Between Satire and Innovation: Milan of Degenheim Reveals the Creative Process Behind Their Bold Roguelike
Today, we’re excited to bring you an inspiring conversation with Milan Peschl, the visionary founder of Degenheim project. Milan’s journey into the gaming industry is a true testament to passion and perseverance. From creating Halloween costumes for fun to building a whole company, his story is as unique as the games he creates.
Starting his career in the gaming world from a young age, Milan eventually made the leap from big corporate clients to his own indie studio, Highrise Studios, and today we’re here to talk about that journey and his latest project, Degenheim.
Degenheim is the first game from Highrise Studios. Milan has always had a deep connection to gaming, spending his childhood immersed in it, despite his father’s frequent reminders to step away from the computer and enjoy the outdoors. His father often told him there was no future in games—but Milan proved him wrong.
Milan’s passion for gaming shaped much of his professional career. Even during his university years, he developed a project—a self-made game designed for children with disabilities. Later, he worked in the mobile industry, collaborating with major clients such as EA, LEGO, and others, contributing to high-profile titles with millions of players and significant revenue.
At some point, Milan and a few friends decided to leave those corporate projects behind. The desire to create games of their own drove them, rather than simply chasing financial success. This passion led to founding Degenheim, their very first fully own game in 2021.
The Interview
Let’s start this interview with a standard, yet essential question: Could you share with us the story behind the creation of Highrise Studios, how the idea for your studio came about, and what your vision is?
Well, basically, as I already mentioned, a few friends and I had accumulated quite a few years of experience in the gaming industry. The most experienced among us has over 15 years of experience. We just wanted to create a game that would truly feel like our own.
We were extreme fans of roguelikes, mostly of Hades which is a massively popular game.I don’t know how many hours I spent in the game but that was probably also the biggest inspiration for our game. Like each and every one of us, we were playing the game and we were like “God damn, this game is so good!” and I was like “God, it’s a pity we can’t play together.” There’s an idea, and we just kind of went with it: how about we make a co-op Hades, but super random, with fun abilities, nothing too serious, fun characters, fun bosses, fun environments.
That was kind of the inspiration that drove us, and yeah, here we are, three years later, shortly before releasing the game. That’s probably the backstory; we were huge fans and wanted to create a game we could play and enjoy, and hopefully, others would enjoy as well.
What was the main inspiration behind Degenheim? Was there a specific moment when you decided this would be your next adventure?
Probably the one I already mentioned, which is that at first, I was just watching Hades, and I was like, “Yeah, the game seems nice, seems awesome, but how is it everyone is so addicted?” Then I tried it, and I got lost. I ran through the game I think 119 times, with a winning streak of like 28 runs in a row on high heat, which is an endgame mechanic. I remember on like 32 heat, which is when you scale the game, I was sweating hard, I paused the game and even gave myself a pep talk.Then I found out, “Oh, this friend likes it, this friend likes it,” and we’re all into gaming. And we’re like, “God damn, like every single one of us spent so many hours in this game. Imagine if we could play Hades together.”
And that’s probably when it clicked for all of us that we were kind of fed up with working in the mobile gaming industry because we felt like we weren’t making enjoyable games that much, mostly making money machines with no connection to them. So this idea spoke to us more from the gaming side, like we wanted to create a game that was truly our own, where nothing was off-limits, where no client could tell us what we could or couldn’t do. If we thought something would be fun or enjoyable, we could just put it in there. We wanted a game where nothing was off-limits, pure comedy, pure fun, enjoying with your friends, and that was probably it.
The team has an impressive background, with experience at giants like EA and LEGO. How have these experiences influenced the development of Degenheim?
What it helped us with definitely is avoiding a lot of rookie mistakes because we already went through them when we were working on much bigger games. For example, we didn’t inflate the scope that much, which happens to a lot of indie games.
Developers think they have big ideas, like “Oh, we’ll make the next GTA,” and they’re like, “Okay, but there are only seven of you. Are you sure you’re making the next GTA?” So, we had a lot of things figured out when it came to game design, especially progression models, because those are huge, especially in the mobile gaming market. Most of what keeps you inside the core gameplay loop in mobile games is the progression models—the meta progression—that keeps you coming back. You’re always chasing the next item, upgrade, level, or feature.
We had a lot of this down and were very familiar with how art production works. For example, one of mine, Daniel, is a super qualified artist. I think he even drew for some Star Wars games, and he drew for Hill Climb Racing 2, which is a huge game. It’s actually his favorite mobile game; he played it from the start and played with cars he drew himself, which is kind of the dream.
