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HOARD key art CRT-09
● RECCH-09
EARLY PROTOTYPE ACTION RPGNOT IDLE

HOARD

Eat everything. Digest it into power. Climb out of the dungeon.

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ABOUT THIS GAME

A top-down action RPG — the one game here that isn't idle. You're a fledgling mimic born in the deepest stratum of a living dungeon: eat creatures, gear, and memories; digest them into stats, abilities, and materials; evolve your body and climb toward the surface. Zelda-ish real-time combat, and perception is a stat — the fog of war is diegetic.

ART & ASSETS

CURRENT RELEASE

v0.12

2026-10-18
  • Smoother play, and no more stutter coming back to the dungeon. Switching to the Nest or the Loom and back used to rebuild every sprite from scratch; now the game keeps them, and a long session no longer slowly fills up with leftover sound. Collision, the fog, the HUD and the autosave all do less work per frame, so busy floors stay smooth.
  • A hidden browser tab now pauses the dungeon. Come back after a coffee and the world catches up by at most two seconds instead of freezing while it replays everything you missed — and a background tab is no longer a free digestion timer.
  • Corpses and loot no longer pile up forever. Boss and adventurer bodies are capped at six per floor and dropped swords at three; the oldest sink into the ground or rust away with a message. Nothing is ever taken while its sword or key still lies beside it, and a boss corpse stays until you have eaten its memory.
  • Pressing an empty or locked gear slot now gives the same red pulse as a swing on cooldown, so a dead key never feels like a dropped input.
  • For testers: DEBUG → TELEPORT now works in the published build (it was dev-only by accident), aquatic creatures spawned from DEBUG land in water, and a new PERF group in the DEBUG panel shows live frame, step and draw times. This update resets saves.

ROADMAP

NEXT UP

  • Wounded prey that bleeds, so a thing that escapes you can still be run down.
  • A subtle shine on anything worth eating when it's close enough to take.
  • A proper pass over healing — how you recover, what it costs, and what else the deep might offer.
  • A second tier of gear, found higher in the climb.

LATER

  • More ways to fight: reach weapons, bows, and shields to block with.
  • Armour you eat instead of wear — it becomes plating on your body, and whatever's still digesting lends you a short-lived shell.
  • Organs worth stealing: digest a creature carefully enough and you keep its signature trick.
  • Maps and secrets remembered by the dead — knowledge that opens the world rather than sharpening your body.

MAYBE

  • Music and the sound of the deep itself — drones and room tone under the effects.
  • The last two strata: the Garrison and the Sunward Gate, and the first daylight.
  • Indigestion — some things fight back after you've swallowed them.
  • A rebuild in a bigger engine for a proper desktop and mobile release.

Plans, not promises — no dates, and any of it can change.

RELEASE NOTES

v0.11

2026-08-09
  • The humans have come. Every floor is now under siege on a clock: after a stretch of quiet, adventurers climb down through the gate above and start hunting. First a scout with a lantern, then a sellsword with a real sword, then both together — and the waves keep coming as long as you stay. They see with their eyes, so rock hides you from them the way it hides anything else, and they never lose interest in the floor just because they lost sight of you.
  • The oldest joke in the dungeon, played straight: a human knows what a chest is. Hold still in front of one and you are not hidden — you are furniture worth opening. It walks over, kneels down, and starts working on your lid while a timer runs. Strike first and you land the biggest opening blow in the game. Wait too long and it gets the lid up, and then it knows exactly what you are.
  • They are the best meal in the game. A sellsword leaves its sword lying at the corpse, human bodies take a long time to digest and pay accordingly, and both drop the first human memory-fragments in the game.
  • Eat enough of them and you learn to understand them. Adventurers mutter to each other while they search, and at first it is noise — garbled shapes above their heads. Weave FIRST WORDS on the Loom and the noise resolves into English, and you find out what they say about the thing that has been eating their friends. COLD READ, its bigger sibling, buys you extra seconds every time one is prying at your lid.
  • You hear and see them coming. A low roll announces each wave, bootsteps grow out of the dark, and a warm lantern glow reaches you through the fog well before a body does — arrival is never a cheap shot. Wound one badly enough and it runs for the gate it came in through; letting it go costs you nothing but the meal.
  • For testers: this update resets saves. DEBUG → FORCE WAVE drops the next wave immediately, and DEBUG → FRAGMENTS now grants human fragments if you want FIRST WORDS early.

