Solo developer Eddie H. Hinestroza opens testing for his first commercial project, a party-based RPG built around raids, resources, and tactical real-time combat.
Solo developer Eddie H. Hinestroza has announced an open beta playtest for Skills & Raids, a dark fantasy extraction RPG now available for testing on Steam. The announcement arrived with a new trailer, giving players a first look at the game’s party-based combat, resource gathering, crafting systems, and raid structure.
Skills & Raids mixes extraction design with RPG progression. Players enter hostile areas with a party, fight through real time encounters, collect resources, complete quests, and try to come back with enough materials to improve their setup.
Those resources feed into crafting, letting players create stronger equipment and new skills while working through a rarity-based loot system that includes Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, and Legendary gear.
Combat focuses on ability timing, where players need to manage cooldowns, move characters during fights, and react to enemy mechanics across different combat areas. The idea is to build a party that can handle dangerous encounters, then improve that team through crafted skills, better gear, and more specialized builds.
The game is set in a handcrafted dark fantasy world where a creature has begun erasing everything, including thoughts. That premise gives the dungeon crawling and resource extraction loop a darker tone, with the player gradually pushing deeper into a world that is falling apart.
Hinestroza is a Venezuelan solo developer currently living in Chile. Before starting Skills & Raids, he worked for around ten years as a concept artist on indie projects such as Black Mesa and Maquette, as well as at AAA studios including Ubisoft Quebec. He left his job in February 2025 to work on the game full-time in Unreal Engine.
Skills & Raids is planned to launch in July 2026. The open beta playtest can be requested now through Steam.
