Interview with Raffaele Picca Developer of Engraving

It’s that time of year again! The Six One Indie Showcase is in full swing and that means loads of amazing indies being shown off and, of course, we’ve got more developer interviews for you. This time I sent some questions over to Raffaele Picca, developer of the horror game Engraving.

A huge thank you to Raffa for being a part of our September showcase and for allowing us to show off Engraving.

• Can you tell me more about yourself and how you got started working on Engraving?

  I’m Raffaele Picca from Germany but everyone just calls me Raffa! I’ve been making games professionally since 2004, mostly as an art director and designer. A few years ago, I fell in love with programming too, and that opened the door to creating my own projects from start to finish.
  Engraving actually began as a tiny jam game during the Kenney Jam 2023, but it stuck with me. The atmosphere, the mystery - so I kept building on it in my free time.

  By day, I work on PVKK: Planetenverteidigungskanonenkommandant, but Engraving is where I get to chase my stranger, darker ideas.

• We absolutely love the concept of having to chart your own path using a map in Engraving. How did that idea first come about and can you elaborate a bit on how the map charting works?
  
  The idea comes straight from my childhood. Back then I was obsessed with game books like Deathtrap Dungeon by Ian Livingstone. My strategy was to draw maps of every branching path so I wouldn’t get lost. To make them feel real, I’d burn the edges and stain the paper until it looked like an ancient fantasy relic. I still have some of those maps today, and they carry that sense of wonder I wanted to capture in Engraving.

  In the game, the player gets a fleeting glimpse of their surroundings on the map almost like short-term memory. But it fades quickly, and the only way to preserve it is to sketch it yourself, by hand, with a mouse or gamepad. The map becomes both your diary and your lifeline, just like those childhood pages of mine.

Real maps drawn by Raffa

• Can you tell me more about what kinds of sinister things players might encounter in the game?

  I can reveal a little, though part of the fun is stepping into the forest blind. The game leans into cosmic horror. So some things you meet are twisted, fleshy abominations, while others drift more like specters of the damned, half-glimpsed in the dark. Not everything wants you dead, but nothing feels safe. The deeper you go, the harder it gets to tell what belongs to the living, what belongs to the dead, and what belongs to something else entirely

• In what ways can the forest change in the game and how will that affect gameplay?

  The forest is built from handcrafted tiles, like pieces of a giant chessboard. Each tile hides its own secrets: puzzles, items, fragments of story while other things like creatures are scattered unpredictably. Early on, the player is cursed, which makes navigating the woods exhausting. Whenever sleep overtakes you, the forest reshuffles itself. Tiles move, twist, and rotate into new configurations.

  It’s not a roguelike with runs, it’s one long descent. The shifting simply makes it harder to retrace your steps. That’s why mapping is crucial: the more you chart, the more you can hold onto in this place that refuses to stay still.

• If you were stuck in a forest, whether the forest itself was out to get you or not, do you think you would be completely doomed or are you confident in your survival skills?

  Haha, great question! I’d probably be doomed. But at least I’d die with a nicely drawn map in my pocket. I’ve watched enough Bear Grylls to feel overconfident in all the wrong ways.

• What does “indie” mean to you?

  Indie is the culture of making games as art before product. A vision without permission. It’s punk code, handmade worlds, and wildflower ideas pushing through the cracks of the industry. An indie game feels like its creator whispering directly to the player, unfiltered, raw, and unmistakably personal.

Engraving does not have a release date just yet but is available to wishlist on Steam so you can stay up to date on future news!