Posts on Chainwatch: Descent

Open for Business

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Not every soul in the Warrens wants you dead.

Some of them want your gold.

Fellow Prisoners of the Chain

The Covenant Chains don’t discriminate. When a merchant crosses the threshold of a Warren, they’re bound by the same curse as you, dragged back from death over and over, trapped in halls that never stay the same. But where most adventurers sharpen their swords, a few set up shop instead. They find the rare stable zones where the Warren’s magic calms, lay out their wares, and wait for the next desperate soul to wander in.

The Warrens Don't Care What You're Running

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Warrens don’t care what monitor you’re running. They certainly don’t care what operating system sits beneath it.

macOS Support

Chainwatch Descent now runs on Mac. If you’ve been eyeing the game from the other side of the fence, the gate is open. Head to the itch.io page, grab the macOS build, and step into the Shifting Warrens.

This wasn’t a simple checkbox. MonoGame’s content pipeline has opinions about macOS, and not all of them are kind. Music processing, path resolution, shader compilation, each one needed its own solution. The short version: music now loads directly from ogg files instead of going through the content pipeline, and the game properly finds its own data files regardless of where you launch it from. These fixes benefit every platform, not just Mac. Cleaner internals, fewer assumptions about working directories, the kind of foundational work that makes everything else more reliable going forward.

Into the Warrens: Chainwatch Descent Alpha Now Available

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The stone door swings open. Torchlight flickers across damp walls. Somewhere in the darkness ahead, something moves. You adjust your grip on your sword, check your provisions one last time, and step into the Shifting Warrens.

Today marks the first public alpha release of Chainwatch Descent, and I’m excited to finally share this journey with you. This is a first-person dungeon crawler set in the cursed depths beneath Khalendor, where death is not the end but merely another turn of the wheel. It’s rough around the edges, unfinished in many ways, and absolutely playable right now on itch.io.

The Chain Remembers

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Death in the Warrens used to mean starting over. Not anymore.

Save and Load

The game now persists everything that matters. Player position, facing direction, monster health and locations, which doors you’ve opened, which items you’ve picked up — all of it serialized to disk and restored on load. Die, and only your character stats survive; the dungeon resets. Pause and exit, and the entire floor freezes in place, waiting for your return.

Fitting the Frame

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Warrens don’t care what monitor you’re running. But the game should.

Display Options

Players can now configure resolution and display mode from both the main menu and the pause menu. A resolution picker lists every mode your graphics adapter supports, and a fullscreen checkbox toggles between windowed and exclusive fullscreen.

The real trick is the confirmation flow. Changing resolution on the fly is risky — pick a mode your monitor doesn’t like and you’re staring at a black screen with no way back. So after applying new settings, a 15-second countdown dialog appears: “Keep these display settings?” If you don’t click Keep before the timer runs out, the game silently reverts to your previous resolution. No panic, no blind alt-tabbing, no restarting.

Nothing Lasts Forever

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Every blade in the Warrens has a history. Nicks in the edge, stress fractures along the tang, a guard that wobbles just slightly. Now the game knows it too.

Wear and Tear

Equipment degrades. Every swing of a sword, every blow absorbed by a chestplate — there’s a chance it chips, dents, or cracks. When durability hits zero, the item breaks and unequips itself. No warning, no grace period. The Warrens don’t care about your favorite sword.

Polish and Impact

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This round was about making things feel right. No new systems — just making the existing ones hit harder.

Screen-Space Damage Numbers

Damage numbers used to project into world space, which meant they’d shrink with distance and sometimes clip through geometry. The new system renders them in screen space instead: they pop in at the center of the viewport, float upward with a gentle fade, and scatter with a random horizontal offset so consecutive hits don’t stack on top of each other.

The Warrens Come Alive

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A big day. Four features landed, and together they transformed the game from a tech demo into something that feels like an experience.

Fog of War

The minimap no longer reveals the entire floor. A fog-of-war system now tracks three states for every tile: unseen, discovered, and visible. Walls are revealed through line-of-sight with a configurable reveal radius, and discovered areas stay on the map in a dimmed state after you leave.

Shadows and Teeth

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Two sides of the same coin this week: learning to hide, and giving the monsters a reason to hunt.

Sneak Mode

Not every encounter in the Warrens needs to end in bloodshed. The sneak system lets players crouch into the shadows, reducing their detection radius. Move slowly, stay out of torchlight, and most creatures will pass right by.

It’s a risk-reward trade. Sneaking drains stamina at a slow tick, and you move at half speed. Get caught mid-sneak by something fast, and you’ll be fighting with depleted reserves. But slip past a pack of goblins guarding a narrow corridor? That’s a win no sword could buy.

First Blood

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Shifting Warrens were quiet for too long. Today, the silence breaks.

Blades Meet Flesh

The first phase of the combat system is in. Players can now swing weapons at the creatures lurking in the Warrens, and the creatures don’t appreciate it. Attacks are stamina-driven — every swing costs energy based on the weapon’s weight, and cooldowns prevent mindless button mashing. You have to think about when to strike and when to hold back.