AZOOVE
Azoove was the first game to catch my eye at Emerald City Comic Con. I’m a big fan of survival games that challenge players to work together, so this one felt right up my alley. Its storybook-like simple art style also drew me in. Daniel, the developer of Azoove, greeted our team with radiant energy and enthusiasm and was eager to share his game. Even before sitting down for a demo, I could tell Azoove was built with intention and a deep passion for bringing people together and bringing positive change to our world.
Azoove is a cooperative, card-based roguelike where you and your friends embark on a doomed road trip through the Azoove Desert. Your mission together is to return a cursed book to a far-off library in order to seal away the Fiend of Fortune and save the world. You and your comrades must survive 10 travel days, face daily misfortune, and manage dwindling resources with restricted communication.
During each round, players draw numbered Action Cards and must work together to manage Rations, scout for Orientation, and keep Stress and Dispair in check. Most of the time, you won’t be able to communicate openly or reveal what’s in your hand. Instead, you’ll need to exchange cards strategically, trust your comrades completely, and plan carefully to make sure you survive your grueling journey through the desert. Unpredictable events like monsters, sandstorms, and curses make each journey you make through the Azoove Desert different. I’ll be honest: Azoove is not for the faint of heart. You’re not guaranteed success on your first few runs – but that’s what makes each victory all the more satisfying.
Daniel Milo founded Timeless Tocan in 2023 with a mission to create games that make a real difference in people’s lives, especially when it comes to mental well-being. Azoove is a perfect display of these values. This cooperative game fosters teamwork, sharpens communication skills, and builds trust—qualities that feel more vital than ever in today’s isolating world. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen a surge in the popularity of virtual card games, and this game stands out among the rest. Azoove is well on its way to becoming a go-to game for players looking to test their social and strategic skills, strengthen their relationships, and share in a truly rewarding challenge alongside fellow adventurers.
Azoove is currently available for early access on Steam. Its full release is expected in the second quarter of this year.
Puppet: This is Puppet, and I'm at Emerald City Comic Con with Daniel from Timeless Toucan Studios, and we're here to talk about his game. So to begin, can you tell me, who are you and what are you working on?
Daniel: Well, so I'm Daniel, and I'm the founder of Timeless Toucan. It's a studio that is mostly me with a few other contractors that have been helping me throughout the almost three years of development to make this game. The studio was founded because I keep wanting to make more indie games, and when I go to a position where I could finally hire people to help me. I figure they have to make it a real studio. And so that happened about two years ago, and now the game is very close to its release. It's been out in early access for almost a year now.
Puppet: Very cool, awesome. Yeah, and tell me what is the name of the game and give me a little synopsis of it.
Daniel: Yeah. So Azoove is a co op survival card game where you have to survive a journey through a desert to return a book to the library. The book is is cursed or inhabited by this fiend who keeps trying to sabotage the journey, kind of like Oregon Trail, where misfortunes happen every turn, and the players have to mitigate them by paying cards. The main interesting mechanic in the game is that there is limited communications, where players have their own hand of cards, and they're not allowed to share that hand of cards with their allies while they're still working together, they pass cards to each other instead, and that's your only means of communication. And that creates this moment where the cards played resolve and the players get back to talking. They get to celebrate together or get mad at each other,
Puppet: Like a good game should, right?
Daniel: As a COVID game should.
Puppet: Yes, right? So, originally, when did you start developing indie games? And why did you start doing that?
Daniel: I started making games about 13 years ago, when I was in high school, and it was because I wanted to make them. I told myself to code, and I started making a game, and I worked on it for about a year, and when I finally was able to play the game, it turned out to be pretty bad, but that didn't stop me. So I kept making games, and through a long career in software engineering, I finally got to a point where I can make good games. I launched one game to Steam under a different studio back in 2021 and that was a very much a pandemic game, and then went on to make this game, Azoove, which is finally under my own studio.
Puppet: Very cool. Yes, right. So in this game, what are you most excited about as a developer, to see other gamers play the game. What are you most excited for them to see?
Daniel: The thing I'm most excited about is when players have the moments that really define Azoove's unique gameplay, where people have these involuntary exclamations when they receive the right card, or when the right card was played and revealed, and when they finally realize that there is no more hope, or that they have secured a definite win. And the reason these moments are so definitive for the game is because of the limited communication causing them because in a normal co-op game, you would know that the game is won a lot earlier, in a way, but in Azoove, you can't be sure, and you're like, you have to wait until it happens. And when it finally happens, the tension is built, and the release is so satisfying.
Puppet: That's awesome. Yeah, it's kind of how life is, though, right?
Daniel: It is, yeah. I think the game also comes with a lot of life lessons, in a way, where the parameters you're trying to control, the resources you're managing, are stress and despair, where the The Fiend is trying to dissuade you from even even thinking that this journey could succeed, and by playing things that would also be useful in real life, like telling jokes and petting pets, the players overcome these challenges, and I hope that you know, under the gameplay there is some kind of good direction for people to do the right thing when they're stressed.
Puppet: That's a hard thing to ask of people, because we all don't know what we're going to do when we're stressed, right?
Daniel: No, but maybe if you remember what happened in the game, you have a bitter reaction when it, when you, when you do get stressed,
Puppet: Yeah, yeah. And that's survival, man,
Daniel: True. Yeah, absolutely.
Puppet: So what made you want to make this game in particular?
Daniel: I was playing a lot of games, and after way too many years playing competitive games, I stopped. I wanted to play games that weren't stressing me out and weren't so high stakes, but I did want to play with my friends, and there aren't enough games where you can play with your friends, but not against other people. And I played a bunch of board games, and I've been played a bunch of video games, and from honestly, from various things that I found missing or things I didn't like about those games, I ended up coalescing into this board game, video game thing. I think one of the more definitive choices in this game is to have random numbers generated by drawing cards from a deck, as opposed to rolling dice. And that was a design idea that I have been toying with for about six, seven years now, and I finally found the right game to put it in.
Puppet: That's very cool. So, um, you mentioned Oregon Trail before?
Daniel: Yes.
Puppet: Have you played it a lot?
Daniel: I've played it some. I wouldn't say played so so much, but I have played so many roguelikes that have the vibe of Oregon Trail. I use that as kind of a well known name that kind of everyone gets. But games like Frostpunk, I think represent the vibe even better, where there's this like survival against the odds and being on the cusp of the feet the whole game is kind of where I'm coming from, trying to get that, to get, [to] make the winning film even more glorious.
Puppet: That's amazing. Yes, last question for you, if you could go back in time and change one thing or give yourself some advice, what would it be?
Daniel: I think the biggest error I made with this game was releasing it too quickly. I think the game was fun at release, but not enough, and I wish I had six more months or so of polishing up the experience before trying to get it out to the first wave of early access. I did receive a lot of useful information from these people, but I think I could have gotten, I could have been more strategic about releasing at a different time.
Puppet: So, where can we access this game and when will it be fully released?
Daniel: So Azoove is in early action steam, including on Linux and Mac and Steam Deck supports controller and mouse and keyboard and touch. The full release is currently planned for the next quarter, so second quarter of '25 I will have a more definitive release date soon, which may get mended into the script if you can get it to you.
Puppet: Yeah.
Daniel: We'll see.
Puppet: Yeah.
Daniel: But currently we're looking at kind of like the April-May-June, quarter.
Puppet: Cool, awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much, and have a great rest of Emerald City Comic Con.
Daniel: Thank you so much. Have a good day yourself.
