“I don’t ever want to be mainstream.” – New Blood Interactive’s Dave Oshry on Dungeons of Dusk, RPGs, Steam, Preservation, Epic, and More

RPG Site: For those unaware, tell us a little bit about yourself and New Blood Interactive.

Dave Oshry: I'm Dave Oshry, the CEO of New Blood Interactive. We've been making games since 2014. We are primarily known for our boomer shooters and for spearheading this boomer shooter renaissance. For those of you who don't know what a boomer shooter is, it's a retro first-person shooter game that plays like Doom and Quake. Our boomer shooters are Dusk, Amid Evil, and Ultrakill. We are also known for our indie stealth immersive sim games like Fallen Aces, Gloomwood, and Blood West.

Now we're doing a really cool Dusk spin-off dungeon crawler RPG called Dusk RPG. Wait, not Dusk RPG, it's called Dungeons of Dusk, but people call it Dusk RPG because that's something we've wanted to do for a really long time. So I’m happy to be talking about it. I've been reading RPG Site for, what, 20 years? This might be the first time they’ve actually ever covered anything I've made, so that's cool.

RPG Site: Funny you bring up the 20-year thing, because RPG Site is actually turning 20 years this year.

RPG Site: I love that you referred to it as Dusk RPG as well because I realized I was also doing that while putting together questions for this interview.

Dave Oshry: Exactly! We called it Dungeons of Dusk, but we knew everybody would call it Dusk RPG anyway. That's not a good name. It's a very boring name. Dusk isn't as big as Doom. So Dungeons of Dusk is a good name. But we knew that everybody would just call it Dusk RPG anyway, so it's perfect.

RPG Site: Who came up with the idea to do a dungeon crawler RPG based on Dusk?

Dave Oshry: David (Szymanski) and I have talked about it for years. We just had to find the right person to do it. Neither me or David know the first thing about making a role-playing game. So it was just one of those things. We joked about it back in 2023 or 2024 with Cardboard Dusk and we ended up making that a real thing too, but that's just a mod for regular Dusk. We even did an April Fool's where we were like, "Hey, what about a Dusk dungeon crawler?"

I think we always knew it would lend itself really well to the old-school dungeon crawling format. Me and David love the old games, the Wizardry and the Ultimas and stuff like that. But we especially always thought it would be really cool if we made it like Doom RPG. Just really simple, straightforward, but super addictive and just fun to pick up and play or put down, but has all the trappings of Doom.

When I was playing, I guess, what was it, 2020, around then, I found this game Inferno - Beyond The 7th Circle, and I was like, "Oh, this is awesome! Who makes this?" It was just some Italian dev, and they're 68K Studios. Federico Fanelli. I was like, "Man, this is really cool. I wonder if this guy would want to do a Dusk RPG." Then I played his next game, Ludus Mortis.

So many dungeon crawlers are super involved, they're super hard, they're so punishing. They're not just simple, addictive, fun, go in, be in a dungeon, kill stuff, collect stuff, level up, keep going. They're just too involved for what we wanted but Federico, you could really tell he could make just the super old school stuff. I was like, "This guy definitely knows what we're talking about."

One of our other developers is Italian, Dominic. He's our animator. He does most of our character and third-person weapon animations in New Blood. I was like, "Hey, you're Italian. This guy's Italian. Can you get in touch with him?" How many game developers could there be in Italy? He did. He got in touch. He's like, "Yeah." I asked him if he's interested, and he said, "Yeah." He got him in touch with me and David. Me and David were like, "Hey, we want to do a Dusk dungeon crawler. We really like your dungeon crawlers. Would you be interested?" He's like, "Yeah." We're like, "We really want it to be like Doom RPG. Have you played it?" He's like, "Yeah, I love Doom RPG. I totally get what you're going for."

The rest is history.That's how Dungeons of Dusk happened. We've been working on it for over a year now. It'll be out this year. The demo's coming in Steam Next Fest in about a month (Editor’s note: This interview was conducted in last month and the demo launches tomorrow on February 23). It's one of those things where you're just waiting for the right moment and the right people, and then it happens, and you go for it. 

RPG Site: So it has been in development for only over a year now?

Dave Oshry: Federico's really good at what he does. This is what he does. He makes dungeon crawlers. He was able to build all the systems and everything really fast. The artist he works with, it's the same art style as his other games, so they iterate really quickly. It's not like he had to figure all this out. He knows how to build a dungeon crawler. Dungeons of Dusk is less involved than his last game. Ludus Mortis was a party-based Roman Empire dungeon crawler. It had more systems. So was Inferno. It had a more complicated battle system.

This is very straightforward. You don't go to a separate screen for the battles. You fight the enemies right on screen, in real time. In a way, it's like being the old mobile Doom RPG. It's a lot simpler than his earlier dungeon crawlers. We're already, I want to say, probably a third of the way through developing. All the systems are there. Now we're just building out the levels and stuff. Doing the art for the new areas and stuff. The first six to eight levels are pretty much solid, the first two to three bosses. We're just building the game now. All the systems and everything are in place. It's coming along really well.

RPG Site: In the past, New Blood games have always launched on Steam Early Access and been in Early Access for a few years before finally launching. 

Dave Oshry: Not all of them, but most of them. *laughs*

RPG Site: How come you decided to do a full release directly and not Steam Early Access for Dungeons of Dusk?

Dave Oshry: I don't know if we need Early Access. We do Early Access for the right reasons. We don't do it because we want money or anything. We do it because we want to get enough feedback to build the games well. We want to make sure that we listen to people. We go, "What do you like? What don't you like? What should we focus on? What's too hard? What's too easy?" We do that as we're building the game. By the time the games are finished, they're basically perfect. The people who want them get exactly what they want. Look at the reviews and the sales and stuff. People are like, "This is exactly what I wanted." That's because we spent a long time making them in Early Access. We don't rush. We don't need money or anything. This is how we build games. With our players.

With Dungeons of Dusk, I think we'll be able to get as much feedback as we need from the demo because it's a simpler game. We could do Early Access, but I don't know if it's going to need it, especially with RPG players being so pedantic and semantic, it might just get to the point where it's like, "All right, we know what we're doing here." I think after the demo, we'll be like, "Do you like the direction? Do you like what we're doing? Cool. The rest of the game will be out at the end of the year or so."

We could do Early Access, but I'm not sure we need it. I haven't decided against doing Early Access yet. Especially because we've got so many other games in Early Access, I think people are going to be so burnt out. They'll be like, "Oh my god, another New Blood Early Access game." Dungeons of Dusk lends itself to Early Access well because it's episodic. We can release the first three levels, and the next three levels, and the next three levels. We could do that in pretty quick succession.

