A Look at the Warrens
Words only carry so far. Some things you have to see moving.
This is a fresh run through the current alpha build. Torchlight bending around the corners, an orc looking up from the dark, chests cracking open into something useful. If you’ve been reading the devlogs and trying to picture how it all fits together, this is the picture.
A Softer Focus
The biggest visual change in this build is the new depth-of-field effect. Look at any of the gameplay shots and notice how the far end of the corridor blurs out, while the wall a few feet away stays sharp. Your eye lands where it should: on the thing about to swing at you, on the chest at arm’s reach, on the writing scratched into the door.
It’s a toggle in the Display options, off by default for anyone who prefers the classic flat raycaster look. Turn it on and the dungeons feel deeper. Turn it off and you get the crisp, every-pixel-matters aesthetic the genre was born with. Both are valid. Both look good. The Warrens accommodate.
The Display panel itself got a workover too. There were too many toggles fighting for room, so it now scrolls and lays out across two columns. Nothing buried. Nothing cramped.
Something to Drink
Potions work now. That sounds obvious, but it took a real pass to get right.
There are ten tiers spread across health, stamina, and status cures. Lesser, regular, greater, superior, perfect, each with their own art and their own numbers. Drag one onto your belt and a quickslot appears. Press D1 through D5 in combat and the potion fires off. Right-click from the backpack works too, for when you just want to chug something between fights.
There’s a single shared three-second cooldown across all potions. You can’t chain a healing draught into a stamina restorative into an antidote in the same instant. The Warrens reward planning, not panic.
The cooldown overlay only paints over potion slots, the rest of your gear stays clickable. A small thing, but it kept tripping people up before the fix landed.
Carrying Your Weight
While we were in the inventory code, the carrying capacity got a tune-up. The old formula was making characters feel encumbered after picking up a single chestplate, which is not the fantasy. It now follows the D&D 5e rule: your maximum carry weight is your Strength score times fifteen.
A weak mage will still need to think about what they pack. A barbarian can carry the keep on her shoulders. The math feels right, the numbers feel honest, and inventory management goes back to being a strategic choice instead of a constant nag.
What’s in the Boxes
Chest loot has been getting better and better lately. With the magic items system from the last devlog and the new potions to round out the consumables pool, opening a chest now genuinely feels like rolling dice. Sometimes you get a serviceable iron dagger. Sometimes you get a Keen Sword of Fortitude. Sometimes you get six healing potions and a pile of gold and you carry the whole haul back to the next blacksmith.
Familiar Faces
Orcs still don’t like you.
Try It
The build the video was recorded on is live on itch.io right now. If you’ve been waiting for a version where the systems start clicking together, this is a good one to drop into.
More to come. The Warrens are deepening every week.