Ashen Vigil

A 3D dark fantasy action RPG, built in Zero. You are Aldric, the Vigil of the Ashen Valley — a knight who wakes at a broken chapel on the lip of a valley where the last kingdom drowned in its own ash.

Play

• WASD to move, mouse to look
• Left mouse — light swing · F — heavy swing
• Space — dodge-roll (it has invulnerability frames, and it costs stamina)
• Q — lock on to the nearest enemy; press again to let go
• R — drink from the Ashen Flask

Every one of those spends stamina, and stamina is what the fight is actually about.

What is in the valley

• The ruined chapel on its shelf west of the road, with the site of grace at its centre — a shattered sword, a pool of golden light, and the only warm light in the world.
• The broken watchtower, seven standing stones, drowned trees and black rock, all in drifting fog under a low amber sun.
• Hollow soldiers down the road, in camps, who notice you, close, and strike.
• The Ash Warden kneeling at the valley's heart — twelve feet of plate fused to cinder, embers in the empty sockets of its helm, with its own theme playing as you approach.

How it was made

Everything is authored content in this world: the scene, five slices under /source/game (the valley, the vigil, the foes, the screens, the sound), and a shared game.rules holding every number the game is tuned by. The valley is one height function sampled into both the mesh you see and the surface you stand on. The art direction in game.rules.ART_DIRECTION is the sentence every generated asset was prompted with, and the reference images that set the look are in /source/design/references.

Honest state

This is a first build, and it is unfinished in specific ways: nothing is animated (Aldric and the Ash Warden both stand in a T-pose), no swing has been driven through real input, and the ground reads paler than its own reference. The valley, the chapel, the enemies, the HUD, the progression and all four sounds are in and they work — the fight is code that runs, not code that has been played. The full account of what is done and what is not is in the build run's report.