I think of our games these days, they're like TV show seasons. Where you watch a season, and then you've got to wait another six months to a year for the next season to come out. That's kind of the way our games are these days. The way we do Early Access, we do these really big, robust updates for people. It doesn't feel like you're just getting little patches of stuff. You're getting a new big thing that you can dig into. I'm not saying we're not going to do it for Dungeons of Dusk, but I don't think in this case we necessarily need it. But the next step is the demo for Steam Next Fest, and we'll see how we go after that.

RPG Site: Obviously the New Blood games were Early Access on PC, and then multiple years before getting console releases, but with Dungeons of Dusk, you're doing PC, mobile, and consoles at once.

Dave Oshry: Yes. Now that we know how to do console ports, we should be able to get this day one on everything, including mobile. The mobile version plays vertically, just like the old Doom and Wolf RPG games with a very silly UI that we made up.

Nowadays, all of our games, when they launch 1.0, we want them to be on consoles on day one. Which we can do now, because we know how to do Switch and PlayStation and Xbox. If it was up to me, the Valve Steam machines would have already taken over the world, and we'd only have to make games for one system at this point. Doing port work is very annoying, but it is what it is. But yeah, there's no reason why Dungeons of Dusk won't be out on everything on day one, which is nice.

RPG Site: Since you brought up Doom RPG, obviously multiple times, have you thought about reaching out with Nightdive to Bethesda and work on bringing that back?

Dave Oshry: I mean, I don't even know. So it wasn't made by id Software. It was made by John Carmack's wife at the time, I think it was Fountainhead Entertainment, which was a studio helmed by Anna Kang, that was her name, who was married to Carmack at the time, and that's how they made that happen. They did Doom RPG, Orcs and Elves, and Wolf RPG. I don't know who has the source code. Also, they are BREW Java games.

The thing is, Doom RPG was reverse-engineered and ported to PC a couple years ago during the pandemic, which is funny because I could have made that happen earlier. I've had it on my phone, I still have my old Motorola flip phone, and I've had it on my phone for years and there's a modding community around those old phones.

Because I had Tweeted a few times about having Doom RPG on my phone, and they were messaging me like, "Hey, can you get these files off your phone? We could use them to reverse-engineer it and have it playable on PC." I was busy, I was like, "Yeah, yeah, one of these days I'll do it." Then somebody else did it. So the games are, Doom and Wolf RPG are playable if you go to, I think I posted about it, if you go to GitHub and DoomWorld, you can play them. Eric194 is the guy who's been doing it. If you go to his GitHub page, you can play these games on PC.

As far as getting, officially able to, release them with Nightdive or something, that sounds like a nightmare. I mean why would I want to pay for a $20 version of Doom RPG when I could play it perfectly fine with the reverse-engineered version? Maybe for preservation's sake, but yeah, I mean, of course, I think about this stuff all the time.

Game preservation is important to me. I'm glad that we've been able to preserve these games. Does Bethesda have any interest in preserving them? I don't know. It's probably the farthest thing from their mind. They just announced the Fallout Shelter reality show, so I don't know how much they're thinking about Doom RPG right now. They've got bigger fish to fry. So my answer is, I don't know, maybe. We'll see.

RPG Site: So the most recent port of Dusk was to Xbox platforms with Play Anywhere support. Did you want to get that out before you announced Dungeons of Dusk?

Dave Oshry: We just wanted to get it out. I mean, we've been working on our Xbox stuff for a while. We wanted to just make sure those were out, the Xbox Play Anywhere version of Dusk. We were trying to debate when we should announce Dungeons of Dusk, and we decided when to finally do it. We decided to get the Xbox version out around Halloween and then for Dusk’s anniversary and the PC Gaming Show, we always try to do something for Dusk's anniversary, and it lined up well with the PC gaming show. So we decided to reveal Dungeons of Dusk in December.

We're always trying to do something with Dusk. Dusk is the New Blood game.

RPG Site: Will Dungeons of Dusk have any new music from Andrew Hulshult, or is it just the original game's soundtrack?

Dave Oshry: It's mostly the old soundtrack, but we're going to see if we can get Andrew to do a few new ones. I mean, the Dusk soundtrack has like, what, 40 or 45 tracks that we can use? There's so much music, but people have asked if Andrew's going to do a few new ones, and I talk to Andrew all the time. He's one of my close friends, so “maybe” is the answer. Probably.

RPG Site: How involved is David Szymanski in Dungeons of Dusk?

Dave Oshry: Not very. Like anything else Dusk related he has full approval and he goes back and forth and gives feedback and plays it really. Me and him and Federico and Andrew are in a group chat. Obviously Federico is in our internal development Discord where we post all the stuff about Dusk RPG and everybody gives feedback, but it's David's IP and David's baby. So he, along with me and Andrew, we give Federico feedback about how we like stuff and what we think could be different or better. That's about how involved he is.

Is he programming or doing art or anything like that? Absolutely not. David's focused on his personal projects and he's got a movie coming out that's getting a huge worldwide release. He's pretty focused on that right now. But David has full approval on anything Dusk related and gives feedback for Dusk RPG, and discusses things we'd like with me and Federico. It's all just  having fun.

RPG Site: Since Dungeons of Dusk is coming out on mobile before the actual Dusk, there's a good chance that a lot of people playing it will have not played Dusk in any form. Do you think this is like a good entry point into the universe?

Dave Oshry: Maybe. I think it'd be cool. It's canonical, right? We're very stupid, so we try to make it so all our games are in the same universe and everything's canonical because people like that. It's fun. The fact that Dusk has two spin-offs now, one's a prequel, and this takes place canonically like between the episodes of the first-person shooter, which is really cool. We're literally designing the levels and the lore so the game starts right where episode one of Dusk leaves off.

You would technically play episode two of Dusk and then the game continues again before episode three. We're thinking of making a launcher that would canonically play all the games for you as you played it. So if you load up like Dusk, the canonical edition, you'd have to play through Dusk ‘82 and then the first episode of Dusk, and then, Dungeons of Dusk, and then Dusk again, and Dungeons of Dusk and then if we do sequel type stuff, that kind of shit.

I don't see why it wouldn't be a good entry point. If somebody plays this on mobile and they're like, “Oh, this is based on a really popular and cool first-person shooter that plays like Doom and stuff”. I think there's a pretty good chance that if you like old school dungeon crawlers, you like old school first-person shooters too. If you like old school Ultima-style dungeon crawlers, you probably also like Doom and Wolf 3D, right? There's a pretty good chance you also like Dusk and Quake. So yes, to answer your question. I think it's a good gateway drug to Dusk.

