Open for Wishlists
2026-08-25
Dreadmark has a real address now — live on Steam, listed as Coming Soon, wishlistable this minute.
Read the entry →Storming the Cathedral
2026-08-19
This round, our automated test heroes did something no run had ever done: they beat the demo's whole critical path, end to end, without a single restart.
Read the entry →A Ladder Worth Climbing
2026-08-18
A leaderboard is only worth chasing if you can trust it. If the name at the top might have typed its way there, the climb underneath it means nothing. So before the demo goes out…
Read the entry →
Watch It Get Fixed
2026-08-16
Reporting a bug in most games is a small act of faith. You write it down, you send it somewhere, and then — nothing. Maybe it gets fixed someday. Maybe it's already sitting in a…
Read the entry →
A Coat of Dried Blood
2026-08-16
The gold is gone. For most of Dreadmark's life the interface wore the genre's default: warm gilt titles, honey-colored selection states, buttons that glowed like a treasure chest.…
Read the entry →
When a Swing Can Miss
2026-08-16
Up to now, if your blade reached a target, it landed. Every time. The enemy could dodge with real i-frames and outmaneuver you, but a clean hit was always a clean hit — no roll,…
Read the entry →
A Presence Worth Fearing
2026-08-16
The Dark Lord always fought like a threat. He didn't always look like one — walk into the nave before this round and you'd find a very dangerous swordlord standing very plainly in…
Read the entry →
Thirty-Eight Answers
2026-08-15
This round started as a list: thirty-eight things, written down in one sitting, ranging from "this door doesn't open" to "blocking doesn't feel like anything." Two days later…
Read the entry →
The Verdict Descends
2026-08-11
Judgment used to be a sword swing with a fancier name — a heavier version of the same overhead cut every melee build already had. It didn't feel like the capstone spell its name…
Read the entry →
The Shield Becomes the Sword
Covers development on 2026-08-10 — the Templar gets torn down and reforged. The hero who used to just "walk up and hit it" now has a spine, and that spine is a shield: his weapon, his wall, and the thing that pays for everything he does.
Last time out, we said the deepest part of a class — the pathing, the hard choices that make a build yours — was the next thing we were rebuilding from the ground up. This build…
Read the entry →
The Second Pilgrim
Covers development on 2026-08-09 — Dreadmark stops being a one-hero game. A second class walks in from the dark: the Witch, who does not kill you now so much as arrange for you to die soon.
For its whole life so far, Dreadmark has been the story of one pilgrim — the Templar, who solves problems by walking up to them and hitting them until they stop. This build ends…
Read the entry →
The Ladder Rises
Covers development on 2026-08-07/08 — the game goes online: leaderboards, seasons, a herald crying world-firsts, and characters that survive your hard drive.
Dreadmark has been a solitary pilgrimage so far. This round it grew a spine of steel behind the scenes — real servers, real leaderboards, and the beginnings of an online world…
Read the entry →
The Lord Takes Flight
Covers development on 2026-08-06 — new attack animations across the arsenal, the Dark Lord learns a terrifying new trick, and the game learns to stay smooth no matter how many monsters pile on.
A fresh batch of motion-captured animations landed this round, and they went everywhere.
Read the entry →
New Ledgers, Locked Vaults
Covers development on 2026-08-06 — the two screens you live in got rebuilt from scratch, and everything you own became a great deal harder to lose, duplicate, or cheat into existence.
Two of the game's oldest screens finally got the treatment the rest of the game grew into.
Read the entry →
A Hundred Small Mercies
Covers development on 2026-08-05 — one long playtest turned into a wall of fixes and comforts, and the bosses picked up some manners (the bad kind).
Some rounds add a system. This one played the game hard, wrote down everything that chafed — seventy-four items' worth — and then sanded every one of them.
Read the entry →
The Blow Lands, the Dust Kicks Up
Covers development on 2026-08-04 — a feel pass gives every step, hit, and cast some weight, and the dead learn to hold the line.
You can build a hundred systems and still have a game that feels like moving chess pieces. This round was about the opposite of that — not new toys, but weight. The kind of thing…
Read the entry →
New Prayers for the Dead
Covers development on 2026-08-04 — five new active skills join the roster, and the darkest of them lets you raise the dead to fight at your side.
This was the biggest single day of spell-work Dreadmark has had. Five new actives went into the book at once, and between them they open whole ways to play the Penitent that…
Read the entry →
Every Key, Your Own
Covers development on 2026-08-03 — Dreadmark grows a real options screen, and hands you the keyboard.
Up to now, Dreadmark's pause screen was a plain, functional thing — it stopped the world and let you nudge a few sliders. This round it becomes a proper menu: a gothic-framed…
Read the entry →
A Rune for Every Skill (and the Climb to Earn It)
Covers development on 2026-08-01 → 02 — the skills stop being fixed. Every one can now be reforged with a rune, and there's a whole ladder to climb before you own them all.
The forge gave the Penitent seventeen skills. This round gives each of them three faces. Fifty-one runes now exist — three per skill — and a rune isn't a stat bump, it's a…
Read the entry →
The Graveyard Finds Its Voice
Covers development on 2026-07-31 — the content close of the miniboss round: the full sound library arrives, every icon is redrawn, and the status bars learn to show what's actually happening to you.
Until today Dreadmark was a quiet game. Not by design — by backlog. Skills fired with placeholder swishes or nothing at all, bosses telegraphed death in complete silence, and the…
Read the entry →
Five Named Deaths
Covers development on 2026-07-31 — the miniboss round: five named bosses join the bestiary, one per enemy family, each built on the game's one sacred rule of combat: the attack tells you the truth before it lands.
