one more run
I’ve been making a small game called ~dvngeon. It’s one of those survivors-style games where your weapons fire on their own and your whole job is to walk around while the screen slowly fills with things that want you dead. Very relaxing. Sort of.
You start in Hearthmere, a cosy walled town with a market, a smithy, a tavern, and a man in the stocks for telling the mayor to git gud. A boy with a peg leg has something very special for you. It’s a rock. There’s a horse named Roach who would really like to be on a roof. There’s also a penguin, and nobody knows why there’s a penguin.
Eventually you have to leave. Past the gate are nine places to die, from a wood full of bees and mushrooms that bite to a field of lava called the Crown of Ash. Each trip is six minutes of waves, then a boss who gets properly upset at half health. Your weapons are called things like Pew Pew, Chop Chop, Bad Soup and Sky Oops, which should tell you how seriously the game takes itself.
Gold you bring home buys permanent boons. Die out there and you keep half, rounded down, because the guild has fees. Ingredients go to the tavern cook, who turns them into dishes with made-up names and sells them to strangers. Now and then a dish comes out as a “kitchen incident”. It earns nothing and costs a gold to clean up. Very realistic.
It’s still very much a game in progress. The numbers change every time I look at them, and the pub and restaurant are still building sites with tiny builders hammering away behind a “coming soon” sign. But it’s playable, it’s free, and it runs in your browser. Just one more run. Honestly.
Hearthmere. Everyone looks busy. Nobody is.
The Crown of Ash, where personal space goes to die.