RPG Site: Are there any plans to do one of the later episodes or levels in Dungeons of Dusk where you just have it become a first-person shooter as a joke or do that as a bonus level?

Dave Oshry: No, it's a straight up dungeon crawler. What I've seen lately with a lot of indie dungeon crawlers is people kind of bemoan the fact that they're too silly. They don't take themselves seriously enough. I've seen that a lot in comment threads lately. People say the vibes are great, but the devs keep putting all these stupid jokes in. Dusk has a lot of jokes around Dusk and New Blood in general, but the games themselves are pretty fucking dead serious, with the exception of some bosses like Big John and stuff like that. Big John's a big deal.

RPG Site: Is there any soap in Dungeons of Dusk?

Dave Oshry: Of course.

RPG Site: Good.

RPG Site: When you ported Dusk to consoles, you had specific endless levels per platform themed around games or the platforms. On PC you can access all of it through DUSKWorld, I think, or like one of the mods or something like that. Are there any plans to do platform-specific stuff like that in Dusk RPG?

Dave Oshry: For Dungeons of Dusk, probably not. What's a PlayStation dungeon crawler that we could make a level like King's Field? Dungeons of Dusk is very much based on old school PC and mobile stuff. I don't think there's any real, like retro console dungeon crawler. I mean, consoles didn't exist back when these games came out, right? 

RPG Site: You could do Wizardry.

Dave Oshry: Yeah, like Wizardry, but I mean, that was on PC. Yea, Wizardry was on PS1 and stuff like that, but back in the early 90s, the modern consoles like PlayStation and Switch, and the Xbox didn't exist. So no, I don't think so. Back then we were still playing, Sega Nintendo, Super Genesis, wait, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis. I got them fucking backwards. I got my biggie lyrics messed up.

RPG Site: Did you get into trouble for that Mario 64 trailer you made for the Switch port?

Dave Oshry: The Mamma Mia Flesh Palace? They're all very clear parodies. Also nobody gives a shit really. I'm a very big believer in doing something and then apologizing if you have to. How does the saying go? Don't ask for permission, beg for forgiveness or whatever it is. If somebody reached out, we'd be like, whoops, sorry. But nobody has, right? It's better than asking, "Oh, can we please do this?" Because they probably won't get back to you or they'll say no.

So like we did it as an homage. Homages are fine. Parody is fine. We're not trying to claim that it's real or anything like that. Obviously, none of those sounds are in the game. Like, the Mario sounds and all that are not in the Switch version. They are in the PC version on Steam Workshop because that's a mod, so you can do whatever you want. It's not official. So no, we haven't gotten in trouble for the Silent Hill map, the Halo map, or Peach's Castle map. Nobody cares.

RPG Site: When you sent me a code for Dungeons of Dusk, I played it on both ROG Ally and Steam Deck. It is pretty polished already. Are you looking for any sort of feedback from the Steam Next Fest demo for handhelds or do you think that aspect is ready?

Dave Oshry: I play it on my Ally X and it works great. The controls are good and everything works. I mean, we're going to get feedback for all of that with the demo, right? There's like 40 million people on Steam every day now. I'd say probably 5 million of them are playing on handhelds. Not just Steam deck, all the Windows-based handhelds like the Legion Go and the Ally. It's a big part of it, and Dungeons of Dusk is, it's a great handheld game, obviously, right? It's perfect for that.

Dungeon crawlers are just so good on these little handheld devices and you could play serious ones now, right? It's not like mobile anymore. There's plenty of dungeon crawlers on mobile, but using touch screen controls? I'd rather kill myself. We're looking to get feedback for that and everything, but I'm excited about it. Do you want to send me feedback?

RPG Site: The only thing I noticed was some of the text is a bit small in Dungeons of Dusk.

Dave Oshry: Oh, yeah, we've got to do that and that'll help us get Steam Deck Verified. We've got to increase the fonts and the window sizes and stuff, but that's all little things.

RPG Site: Yeah, it felt really nice. I even used the right trackpad to look around because I hate using the analog stick when I can use the trackpad on Steam Deck.

RPG Site: When I interviewed you back in 2024, you mentioned how important it was for you and the team to do everything internally including QA and porting to consoles. How has it been learning to port to even more consoles and mobile internally because we've had new consoles release since 2024?

Dave Oshry: It's a pain in the ass. Porting to consoles is a pain in the ass. Console certifications, everything besides Steam, is a pain in the ass. Let's just say that. The platform that allows you to do anything in real time compared to having to wait weeks or go through certifications and all for platforms that sell so much less than Steam, right? We do it because our players want it, right? 

If we only cared about money, we wouldn't ship on anything but Steam these days, but we hate money, and we love our players. When people say, "Please put your games on Xbox," we put them on Xbox. When people say, "Put them on PlayStation," we put them on PlayStation. We've got Switch 2 dev kits now. It's not much different than the Switch 1. We've got Dusk running at 120fps with mouse controls on Switch 2. It works great. We're just waiting for Nintendo to give us approval to actually launch it because they're still pretty cagey about letting games launch on Switch 2.

They don't want it to just become a giant slop fest like the Switch 1 eShop became after a few years with just tons of shovelware on there. They're still pretty choosy about who gets to launch their games on Switch 2, but Nintendo's been very nice to us and stuff, giving us dev kits and letting us do updates for our games.

But, yeah, it's the same. It's just a process. It's just a pain in the ass. I mean, anybody will tell you that. We develop games on PC. We'd love to just ship them on PC, but consoles are a big part of the gaming landscape. So, we do what we have to do. It's fun to learn all this stuff, learning new skills and how to ship games on different platforms, and seeing your game on the Xbox dashboard or the PlayStation dashboard, is always cool, but it's a pain in the ass.

RPG Site: Can you say when Amid Evil is launching on console because it was in that Xbox video promo?

Dave Oshry: We're trying. I mean, we're just so busy. We're trying to finish Ultrakill, Fallen Aces, and Gloomwood. At the same time in between that, we are trying to finish the Dusk SDK and all our console ports, and everything. The programming team is always bouncing around between all these different things. My job is to shift our focus onto what's a higher priority, right?

Right now we're trying to finish Ultrakill Layer 8: Fraud. That's the priority. Then most of that team, shifting whoever's not working on Ultrakill, has got to jump into helping finish Fallen Aces Episode 2. We're also got the HyperStrange guys working on the new Blood West DLC and at the same time, trying to get Tenebris Somnia done, and then get the PS5 version of Faith done, Amid Evil on Xbox and PS5 and Switch 2.