We had a lot of experience that allowed us to avoid many mistakes and streamline production. This allowed us to produce a game with so many features and so much content with such a small team. At its peak, we were around 30 to 35 people, but we optimized it to roughly 15 to 20 people, which is not that big for a game with art, meta progression, combat, multiple abilities, VFX, sound effects, cinematics, and so on.
You already talked about the amount of work this game has, but I want to emphasize this: we will have over 100 abilities, 20 characters, and a huge variety in the game. How do you balance this complexity with accessibility for new players, especially in this kind of genre?
With sweat, blood, and tears, I’d say. We spent almost a year in playtesting. I think when we first released our playtest, it was around this time last year, and it’s just going back and forth with other game designers, developers, and the community. We went through analytics and saw things like: people are picking these abilities, these abilities are doing the most damage, these abilities are picked the least, these abilities have the best success rate, these characters have the least success rate, and so on.
When you mix this all up and listen to the playtesters, we actually accompanied hundreds of players—maybe even over a thousand over the year. We gathered so much feedback. For instance, in the first week, we had so much feedback from the first batch of players. One guy reported like 32 pieces of feedback, including things like “you can get stuck here” or “this ability is OP.” We had so much and we were continuously balancing it over and over again.
This combination of a gradually unfolding gameplay means it’s not like you go into the game and we just throw you in with all the content right away. Instead, it’s more like, “Okay, here’s a very quick tutorial that gives you the gist of the basic controls.” You start to get the hang of it, and then you move on to the first chapter of the game, which is relatively easy.
We’ve observed a good success rate where players complete it and want to continue. From there, there’s a gradual introduction of features: you get into the player hub, and you see things like talents, items, special abilities, characters, and how everything works. This happens gradually.
You learn how to equip items, upgrade them, and fuse them together. The game progressively introduces these mechanics. At the beginning, you don’t even have all the abilities unlocked, to avoid overwhelming the player.
Instead, as you progress, new abilities and features are unlocked step by step. For example, by the time you reach Chapter 3, you have way more abilities available than in Chapter 1.
This pacing is intentional to ensure everything feels enjoyable and not overwhelming. Every piece of information, like ability descriptions, is kept short and easy to comprehend. As you progress, new content keeps unlocking, keeping the experience engaging but manageable for the player.
Bosses and other characters are a central part of the experience. What is the creative process behind their design, both in terms of gameplay and aesthetics?
Well, since we wanted to create a game that’s unhinged, satirical, and full of fun and comedy, we really went all out with the boss designs. For example, the Chapter 2 boss, called “Fat Fkn Karen.” It’s a joke—it’s not meant to offend anyone. In fact, we even make fun of ourselves in the game. There are NPCs who call the developers “losers” for not finishing something on time.
Karen is a massive woman wearing a tiny fairy costume with a wand. She’s based on the internet meme Karen who always wants to speak to the manager. Her abilities include summoning small, fatmobile scooters (like the ones you might see in Walmart). These scooters swarm the player in large numbers as part of her attacks.
We aimed for gameplay that’s challenging but also enjoyable and humorous. You fight the boss and think, “This is so random!” That’s exactly the reaction we wanted to evoke. As the game progresses, the bosses get more wild in both design and mechanics.
For example, in Chapter 3, we have a boss unofficially inspired by a well-known streamer, who may or may not be bear some similarities with Asmongold. Fans of his will notice references, like his $2 steak cooked in the microwave—this becomes one of his in-game abilities. He summons a microwave that shoots steaks at the player. Another reference is to a video where he threw an old mattress out of a window. In the game, he summons mattresses that fall from the sky onto the player.
Our goal was to make the gameplay challenging, enjoyable, and fun, with each boss being more outlandish than the last.
My next question is about the meta-progression system, which is a key element in the roguelike genre. What unique mechanics have you introduced to make this feature stand out?
We have some very conventional stuff there, and we made it a mixture of progression models from mobile games and from desktop games—kind of like a mixture, which is unusual. Why we went down this way is because arguably mobile games have probably the best meta progression models in the world, because some of those games, with only their meta progression, tend to keep you as a player for years, and they can scale basically infinitely.
Some unique things we threw in, which we wanted to make as part of the internet culture, is that you can actually progress and gradually unlock abilities which you can equip and alter your hero kit. You have your character out of the 20 we have, and they have some abilities, and you have one extra slot, and you reserve it for something we call “meme sakes.” It’s kind of inspired by keepsakes from Hades, but it’s memes—actual memes as abilities.
