Battle Princess Madelyn, which was co-designed by a 7-year-old, will be out soon

Battle Princess Madelyn is a pixel-art platformer being created by a seven-year-old girl, Madelyn Obritsch, with able assistance from her father Christopher and his cohorts at indie studio Causal Bit Games. It's the result of a very successful 2017 Kickstarter campaign, which emerged from a conversation between the two about who can and can't be a videogame hero, and today they announced that it will be available on Steam on December 6. 

"It's been an exciting, exhaustive, stressful, enjoyable, frustrating, etc. period over the last two years developing Battle Princess Madelyn and I would do it all over again," the senior Obritsch said. "The feedback that has been given in the creation of the game, the positive remarks, the way social media, the specialist gaming press, etc. have supported the game throughout this long period has been nothing short of remarkable. The end result is a game the team are all proud of and went beyond what was envisioned." 

We spoke to Christopher last year about Battle Princess Madelyn, an old-school action-platformer with big boss battles inspired by Ghouls 'n Ghosts. Madelyn, who was six at the time, is sort of the creative director on the project: Christopher is often "forced to redirect Maddi's expectations and ideas in order to make the game playable," we wrote, but "much of the creative process comes straight from her six-year old mind [and] she's very proactive in translating her ideas from her head onto paper." 

"She'll draw stuff for the game wherever she is, and she came home from her friends house [one] day and was like, 'Daddy, I made a monster for the game'," Obritsch told us. "I asked what it was and she explained it to me. I then asked what she wanted it to do in-game and she showed me the drawing and explained what each part of the picture was." 

Battle Princess Madelyn is available for wishlisting on Steam. Find out more about the game and the studio at causalbitgames.com.