We're doing a million things all at once. We're not a huge studio and we have multiple people that work across all of these little teams. So, to answer your question about Amid Evil for console, we'll get to it when we can. But yes, we still want to do it.

RPG Site: Can you discuss how you got in touch with HEALTH for the Ultrakill song, and have you considered getting them to do a remix for any other game’s soundtrack which you're working on?

Dave Oshry: So, Johnny's a buddy of mine. So, Johnny Health, who plays a bunch of instruments in that band. 

RPG Site: Yeah, I interviewed him last year. I love HEALTH.

Dave Oshry: We were just talking about putting a song in Ultrakill. He told me they were coming out with a new album, and he asked if we wanted to pick one of the singles and put it in the game. I chose Hateful because I thought it would go really well in the Cybergrind. That was the first music collaboration. We've done more since, and we've got more coming in the future. It was easy. Asking a friend if you want to do a fun thing. That's how most shit goes around here.

RPG Site: You've worked with ASUS in the past quite a bit through ROG Ally giveaways and such. When I spoke to you last time, you told me to get one. I now own one. I’m curious if you had to do any extra work for the new ROG Xbox Ally handhelds to get your games working well there.

Dave Oshry: Not really. I mean, they're so powerful that if you can get your games running on Steam Deck, the Ally handhelds are like, no worries at all. I'm a big fan of the Ally. Is Windows a pain in the ass? Yes. But it's still Windows, right? I think Xbox has done a pretty good job with the new software. It still needs work, but I don't find myself going to my desktop at all. With the Ally and the Ally X, now I'm on the Xbox Ally, right? It’s got the new Xbox app that kind of puts Windows in the background processes and puts them away. I just use it for gaming, whereas the old one I used to have to go back and forth to the Windows desktop touch screen all the time, and it was a pain in the ass.

It's a lot better now. It could still be a lot better. You go to Steam, and you have SteamOS which is good because the Xbox App just lets you just swap to Steam or Xbox or GOG Galaxy or whatever. It works pretty seamlessly. It's nice. It quickly swaps and I have no issues. It doesn't lock up.

Armory Crate is still probably the worst software that has ever been invented for hardware. I tell the ASUS guys all the time, and they're like, "It is what it is, man." Like, yeah, it sucks. But like, the hardware is first rate. I've been using Asus stuff since forever, like their monitors and everything. 

It's so weird because I always say the Steam Deck's great because it has great software, right? Valve is a software company. They know how to make great software. But the hardware lags behind, even though it does have an OLED and stuff now, but the Steam Deck is pretty old at this point. ASUS is a hardware company, so they make great hardware, and their software is dog shit. So if I need something that's like in the middle, that has both great hardware and great software. I think we're getting there, but it's just, it's not there yet.

I love my Xbox Ally because the grips are really nice, too. I find that I can play it for longer in bed. It's ugly for sure. It's definitely uglier, but I don't care. It's more comfortable. Does it look like a Steam Deck with an Xbox grip glued to it? Yes. But it's a lot more comfortable. I can play it for a lot longer.

Ever since the Ally X launched, the battery life has been really good. The only thing it's missing besides better software is an OLED screen. If it had an OLED, like hopefully the Ally 2, whenever it comes out. I think nowadays, it's just, the whole world has gone to shit, and parts are impossible to find. There's no RAM, there's no silicon. You can't make anything. Steam Machines are probably getting delayed. Nothing's getting an OLED. It is what it is.

To answer your original question, do we have to do anything extra for the Xbox Ally handhelds? No, it’s great. I love that we've got these powerful PC handhelds now. I mean, the people that play on them are still the most annoying fucking customers in the world. They demand everything for their handhelds. If your early access game isn't Verified on Steam Deck on day one, they're yelling and screaming at you. It's like, come on, man.

RPG Site: I remember being disappointed when I bought Fallen Aces and it didn’t work on Steam Deck. It wasn't a big deal with it getting sorted in a few months.

Dave Oshry: We're just fucking getting stuff going but that's what people expect now. They expect anything they buy on Steam to work on Steam Deck which is crazy, considering how underpowered the Steam Deck is, but it's whatever.  Listen, I've been making games for 15 years. I'm used to entitled players. We try our best to make them happy, and I think we do a pretty good job.

RPG Site: Is Steam Deck verification and optimizing for Steam Deck helpful for you for visibility on Steam with the algorithm?

Dave Oshry: I have no idea. I assume so. I had another guy ask me this the other day. It can't hurt, right? Like, anything you do to make your game more visible or have more little green checkmarks can't hurt, right? I don't know if it actually makes it more visible, but it surely doesn't make it less visible.

RPG Site: Obviously Steam is the most important platform for your games. What are your thoughts on GOG right now?

Dave Oshry: I've always loved GOG. Back before Steam opened the floodgates and you could put any old game on there, things were great. Steam would be for your new games and GOG would be for all your old games, right? Then Steam let anybody put anything on there, and then all of a sudden who needed GOG anymore?

The things GOG has been doing with preservation, and updating games, and being able to host things like Fallout London. They have these one-click mod installers now, which is really good. For guys like me, I don't mind moving files around and shit, modding the old way, but we're getting to a point now where people are either too old or too young and don't know how modding works. The fact that you can be like, "Oh, man, I really want to play Heroes of Might and Magic 3," and you could just go to GOG and they've got, like, a one-click installer to play it on Windows 11 in ultrawide, and the fact that they’re taking the time to do that kind of stuff is great.

The problem is it's still 1 to 5% of the sales on Steam, where it used to be closer to 5 or 10%. And GOG's got a new owner now. One of the CD Projekt Red guys who left just bought GOG out from under CD Projekt Red. It's independent now. I mean, it was always independent, right? It's part of CDPR, but now it's his own company, and he's been outspoken about what he wants to do, just providing a better experience. 

Everybody roots for GOG, right? We want GOG to be a great thing, and GOG's great. It's just that I don't have a reason to use GOG or GOG Galaxy instead of Steam. The only thing I've got installed on GOG Galaxy right now is Fallout London and The Journeyman Project games, actually. I went back and played those a little bit, and those need to be fucking made to work on modern systems. Holy shit. That was a pain in the ass. But I got them running. I played them for five minutes. I got my nostalgia fix, and I uninstalled it.

I mean, GOG is great. I love their preservation efforts and everything they're trying to do, but they need enough people to give a shit, or, how long are they even going to be around?

RPG Site: I keep attributing this quote to you even though you’ve told me it was said by someone else. Something about the Epic Games Store being a marketing black hole.

