Remember a few years ago when May had a week of many, many high-profile indies launching around the same time? Well, it’s déjà vu here in 2026, and we’ve got a slew of indies releasing between May 5 and 12. In the middle there on the 7th, we’ve got the eye-catching TetherGeist, a precision platformer with loads of color and charm.
I had a chance to have a quick exchange with two out of three of the game’s developers, Noah and Rae, who shared with me some details on TetherGeist’s development as well as what the game will offer fans of platformers.
How are you doing? What games have you been playing and enjoying?
We are doing so well! Since finishing production on TetherGeist, it’s been nice to have some more free time to play games. We recently played through Reanimal together and had a great time. And Noah has been playing through Mouse: P.I. For Hire and loves it. We are both suckers for noir stories and classic cartoons, so that game is right up our alley.
What are you doing to calm the nerves leading up to the launch of TetherGeist?
Thankfully we’ve had enough project launches across games and comics over the years to have learned to detach ourselves emotionally from the success of our work. It doesn’t take all the stress away, but we are definitely better at it now than we were five years ago. It is important to remember that creating something is itself a great achievement, and there’s nothing gained from stressing about the mistakes you made. You just learn from them and do better the next time! We also have a tradition of going camping when a big project launches; it’s a great way to unplug and recenter during what would otherwise be a very stressful day glued to the screen.
What feature are you most proud of implementing in TetherGeist, and why that one?
Ooo, that’s a tough one. There are a lot of things we decided to put into TetherGeist that we are really proud of. I think the thing that we both would agree on is our branching narrative. Multiple endings aren’t anything special in video games. But how we wanted to use our multiple endings was a big part of our overall narrative design. We wanted the themes of the game to be explored at a few different levels depending on how the player plays the game. Of course, the final implementation of these endings isn’t as in depth as we originally planned, but they still fulfill our goals.
What do you think is your signature or thumbprint in TetherGeist that makes it uniquely yours?
One thing that I think all three of us would agree on is our unique thumbprint on TetherGeist is its themes of spirituality and faith. As a team we have a lot of overlapping spiritual beliefs, and many of those are explored in TetherGeist. Our story is all about a young shaman who embarks on a spiritual pilgrimage to an ancient temple. We explore themes like the relationship between spirit and body, transformative vs. transactional faith, and the loss of institutional spiritual knowledge. All ideas that we are passionate about but are not often explored in the video game medium.
Thinking in terms of level design, what was your strategy to make the game both welcoming to newcomers but also challenging for seasoned players of precision platformers?
This is something we were very sensitive to early on. We wanted to make a game that appealed to the experienced Celeste fanbase but also welcomed new players to the genre. The most basic solution was to have good tutorialization and a reasonable difficulty curve. That way players could be really comfortable with the controls before being introduced to the more technically difficult sections. Another solution for us was the use of frequent checkpoints and instant respawns. With those, the player wouldn’t get frustrated playing the same long stretch of level over and over again, and every time they fail, they are instantly trying again, not waiting for a respawn. All of those elements made the gameplay more accessible, but in order to give players an extra challenge, we included many optional rooms and secrets. If the player so chooses, they can leave the main path and go complete a more difficult room in order to receive one of the game’s collectables, a red atropa blossom.
As such a small team, how do you juggle all the hats you have to wear to get a game out the door? Did you ever feel like you’ve got too many hats for three heads?
There was definitely a lot more work to be done than we initially expected. Thankfully, our team all had complementary skills that really rounded out production. Jordan Ottesen had experience as a programmer, musician, and video editor, and we ourselves have worked as writers, designers, and artists. The three of us also all had entrepreneurial experience, which lent itself well to all the other hats we had to wear, between production coordination, administrative tasks, and everything else that goes into shipping and promoting a game. But even still, we couldn’t do it all on our own and had to hire extra hands to cover bases we couldn’t, like marketing, translation, porting, etc.
Why an axolotl as your spirit companion? Any reason for that besides it being very cool?
One of the biggest world-building inspirations we pulled from was the biomes and architecture of Mesoamerica. So when we wanted Mae to have a companion character, an axolotl was a cool, relevant choice. And while doing research for the character, we discovered a related species called Sirens that have the same external gills but only one set of front legs. So that became our adorable friend Bao!
What do you hope players get out of playing Tethergeist? What’s the one takeaway you’d like all players to have?
The story and gameplay experience of TetherGeist is all about overcoming difficult obstacles despite not knowing what the results of your efforts will be. Life is full of difficult paths we must walk down. And it’s our belief that it is the act of choosing to walk the path that makes us stronger, happier people. Despite where the journey ultimately takes us.
TetherGeist will be launching on May 7th on both Steam and Switch. Stay tuned for a review forthcoming on the game.