v0.10

2026-08-09
  • The climb quadruples. Two floors are now four: above the Silt lie the Shifting Dunes (a bleached desert of scarabs, glass lizards, and quicksand), the Verdant Warrens (the spore jungles and insect hives, grown into a deep-green forest), and the Drowned Halls (cold flooded ruins under pale light). Each floor has its own look, its own prey, and its own boss holding the key upward.
  • Learn to swim. Deep water is real terrain now — it stops you at the shore like a wall until you evolve the new fifth Legs tier, FINNED. Then you can slip in and swim: slower than walking, but your dash still bursts at full speed and you can still settle into your disguise afloat. The far half of the Drowned Halls — the Warden's court and the way up — can only be reached by fin.
  • Two new bosses on the hunt. THE DUNE WYRM charges down long lanes and boils the sand under your feet — at half health its charges chain back-to-back. THE DROWNED WARDEN sweeps expanding rings around itself and sends waves down the hall — wounded, the rings come faster and wider. Same rules as ever: read the red shape, leave it or dash through it.
  • New ground to respect, new memories to answer it. Quicksand drags harder than any silt pool, and the Drowned Halls' chill gnaws at you on its own clock — until you weave SAND TREAD and COLD BLOOD from what the locals remember. The boss tracker now works on every floor: eat the neighbours, feel the pulse sharpen.
  • Small touches: a splash when you enter water, lantern fish lures glowing through the murk, per-floor gate colors, and the capstone at the top now whispers of THE GARRISON.
  • For testers: this update resets saves (the world's shape changed underneath them). DEBUG → JUMP now cycles all four floors.

v0.9

2026-08-09
  • Bosses now telegraph their attacks. Before every strike a red shape spreads on the ground — the Silt Mother's slam circle, her burrowing charge lane, the Vesper Queen's dive and screech — filling as the blow gets closer. Everything is dodgeable: step out of the shape, or dash straight through it with your i-frames.
  • Bosses change tactics as they weaken. At half health the fight turns and a gold message announces it: THE MOTHER STIRS — she speeds up, strikes more often, and slams wider. THE QUEEN RAGES — she calls two of her brood to join the fight. Their health bars carry a notch so you can see the turn coming.
  • The fights have a rhythm now: bait the wind-up, dodge the shape, then punish the recovery while the boss is rooted. If you got hit, it's because you stood in the warning — never because the numbers said so.
  • Your senses still rule the dark: a telegraph beyond your vision stays hidden — but you'll hear the low whoosh of the wind-up, the thump of the strike, and the gong of a phase change even when you can't see them.
  • A gear icon joined the top bar — the settings menu is one click away (ESC still works).
  • For testers: the DEBUG COMBAT panel grew BOSS WU / BOSS ACT / BOSS REC sliders, so you can stretch or shrink the wind-up, strike, and recovery windows live and tell us where the fight feels best.

v0.8

2026-08-08
  • The game has a settings menu. Press ESC anywhere: the dungeon holds its breath under a dim while you adjust the volume, restart your run (with a hold-your-horses double-confirm), or remap your controls — then drops you back exactly where you were.
  • Every control is rebindable — movement, attack, swallow, dash, gear slots, mute, even the screen keys. Bindings go by physical key position, so WASD-shaped movement works on any keyboard layout, each action can hold two keys (arrows and WASD both stay live out of the box), and every on-screen hint updates to show the keys you actually chose. Your bindings survive refreshes and run resets.
  • A speaker icon now sits in the top bar: see at a glance whether the game is muted, click it to toggle, and it always agrees with the M key.
  • The boss radar finally respects your kill. The moment something vast stops moving, the red pulse and its ominous blip go silent — and once you've digested what it knew, the rim points the way onward instead: a steady green arc with a brighter, faster pulse that feels like an invitation, not a warning. It switches off for good once the gate is open.
  • For testers, a whole new SOUND page (the F4 tab): every sound in the game gets its own volume and pitch sliders plus a menu of alternate takes to audition — changes apply to the live game instantly, stick between sessions, and a COPY JSON button exports your mix so you can send us the numbers instead of describing them.

v0.7

2026-08-07
  • The dungeon has a voice. Everything you do makes a sound now — footsteps that match your waddle, the whoosh of a tongue-lash and the meatier thud when it lands, a wet gulp when you swallow something, a soft pop when it finishes digesting.
  • You hear the way you see. Down here your senses are weak, so the world arrives muffled, like listening through a shut door. Every point of Senses and every Eye you evolve opens the mix up — by the time you can see across a cavern you can hear across it too.
  • Big moments land like big moments. Killing something vast, a key hitting the floor, a gate giving way, a floor changing — each gets its own sting that carries over the everyday chatter.
  • You can tell what's happening without looking. Being bitten and standing in a spore vent no longer sound alike; swallowing a body and swallowing a plank no longer sound alike; and a refused input — a swing on cooldown, a dash you haven't evolved yet, a full gut — answers with a quiet blip instead of nothing at all.
  • Swallowing gear announces itself. Eating a spelunker's pick or a rusty sword has its own sound, because that's the moment you choose what it becomes.
  • Press M to mute. For testers, the DEBUG bar has a new AUDIO section: master volume plus both ends of the muffle sweep, adjustable live. Volume and mute stick between sessions and survive a save reset.