Dave Oshry: People credit that to me. I think I single-handedly killed the Epic Games Store with that quote. It's a fucking marketing black hole. It's actually not, so--which is funny. Well, it is if you're launching only on EGS, right? So, we don't have any games on EGS, and Blood West is on EGS. HyperStrange controls that. When we took over publishing for Blood West, they were like, "Hey, do you want the Epic Games Store stuff?" I was like, "No, I don't give a shit. What does it sell? Like, five copies a month? They're like, "Not even."

But they did a free giveaway for Blood West over Christmas. I think it was--Blood West was free on Christmas or whatever and I thought "Oh, man, I guess that's going to kill some of our Steam sales that week or whatever, during the winter sale." It turned out Blood West Steam sales for those two days actually were, like, up 200% because it was just free advertising for Blood West. So, people saw that Blood West was free on EGS, and then they went and bought it on Steam instead, which is hilarious.

So it's not a black hole. It actually advertises for other platforms. That's how bad EGS is. And it sucks because originally the promise of EGS was really good, but you have to build a better store. You can't beat Steam just with free giveaways and high developer percentages. You could give developers 100% of the royalties if you wanted, but if nobody's buying. What's 100% of zero? Like, who gives a shit?

So, the ideas were there, but they failed to build a better store or a better user experience at all and it's been like 10 years, and they just haven't. So, it's dead. End of story.

They had a chance, and they blew it by not building a better experience. Do I wish that Steam's cut was less than 30%? Of course I do. Unless you're going to build something that's better than Steam, it is what it is.

RPG Site: Did you think Escape from Tarkov coming to Steam was a big deal? 

Dave Oshry: Probably. I mean, I don't play Tarkov, so I don't know. I guess it was a big deal. Games that are big enough to exist off of Steam, those are big games. There's been lots of them in the past. Stuff like Minecraft. Obviously, coming to Steam is a really big deal. With modern players who are only used to Steam, they literally don't know or they don't want to use a launcher outside of Steam, or they're afraid to. It's like a console player that doesn't know how to play games on PC. They're like, "Ah, I don't want to--that's scary. I don't know. Is it going to give my computer a virus?" *laughs*

People are very scared to play things outside of their ecosystem. So, yeah, it's a big deal, but I don't play Tarkov. I know people who do. They all hate themselves. They hate the game, and they play it anyway. But there's a lot of games like that.

RPG Site: I brought up Tarkov because you, David, and Andrew Hulshult mentioned it a lot in a recent video interview on the Quad Damage Podcast.

Dave Oshry: I joked about how everything's an extraction shooter now. That went--yeah, that went kind of viral. I was like, "Tarkov has--what did I say?--done irreparable damage to the gaming industry because everything's a fucking extraction shooter now." And that went kind of viral, and people were--I had people in my DMs be like, "Yeah, fuck Tarkov. You go, Dave. You're so based." I was like, "I don't actually have any opinions on Tarkov at all." 

I don't play it. I know Andrew plays it. He's a big Tarkov player, and he's always complaining about it. I'm like, "Why do you play this game?" He's like, "I don't know." It's the same thing with Dylan and they play Hunt Showdown, and they're always complaining about it. It's those games where it's just, they're frustrating, but I guess in a good way. Those kinds of games. You just wish you could get better. They're good games, but they're a pain in the ass. I don't play multiplayer games, really, so I don't get it, but, I guess I do.

RPG Site: Do you think Xbox Play Anywhere as a feature and the Xbox on PC or Windows Store are worth more for devs like New Blood compared to say the Epic Games Store? 

Dave Oshry: Xbox Play Anywhere is good because it gives you build parity and cross progression/saves in the Xbox ecosystem so you don't have to make different builds for Xbox and PC even though you're essentially shipping the console version of the game on PC, and nobody buys games on the Xbox PC app, but the idea is sound. Xbox Play Anywhere is a definite plus for Xbox, but it's probably too little too late.

RPG Site: I'm sick of so many devs and pubs using their own launcher or forcing it even when you boot up something on Steam. What are your thoughts on forced accounts or launchers for single player games?

Dave Oshry: There is no good reason to have your own launcher for single player games unless you care more about harvesting data than selling video games so I think we know who would do that sort of thing.

RPG Site: New Blood is not a traditional publisher in how it approaches marketing and media outreach. You posted the Dusk RPG thing on your social accounts and on Steam. That’s how I discovered it. I follow you and New Blood everywhere, so I saw that, and covered the news. Have you changed your approach with how you get coverage or are you still happy reaching your own community on Discord or whatever for your games?

Dave Oshry: I mean, we're happy. I don't want to be mainstream. That's the last thing I want. If there was discourse about our games on Twitter and IGN was posting videos of it, I'd be like, "Eh." I don't ever want to be mainstream. I like where we're at. I like that we've been able to be so successful while completely avoiding the mainstream to be honest. Doing our own thing with our own community.

The fact that most New Blood games spread through word of mouth and stuff like that, and we've got such a devoted fan base now for our games is living the dream, really, and we're not going to change that anytime soon.

I don't even know what traditional marketing looks like these days. Like, we've gotten pretty good. We have a social guy now, Weapo. You might know him as the guy in the orange trucker hat who makes all our shorts and stuff, and he's been really good at making TikToks and YouTube Shorts and funny shit, and that's been really cool, because I don't have to do any of that.

We just go, "Hey, we need something for this. We got this promo coming. We got this thing coming up. Can you make a funny video for that?" And he just does it. So we've been able to grow our audience that way, which I think has been working. I don't know. Things change so much now with the way everybody has to beg to go viral now with their game to get wishlists or rage or engagement bait. 

The Internet sucks in 2026. Nothing's fun anymore.

You used to be able to make a cool website, or nobody goes to websites anymore. Nobody watches normal YouTube videos anymore. Everything's just Shorts and TikToks, and five-second attention spans. The fact that we've been able to keep up with it, and do well and retain players is a blessing. I wouldn't want to be starting a game studio or a game publisher in 2026. I'm glad that we've been around for 12 years and we have an existing player base and fandom that we can work with.

If somebody asked me if they want to start a new company or a new studio today, I'd be like, "Don't. Just don't. It's not worth it."

RPG Site: I know you do giveaways with ASUS, but have you considered working with accounts like Wario64 to promote your games?

Dave Oshry: I mean, I've known Wario for a long time. I mean, I know where he lives. I know his real name. *laughs* But he always posts our stuff, which is cool. I mean, he posts a million things a day. I don't know how. I honestly don't know how he does it. That man must just sit like the guy in the Matrix with 10 monitors in front of him, just fucking posting deals and shit all day. He always posts about our stuff when they're on sale and stuff. So that's cool. I haven't reached out to him personally in years. We used to talk on Twitter DMs a long time ago. Yeah, he's a cool guy.