Until today, Dreadmark's toughest fight was a big skeleton with a health pool. Dangerous, but anonymous. This round gave the graveyard its nobility: five named minibosses, one…
Read the entry →
The Skill Forge
Covers development on 2026-07-31 — an overnight skill marathon: the roster more than triples, and every skill archetype in the design plan becomes something you can actually press.
Until tonight, the Penitent knew five tricks: a basic combo, a whirlwind, a big cleave, a lunge, and a healing circle. The talent trees promised more — nine more actives were…
Read the entry →
The Bow Comes Off the Back
Covers development on 2026-07-30 → 31 — ranged weapons become a playable kit: back stow, the weapon swap, and the draw-and-loose shot.
Dreadmark's ranged slot has been a stat line without a body: you could wear a bow next to your melee kit, and nothing about your character admitted it existed. This round built…
Read the entry →
The Left Hand Learns Its Trade
Covers development on 2026-07-30 — shields you can see, books that belong in the off-hand, and dual wielding.
The off-hand slot has been real in the rules for a while — shields with armor, the classic no-shield-with-a-two-hander restriction — but the left hand itself was a ghost. Equip a…
Read the entry →
Two Hands on the Hilt
Covers development on 2026-07-29 → 30 — greatswords that plant their feet, and reach becoming a real stat.
Until this week, every weapon in Dreadmark swung like a one-handed sword, because under the hood every weapon was a one-handed sword with a different mesh. The two-handed bases…
Read the entry →
The Camp Finds Its Voice
Covers development on 2026-07-27 — giving the camp its audio.
The Pilgrims' Camp had bodies in it. It didn't have sound.
Read the entry →
Somewhere to Come Back To
Covers development on 2026-07-26 — building the Pilgrims' Camp hub.
Every loot game needs a room you return to. Somewhere to stand still, empty your bags, decide what was worth carrying. Dreadmark has had graveyards and a cathedral for weeks; what…
Read the entry →
The Game Grew Hands (and a Face to Match)
Covers development on 2026-07-24 — a week of inventory, character sheet, and skill-tree work landing in a single build.
The last entry ended with a loot game that existed only on paper. This one ends with all of it on screen: an inventory you drag things around in, a character sheet that explains…
Read the entry →
Night Falls on the Graveyard
2026-07-16
This round the game got its face. When the day started, the graveyard sat under a warm sunset like a diorama in a shop window. When it ended, the whole game was one continuous…
Read the entry →
The Loot Game, Built Before It Exists
2026-07-16
This round nothing new moved on screen — and it might be the biggest day the game has had. While one workstream kept dressing the cathedral, a second one sat down and built the…
Read the entry →The Bot Beat Me at My Own Game
2026-07-13
The bot cleared the arena. It didn't die more than a person does. And it still walked out with two to three times the damage a human takes doing the same job. This round chased…
Read the entry →The Compare: Human vs Machine, Round One
Covers development on 2026-07-12, night — the first real human-versus-bot showdown, and what each side learned from it.
Six full arena clears by the designer, thirteen by the bot, every event logged on both sides. The verdict was not close: the human clears the thirty-three-monster gauntlet in…
Read the entry →Sprint, Priorities, and a Batch That Heals Itself
Covers development on 2026-07-12, evening — the first human-versus-bot session, and everything it immediately shook loose.
The plan for tonight was simple: the designer grinds arena runs in the standalone build while the bot grinds identical arenas in the editor at triple speed, and the telemetry…
Read the entry →Forty Arena Runs and a Pair of Ears
Covers development on 2026-07-12, late — the arena optimization campaign and the quality-of-life storm around the first builds.
With arena mode built, the test bot got a standing order: clear all three waves — thirty-three monsters — with the least damage possible, as fast as possible. Then it ran the…
Read the entry →The First Build (v0.0.2)
Covers development on 2026-07-12, evening.
Dreadmark became a program today: a standalone Windows build you can double-click, with a version number in the corner. That milestone pulled a train of "a real game needs this"…
Read the entry →
Watch Day: Arena Waves, Player Telegraphs, and an Archer That Stands Its Ground
Covers development on 2026-07-12 — the busiest day of the project so far.
Today the loop changed: instead of the bot testing alone, the designer watched runs live, called out everything that looked wrong or dumb, and then picked up the controls himself…
Read the entry →
The Bot That Learned to Play
Covers development on 2026-07-11 → 12.
How do you test an action-RPG's combat hundreds of times a day without a QA department? Dreadmark's answer: an AI bot that actually plays the game — moves, kites, dodges…
Read the entry →
Enemies That Tell the Truth
Covers development on 2026-07-11 → 12.
Dreadmark's first monster roster is three skeletons with three jobs — and one shared law: a telegraph must never lie.
Read the entry →
Vigor, Spenders, and the Wet-Noodle Rule
Covers development on 2026-07-10 → 11.
With one character moving and hitting things properly, Dreadmark got its combat spine: a generator/spender resource called Vigor, five skills, and a HUD to hold them.
Read the entry →
A Fresh Start (and the Left Leg That Almost Ended It)
Covers development on 2026-07-10.
Dreadmark began as a hard reset. There was an older prototype — different tech, different scope — and the decision that opened this project was to disregard it entirely: new…
Read the entry →
The Game Plays Itself
2026-08-08
Something new haunts the Pilgrims' Camp tonight: characters nobody is controlling.
Read the entry →
The Pilgrims Grow Wise
2026-08-09
Last night two characters nobody controls walked out of the Pilgrims' Camp and into the graveyard. Today they stopped dying like fools.
Read the entry →