become a tradition. We’ll be seeing you here regularly, roughly once a month. We won’t just be bragging about successes—we intend to write openly about the obstacles, mistakes, and things that didn't go our way, because that’s the reality of the developer’s path.
In the next episode:
We’ll take a deeper look into the art workshop. We’ll talk about inspirations for asset creation and show you how the armors you’ll wear in the arena are made.
In the meantime - if you’re not there yet, join our Discord. That’s where the action is, and that’s where you have a real influence on what Glads and Lads will look like on launch day.
See you in the next entry!
The Gamefluence Team