I've never really thought about doing anything official with him. I'm always happy when I see that he posts about our games and stuff, though. It's a good retweet. It probably gets some sales out of it.

RPG Site: Going back to Dusk, when you said you were waiting on Nintendo to release Dusk on Switch 2 specifically and also for the PS5 version, is this going to be Dusk HD or is this Dusk itself at like 4K 120?

Dave Oshry: So, it's just Dusk itself. We're working on this new version of Dusk that we've been working on for a million years, right, based on the SDK version that'll hopefully allow us to do everything on consoles including Dusk HD and eventually co-op and all this shit. It's just, it's been on the back burner. We work on the new version of Dusk and the Dusk SDK in our spare time when we don't have a million other higher priority things to do.

Ideally the next-gen Dusk, the next gen version will include Dusk HD. So, you could, I don't know if we'll be able to make it so you can swap back and forth between the graphics, like Halo CE and stuff like that, let's not get crazy now. I don't know if we'll be able to make it like that, but hopefully we can at least ship, we might be able to ship Dusk HD as a DLC that you can launch on consoles and stuff like that with its own executable. That's what we did on PC. Dusk HD is its own executable which is why you can't get achievements and stuff with it. But who gives a shit? It's free.

Like I said, it's a pain in the ass. I want to do the coolest stuff possible, but it's just a matter of managing our time. It's not about, obviously it's not about money. We got plenty of money and we hate money. I want to always do the coolest stuff possible that we can with our games, but we also have to prioritize. I cannot be like, "Sorry, guys, we can't, the programming team can't work on Ultrakill because we need to get fucking Dusk HD working on Xbox Series S." Like, that is not a priority. We'll get to it when we can.

RPG Site: Just speaking of Fallout, before that, did you end up watching the Fallout TV show?

Dave Oshry: Yeah, of course. I watch it every week with my wife.

RPG Site: Did you end up liking it?

Dave Oshry: I mean, I've got mixed feelings about it. At the end of the day, it's a good show. It's a good adaptation, but it's annoying how they're just blowing up everything that's happened in the game. It's like, fuck it, and it's a lot of ‘member berries. It's like, "Hey, ‘member the Legion? Hey, ‘member Victor? I ‘member. Hey, ‘member the NCR? I ‘member. You ‘member the Brotherhood? I ‘member. Like, this just, deathclaw? I ‘member deathclaw.

It's literally like Family Guy fucking cutaways. It's weird because the show's at its best when it's not doing that. When it's telling original stories in this universe that are not related to stuff from the games, it's such a better show. When it's trying to be like, "Hey, remember this thing from the games? Anyway, we blew it the fuck up. And it's not what you remember. And we're fucking with the lore and now everybody's gonna get mad about it."

Like, it's not as good of a show because you can tell it's not their own. The stuff that, and a lot of the original stuff they're doing, like the stuff between the Ghoul and Lucy, the best stuff is like the flashback stuff with Coop, right? With Cooper Howard and his wife, and like trying to feel like who dropped the bombs, like all that. Those are like the big questions of Fallout, that the show, I think, can do a good job with, and that it's actually tackling well so it's a mixed bag.

There will be a scene that's really good, and then a scene that's really stupid, and it's just like, "Wow, that was really dumb." And then, "Oh, that was really cool." "Huh, that was interesting." Overall, obviously I like it.A lot of people can just say, "Oh, it's dumb fun." Like, whatever. You should enjoy it for what it is.  The problem is it's capable of being more than that, and sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. But at the end of the day, I like it. I'm gonna keep watching it. Me and my wife sit down and we watch it every week when there's a new episode. 

What am I gonna do about it? Complain on Twitter about it? Like, fuck, the internet does not need any more opinions on the Fallout show. We have enough.

RPG Site: Back in 2022, you posted about that traditional Fallout-like game that you all are making and said, "Don't expect to hear anything about it soon." Let's talk about that now.

Dave Oshry: I post stuff from time to time. We're working on it. It's mostly really boring engine work right now. We've got tons of art from Alexander when he's not working on Fallout Bakersfield, the first person, the Doom mod in the Fallout universe that went super viral that he and his brother are working on. 

We've got tons of art, and we've been working on the story outline and stuff, but mostly it's just because we're building our own engine for it. There's nothing to show. I can keep showing, every once in a while, I tease art or a scene or some animations on Twitter, and I might start a blog for it so people can keep up. 

But when there's something to show, we'll show it. When it's ready to be revealed with a Steam page and stuff, you'll know. In the meantime, it's really boring engine related stuff right now. It's nothing exciting. Unless you like looking at lines of code. Which some people I'm sure do, but that's not something I'm going to Tweet.

RPG Site: Back in 2024 when I spoke to you, you're a big fan of the Yakuza games, and you mentioned Yakuza Gaiden back then. Did you end up playing Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii?

Dave Oshry: No, I haven't had time. I've been meaning to, but I just haven't had time. I loved Yakuza 7. I loved that they made it turn-based. The last one I played was The Man Who Erased His Name which was great. I really liked that, and I haven't had time to play 8 or Pirate. I don't have time for 80-hour games in my life right now.  I barely have time to play our games. I'm really looking forward to Gang of Dragon with Don Lee. That looks sick.

RPG Site: That was the funniest reveal from The Game Awards. I slept through the show and I woke up to tons of messages asking me if I saw the “Nagoshi reveal”.

Dave Oshry: It's literally a Yakuza game. That game also might not be a real fucking game. The closer you look, you're like, "Ah, we gotta really see some gameplay before we believe it's any good."

RPG Site: You mentioned not having much time to play any games. Did you end up playing anything in 2025 that you really enjoyed?

Dave Oshry: My top 5 games, I would say are, Number 1: Atomfall for sure. A game which I don't think got enough attention or love. I mean, I think it fell victim to Game Pass, where a lot of people played it on Game Pass, so not as many on PC, and it didn't get as much word of mouth and stuff. Even though it did get tons of marketing and hype, I thought Atomfall was really, really good. It is a really good mix of Fallout and Stalker. It kind of felt a bit like New Vegas, a lot like Stalker, and very British obviously. I think it was a really, really good game. I hope they make Atomfall 2 and improve upon it and keep going.

Kingdoms of the Dump is probably my number 2. It is like a SNES-style RPG. It's literally Final Fantasy 6 or Chrono Trigger. If you like those, but with a really cute cast of characters, and it's all garbage-themed. It's really, really good. They did an amazing job with that. It was almost my number 1, but I think Atomfall is still my number 1.