So it’s like, I don’t know if you know, like “That’s what she said” from The Office. So that’s probably a unique approach that yes, you have abilities, you have kits, and so on, but this introduces a new modularity and variety because you gradually unlock more and more of these abilities, and you can find in your kit, like, “Okay, this ability goes with this character or my playstyle.” It actually allows you to be more defensive, more aggressive, more mobile, have a huge nuke ability which is an AOE, or you just want to apply dots, or you want to have an extra jump ability. That’s all there, and it allows you to alternate your gameplay even if you’re playing the same character.
Humor and references to internet culture are central to the theme. Was this creative choice driven by the desire to provide a fresh perspective, setting it apart from games like Hades, for example, or did it emerge more organically as part of the development process?
I’d say it’s a combination of both. You want to be somehow unique, somehow different. You don’t want to be like, “Oh, this is just a reskin copy of Hades.” It’s a promise of a good game, but it’s not that original, and a lot of other games have tried this. I’ve seen them, and I won’t be naming names because I don’t think that’s a good thing to do, but there have been games that are just blatant reskins of Hades. They took all the abilities and so on, threw it in this theme or that theme, and that’s basically it—leave out half of the abilities, the dialogues, the story, the deep progression, and boom, it’s a new game.
We didn’t want to go down this route. Instead, we aimed to be like, “Okay, let’s get inspired by the best of these games within our capability and capacity, and give it a twist”. We always wanted to strive for a satirical, funny world full of comedy, and hence why we went down this road. It brings a new level of modularity to your character and your gameplay, but on the other hand, it’s fun. For example, you might be just using the ability because you like the meme, and you want to spam it because it also comes with the graphics, it also comes with the sound effects.
For example, that “That’s what she said” ability. You press it, it actually functions as a dash, so you dash into your enemies and then create an AOE around you. It actually displays a hand-drawn Michael Scott, our version, with the sound like “Oh, that’s what she said,” and you can spam it. It brings a fun vibe because when I showed this the first time to some new players, and I actually used it and dashed in between, they were like, “Who the [ __ ] was that?” Everybody burst out laughing, and I was like, “Okay, okay, this is exactly what we wanted.” Then I saw other people adopt it, and they had so much fun with those abilities that they could spam it. After that, it kind of felt like a no-brainer.
Character design and NPCs like Straw Barry have a very unique style. Where do these personalities come from? Are they inspired by stereotypes, or have you drawn from personal experiences?
Dash Johnson is quite an interesting character. Fun fact: he was actually created years ago for a project we were working on with the co-founder and artist. However, that project never materialized due to client-side issues. After years, we decided to bring him back from the drawer because he was perfect for this game.
Dash was designed based on stereotypes of heroic figures from the ’80s and ’90s, like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone—those buff guys who run into danger, save people, and shoot everything in sight. He’s meant to embody that archetype in a fun, over-the-top way.
Straw Barry, another character, is an extension of this concept. He appears in the tutorial and plays a role in the story, though I won’t spoil anything about that.
Recently, we added a character called Donald Pump, which is essentially a inspired Donald Trump as a massive, muscular figure who acts in a hilariously “American” way. The idea came up just for fun, without any deeper intent or commentary.
At first, some team members were hesitant, wondering if it was appropriate. But I said, “Guys, we’re making an unhinged game—nothing is off-limits.” Once we developed him, Donald Pump quickly became one of the team’s favorite characters because of how fun and ridiculous he is.
A lot of the creative process for these characters is improvisational. Sometimes I wake up with an idea, and we just roll with it. That’s how some of our most entertaining characters come to life.
The current version supports keyboard and mouse, but controller support is coming soon. How far along are you with this implementation?
We’ve had it already functional for roughly a month, which means the game is playable not only on desktop but also on Steam Deck. It’s Steam Deck compatible, though there are some minor issues, like bugs on the Steam Deck. However, controller support is already in place.
We wanted to have it because we know many players enjoy it, and we plan to expand to other platforms in the future.
You are developing for multiple platforms, including Steam Deck. What technical challenges have you encountered to ensure optimal performance across devices with varying capabilities?
A major difficulty was implementing multiplayer and making it server-based. We used Unity’s new technology, which is Unity 6-based, and we were one of the few games to use it. This technology saved us time and reduced pain with server setups, but it wasn’t easy.
Making a server-side game with networking latency, server validation, and cheat protection was challenging. For example, the server validates actions and prevents things like speed hacking or tinkering with the numbers, which is essential for maintaining fairness. This was probably the biggest technical challenge we faced.