v0.6

2026-08-06
  • Combat got its arcade heart. Landing a hit now freezes the world for a satisfying instant, kicks the screen, and pops a damage number off the target — gold when you strike from ambush, red when something bites you back.
  • You can dash. Evolve your Legs once and Space throws you into a burst of speed that carries you clean through claws and teeth — the whole dash is invincible against contact. It even ignores the silt pools' drag. Spore vents still don't care; nothing dodges spores.
  • Swings are big now, and they tell the truth. The tongue and both weapons reach much further, and what you see is exactly where hits land: the tongue extends to its true range in every direction, weapons sweep a huge arc with trailing ghosts and a slash wedge drawn from the actual hitbox, and overhead/low strikes finally swing from the body instead of flailing sideways at the hip.
  • The attack cooldown is visible. The Z and weapon chips darken and drain with the shared cooldown, pulse gold the instant they're ready, and shake red at you when you mash too early — no more wondering why a press did nothing.
  • For testers: the DEBUG bar grew a COMBAT section — 18 live sliders (swing size, cooldowns, dash, hitstop, shake...) plus three preset slots you can save and cycle to A/B how combat feels. Presets survive page reloads and even RESET SAVE. Tell us what feels good.
  • Heads up: the save format changed for the dash, so old worlds reset once.

v0.5

2026-08-06
  • Monsters stopped being free food. Big things that used to grind themselves into a corner while you chewed on them now slide around it — and if they really can't reach you, they give up and wander off instead of standing there being hit. The floors are carved a little wider too, so there's room for the big ones to actually come at you.
  • Walls are walls. Your tongue no longer lashes through solid rock, so fighting around cover means moving, not just facing the right way.
  • The important moments stop shouting over each other. Boss kills, gate unlocks, memories devoured whole, floor changes and death now get a gold message that stays up long enough to read — the ordinary digestion chatter stays quick and out of the way.
  • The game teaches you to heal. The first time you're hurt with food in reserve, it tells you once: hold still, and the disguise knits biomass into flesh. Once, ever.
  • The Memory Loom scrolls. Every memory card is reachable now, with the ones you can still weave at the top and the ones you already are at the bottom — and weaving no longer throws you back to the top of the list.
  • Small comforts: hovering a GROW stat tells you exactly what a level buys before you spend, the boss-sense pulse stays on screen no matter how sharp your senses get, and Tab / Shift+Tab cycles the screens (handy if your keyboard's function row is a fight). Heads up: the save format changed with the wider corridors, so old worlds reset once.

v0.4

2026-08-05
  • The climb begins. There is a second floor now — the Fungal Deep, a violet spore-jungle above the Silt — and a sealed gate between them. Something down in the basin is holding the key.
  • Each floor has a boss. The Silt Mother and the Vesper Queen don't flinch, don't get knocked around, and live in lairs ringed with dangerous ground. Killing one drops the gate key; swallow it and it sits in your gut, undigestible, until you feed it to the lock. Eat the corpse too — a boss's memory only arrives through your stomach, and one of them literally shows you the way onward.
  • Your diet is a compass. Eat enough of a floor's creatures and a faint red pulse appears at the edge of your vision, pointing toward the boss — the locals have all met it, and their memories accumulate in you. It sharpens as you eat.
  • Both floors are big now, and carved: long rock walls make real corridors, silt pools drag at your legs, spore vents cough damage until you weave the memory that lets you breathe them.
  • New things to eat (and be eaten by): blindworms that lunge when you're close, skittish sporelings, hive drones, glowing lumen moths — and the beast has moved upstairs, so its memories are a Fungal Deep hunt now.
  • Heads up: the save format changed for the new floors, so old worlds reset once. Testers: the ` debug panel gained a JUMP button to hop between floors.

v0.3

2026-08-05
  • Your hoard survives. The dungeon now saves itself continuously — close the tab, come back tomorrow, and the world is exactly as you left it: where you were standing, what was chasing you, what was still dissolving in your gut, every stat and evolution and woven memory.
  • It saves the whole world, not just your progress. The rat you were stalking is still in the spot you last saw it, and gear you already ate stays eaten — the spelunker you looted does not quietly get his sword back while you're away.
  • Nothing to click. There's no save button and no save slots; it writes itself every few seconds, whenever you switch screens, and the moment you close the tab.
  • For testers: press ` to open a debug panel. Wipe your save and start over, grant yourself biomass, materials or memory fragments, spawn any creature beside you, or teleport by clicking the map.
  • One warning while the game is still being built: when the save format changes in a future version, old worlds are dropped rather than converted, and you'll start fresh.

v0.2

2026-08-04
  • There's real gear down there now — a spelunker's pick and a rusty sword, lying beside the dead men who carried them. Swallow one and it doesn't just digest: it waits in your gut until you decide what it becomes. Render it into iron, refine it into a permanent stat, or wield it. Gear never comes back, so every choice spends it for good.
  • Grow appendages and they become weapon slots. Anything you're wielding sits on keys 1-4, your tongue stays on Z, and everything shares one swing timer — so picking the right tool beats mashing all of them.
  • Steel doesn't obey you at first. An unfamiliar weapon swings slow and hits soft until you eat a dead spelunker's remains and weave his grip back together. Skill is something you consume, not something you practise.
  • Whatever you're holding shows up on your body — the weapon rides in a pseudopod, swings when you swing, and tucks completely out of sight the moment you disguise yourself as a chest.
  • Changed a weapon's mind? Click its slot to bring it back up into your gut, and choose its fate all over again.
  • Screen switching moved to F1 / F2 / F3, since the number keys now belong to your weapons.