Doom: The Dark Ages, obviously. It's fucking Doom, right? It was sick. I loved it. It's weird, but in the new trilogy, I kind of bounce back and forth. I think it might actually be my favorite one because it's got big maps with lots of shit to collect. The other ones were more linear. I think it is the best of the new trilogy. If you can somehow combine all three of the games, it would be the best modern Doom game. I really like the story in Doom 2016, how it was really straightforward. In Doom Eternal, I loved all the movement and stuff they added, but I think it got a little bit too complicated with the combat. I don't like having to think that much when playing Doom, but at the same time, trying to go back to 2016, it feels slow compared to Eternal.

But then with Dark Ages, it's kind of a good mix of everything. Plus you got these big open levels. They're all fucking sick, right? The whole new Doom trilogy fucking ruled. So yeah, Dark Ages for sure.

Then Mafia: The Old Country, which nobody talked about after it came out. I thought it was great. I love Mafia and I liked The Old Country. I played it in a weekend, it was just 12 hours. Like, bing, bang, boom. It's so funny with the Mafia series, they kind of just go back and forth where people are like, "Oh, this is too linear. We want more open world" to "Oh, this one's too open world. Like a Ubisoft game. We want more linear," and they just keep over-correcting where I think what they want is something in between.

People complained that Mafia II was too linear. They complained that Mafia III was like a Ubisoft game with a giant map with a million things on it. And then obviously now, The Old Country is more of like a spin-off where it's like the most linear, shortest story focus. There's nothing to do really besides drive to each mission. But they were good. Cinematically, story-wise, it was great. I enjoyed it a lot. I think the same team is working on a proper Mafia 4. Hangar 13. I think they were working on them both at the same time. That was the rumor. They were working on The Old Country and then Mafia 4 at the same time. I also really liked the Mafia 1 reboot. That was great. So yeah. The Old Country was up there.

I played Avowed and I played The Outer Worlds 2. I haven't beaten Avowed yet, I fell off of Avowed at the last chapter. I beat Outer Worlds 2 and I immediately forgot everything that happened in it. It's a good video game. I didn't like the Outer Worlds 1 and I should, right? It's supposed to be a funny Futurama Fallout. It never quite reaches those heights.

I have a lot of notes on The Outer Worlds 2. Maybe I'll start a blog. At the end of the day, it's not in my top 5. I played it. I enjoyed it, I think. I beat it. Which says a lot. But it's a good...maybe even a great game, but I have no real thoughts on it. It does everything it wants to do, It's just so… "Yes, that was a game." It is a video game that is what was advertised. If you watch the trailer for The Outer Worlds 2, and you play it, you're gonna go, "Yes, that was what was advertised to me. That was a video game that I played. It was enjoyable, I think."

Avowed, same thing. It was both kind of like very good. A lot of budget. Beautiful game. Really good in the ways you wouldn't expect it to be. I found the conversations and the roleplaying lacking, but the visuals and the combat were really cool which is very strange coming from Obsidian, which used to make games where the conversations and the roleplaying were really good, but they were janky, busted, ugly games with bad combat.

So now Obsidian makes games with great combat and boring conversations. I'm not sure how that happened. So same thing with The Outer Worlds 2. The combat was awesome. It felt like playing, not quite Call of Duty, but a pretty modern and awesome shooter. Avowed had amazing combat for an RPG.

The Elder Scrolls should fucking take note of Avowed's combat. The different builds and stuff you can do, and how fluid it is, and the animation! Gorgeous. Both gorgeous games, by the way. Great use of Unreal Engine 5. Two games that actually use Unreal 5 in a good way, and run pretty well. But again, neither of which I find myself wanting to talk about as an RPG player.  The roleplaying-ness is not there for me.

Whereas in a game like Atomfall, which was only 20 hours long, I find myself much more connected to, or Kingdoms of the Dump, or even Mafia, which isn't an RPG at all. But yeah, what else did I play in 2025? Have I talked enough about stuff I played in 2025? Probably. 

RPG Site: What about this year? What are you looking forward to playing in 2026?

Dave Oshry: This year? I have no idea what's coming out. Grand Theft Auto, baby! I mostly-- I also have to play Tainted Grail. I played the first hour of that, and I'm like, "Yep, this is an Elder Scrolls thing, alright." I’m still playing Everspace 2. Love Everspace 2. That's a good game. Oh, I beat Diablo 4 this year. That is also a video game that exists that you can play. A lot of these games, RPGs these days, are very fast food, brain-off numbers. Like, "Oh boy, there sure are numbers."

Diablo 4 is basically Vampire Survivors at this point. You move around and numbers pop up. And then you get to watch a cool cutscene. The bosses die before I even get to them. I'm like "What is happening?" I remember Diablo used to be hard. I've turned it all the way up to Torment, and stuff. Nothing. It's whatever. I have no idea what Diablo is supposed to be in 2025, but the cutscenes are really cool. I do enjoy Diablo's story. I will beat every Diablo game because I beat every one since I was a kid. But yeah, Diablo 4 is also something I beat. I beat that over the holidays.

What I'm looking forward to in 2026? I have no idea what's coming out. Other than Grand Theft Auto and our games. I work on our games. That's what I do. I have no idea. I don't even know what's on my wish list. I cannot think of anything that's coming out. In terms of RPGs, what are the big ones?

RPG Site: What about in general?

Dave Oshry: I mean, this is for RPG Site, and you gotta think about RPGs. There's tons of CRPGs. I don't know if any new ones are coming out. I think the AtomTeam is doing new stuff with Atom RPG. The UnderRail dev is working on their sequel to that. I don't know if that's coming out this year.

Vampire Survivors is also doing a dungeon crawler. So we're probably gonna bundle that with Dungeons of Dusk. I was actually just emailing the dude from poncle before this interview. I have no idea. I don't know what's coming out. Our games are coming out. You should play our games. Gang of Dragon? Is there a new Yakuza coming?

RPG Site: The remake and spin-off bundle, Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties.

Dave Oshry: The one that I did for the PC gaming show. I'm looking at a list that you sent me for 2026 RPGs. Oh yeah, Avowed’s coming to PS5. I think that's when I'm gonna finish Avowed. When it gets the big update in February. Solasta 2, Lord of Hatred. I will play the Diablo expansion. I do wanna see what happens in the story, obviously. Love me the Diablo story and then, yeah, a bunch of shit that-- Gothic's getting a remake? Huh. - Who knew? - Yeah. The Duskbloods? That's happening? Yeah, honestly, I have no idea.

RPG Site: I have to add Dungeons of Dusk to the 2026 list.