The co-op mode allows up to four players to collaborate. What measures have you taken to keep gameplay balanced and enjoyable in a multiplayer context?
The co-op mode allows up to four players to collaborate. To keep gameplay balanced and enjoyable in a multiplayer context, we focused on continuous testing and adjustments with players. For example, as a hardcore Roguelike player, I initially wanted to make the game harder with more HP and enemies, but I noticed that other players were struggling.
When we played together, we found that some players felt they weren’t being utilized properly, and enemies in co-op were dying too fast. So, the game scales according to the number of players, making it slightly easier with more players, in terms of numbers. This approach helps accommodate different skill levels, ensuring that everyone can enjoy the game, even if some players are better than others.
It’s not super hardcore; it’s more of a hybrid casual game. The game scales, so the more players there are, the more HP and damage the enemies have, and so on. There are various mechanics in the backbone of the game, but we wanted to find the right balance so that everyone feels utilized without making it too difficult. If it’s two of us, it’s okay, but when there are three, it shouldn’t be harder. We want it to be the opposite, so the game gets slightly easier the more people there are, so everyone can enjoy themselves.
Why release the game first in Early Access, and what do you think about Early Access? What do you think will be the main focus of the Early Access, and then obviously the full release?
Oh, as time went by, to be honest, the fun fact is that while we were fixing a lot of server problems, we had some developers dedicated to the server stuff, and while we were fixing that, we actually used the time to add a lot of content that wasn’t even supposed to be in the Early Access. So currently, we’re closer to having the game fully ready, not just Early Access.
So it’s going to be a very rich Early Access I guess? Usually, Early Access games are kind of half-baked, missing a lot of content, but we’ll have most of the content — about 80% or even more — on release in Early Access. It won’t just be 30% or something that will come later; you’ll get the majority of the experience on day one, and we have the ability to add more to it.
For example, the game currently features 10 full chapters, each with unique bosses and pieces of the story that unfold gradually. It also has five different difficulty levels, so you can challenge yourself or just play for fun. There’s even a “OnlyPain” mode for people who love the challenge. A lot of this stuff we initially planned to release a few months later, but just today, when I logged into the new playtest, I saw that we already have all five difficulty levels. I texted one of the devs, and he said it went faster than expected. So, we’re kind of already ahead in terms of content.
We’re in Early Access because it gives us room to take in feedback from more players. They can give us feedback with the understanding that the game isn’t fully finished. They can suggest changes, and we can work on it. Our Early Access will be very complete. Out of the 20 characters we plan to have, we’ll probably have 12 to 15 fully playable. In the demo, we already have seven or eight.
I think we have nine out of ten chapters done and tested, with at least five or six of them properly balanced. This is why we wanted Early Access — so players can shape the game. They can give feedback on features, bosses, difficulty, and we can tweak things to make the game better. We want the community to feel involved and that their input matters. It’s great to give players what they love, especially when they have the power to shape the game.
It’s like when you’re often on the side of the player. You know when new features are coming, and you want them now. I play games too, and I know how it feels. For example, I played Ravenswatch for over 130 hours and loved it. When they released new characters, it was kind of slow — like one character every few months — and I thought, if there were more characters, I’d be playing even more.
I didn’t want that for our players. We don’t want them to have to wait that much. We want them to have a lot of content upfront. Even when there’s more content left to come, they’ll get more regularly: new characters, new chapters. Players won’t have to wait long. We want to overwhelm them with new features so they can keep up with the game as it evolves.
We’re doing this for the players, not for ourselves.
Conclusions and Acknowledgments
Before concluding, we would like to express our gratitude, first and foremost, to you, the readers, who have accompanied us up to this point with your interest and attention. A special thanks goes, of course, to Milan: his availability, courtesy, and dedication were essential to the success of this interview. We deeply appreciate the time he dedicated to us and his sharing of the vision behind their project, answering our questions and curiosities with clarity and passion.
This interview has allowed us to deeply explore the creative vision and pragmatic approach behind their new, ambitious work. A project that stands out not only for its irreverent and satirical style but also for its courage in redefining the boundaries of the roguelike genre, staying true to the promise of surprising and entertaining. It is a work that invites reflection on what it means today to create a game that entertains with ease, while remaining unique in its freshness and originality.
An experience that promises to stimulate curiosity, bring smiles, and leave a mark, opening the doors to an even brighter and more promising future. With this promise, we close the interview, curious and eager to discover the next surprises this project has in store for us.
If you want to know more:
Highrise Studio Official Website