Dave Oshry: Yeah, you gotta add Dungeons of Dusk. That will be coming out in 2026. I don't know how it couldn't, but you know us, our shit always gets delayed so who the fuck knows?

RPG Site: What does a day in your life look like right now?

Dave Oshry: What does a day in my life look like? Well, my baby daughter is about to be born. Any day now in the next two weeks. So a day in my life looks like building a lot of nursery furniture, waking up, going through my hundreds of emails and messages, checking in with each of the teams, working on our games, playing builds, giving feedback, bringing my wife her big water bottle, feeding the dogs, walking the dogs, I don't know. I work all day, every day. Seeing what's new, going on social media, watching everybody fucking be insane on Twitter, that's my day. Then I go to bed and play on my Ally X and I go to sleep. That's a day in my life. Sometimes I go to town and buy groceries.

RPG Site: You aren't doing any traveling this year for events?

Dave Oshry: Obviously with the baby coming, a lot less. We might bring Tenebris Somnia to BitSummit in Kyoto this year because we are doing a Japanese release of that game. Plus BitSummit is just a really good excuse to go to Kyoto, and it's in May this year, so it's really nice during cherry blossom season. Obviously we're big weebs. Any excuse to go hang out in Japan for a week is a good idea. Again, with Tenebris Somnia, we're probably going to do Gamescom Latin America in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I don't know if I'm going to go to that one, but the boys are probably going to go to that one.

I don't think we're going to do PAX East or anything. It's just too much, especially with the States being fucking crazy, and so many of our guys being international. It's just like flying a bunch of people into the States right now is a terrible idea, so probably not. Plus we don't have anything big to show. PAX Australia later in the year probably? That's like our home show now because so many of us are in Australia and New Zealand. We'll probably do PAX Australia.

We'll definitely be back at EVA in Argentina later this year. Again with Tenebris Somnia, because it's probably going to be launching around then. Tenebris Somnia is definitely getting shown at a few shows this year because that's a big new horror game that we've got coming out.

Other than that, a lot of the showcases and stuff now are online. So we might maybe show up at the PC Gaming Show like we do. Some smaller showcases. In-person events are not as big as they used to be. So we like going to fun smaller ones. Stuff like EVA and BitSummit.

We were at Tokyo Game Show last year and that was an absolute clusterfuck. I don't think I'd ever go back to Tokyo Game Show. E3 doesn't exist anymore. PAX East and PAX West maybe, but we've got to have a really good reason.  So yeah, definitely traveling less. Staying home with the baby. I'm in the second half of my career now. Looking forward to retirement and raising my kids. Less events and less traveling for sure.

RPG Site: So besides Dungeons of Dusk, what should everyone expect from New Blood this year?

Dave Oshry: The best stuff. Bloodwest DLC #2, Endless West, we're actually changing the name of it. I think it's going to be called Bloodwest Scavengers because we can't just call a game Endless West if it's just DLC. It has to be called Bloodwest something. So we have to change the name of it. Dungeons of Dusk obviously, Fallen Aces Episode 2, Ultrakill Layer 8, more Gloomwood updates like the bank and controller support, and stuff like that. Tenebris Somnia is coming out this year.  More console ports of our existing games. More stupid merchandise. I think I got everything.

What else do we make? We make so many games. Yeah, I need more big reveals. Maybe some more fun publishing acquisitions of older stuff that I've been talking about. The Bloodwest thing went really well, so maybe more stuff like that where I pick up an older game and bring it into the New Blood family in order to keep it going. Maybe some older stuff like that.

Maybe working with Nightdive on some more stuff because that would be fun like on Rise of the Triad. Stuff like that's always fun to me. I love keeping games preserved and shit.

Obviously maybe teasing some more stuff about our old school Fallout RPG, but that's not coming out anytime soon. We're plenty busy so we've always got stuff going on. If you just follow New Blood on socials and all that, you'll see it. We're super active on there.

I'm trying to be less active on social media. Trying to raise my kids, but New Blood's always got plenty of stuff going on.

RPG Site: How do you like your coffee? Go into as much detail as possible including whatever beans you like buying.

Dave Oshry: I mean you ask me this every time. I live in New Zealand, so I drink a flat white. The flat white was invented by the Australians but perfected by the Kiwis over here in New Zealand. I make my own coffee every morning with my big fancy Breville coffee machine. The beans I get from a local brewery called Common Ground Espresso. Oh man, they're good. They do a bean called Grunty, which as the name implies is kind of like a thick cocoa-y bean. It makes you shit your pants after a nice cup.  That's how you know the coffee's good when you run to the toilet afterwards. That's a good cup of coffee. Keeps you regular.

I buy about 500 grams of Grunty beans, and put that on top of the old Breville every morning. Let it brew for about 13 to 16 seconds which is about 2 shots of espresso, and then I use trim milk. I use nonfat milk because I have become lactose intolerant, I think it tastes better, and it foams more. Depending on the fat content of your milk, if you use full cream milk you don't actually get a nice foam. Even though I call it a flat white, I do a little bit of foam on my milk so I use trim milk with calcium. I use the yellow top.

We've only got like three milks in New Zealand. One provider in a small country. So there's the green top, the blue top and the yellow top. Blue top is full cream milk, green top is trim milk, and then yellow top is trim milk with calcium which I just think tastes the best and foams the best. So I pour it in my little jug, foam it up, pour it to about the top of the cup, sprinkle it with cinnamon on top, and then swirl it around, and that's how I make my flat white every morning.

Everybody who comes over says "Holy shit Dave, you make great coffee." And I say yes, because I make it the way I like it, and if you don't like it the way I like it, too fucking bad! 

RPG Site: One last coffee and merchandise-related question. I was hoping you'd restock Dusk on Switch and do a New Blood coffee mug so I could buy one of those.

Dave Oshry: We have a New Blood coffee mug.

RPG Site: Isn't it sold out?

Dave Oshry: Yeah, because I didn't like it. We're making a better one, but we had one, and we have an Ultrakill coffee mug. I like the stubby coffee mugs, you know like the shorter ones that are good for espresso drinks? The first ones we made, they didn't come out great. We sold them out. We have Ultrakill ones. Those are I think might also be sold out. Yes, we will be making better New Blood coffee mugs because I want one too. I get samples of all our merch like all the time.

I have to approve all the samples. Just piles of t-shirts and hoodies, keychains and stuff, and all the samples I approve of, we just give them to the local Goodwill and SPCA. If you want samples of New Blood merch, go down to the local SPCA or Op Shop and there's piles of fucking New Blood hoodie samples there. But yes, we are making new coffee mugs. It will happen and they'll be better than the last ones.