DEVLOG
Devlog
Every update to Dreadmark, written up as it happens: what changed, why it changed, and what went wrong on the way.
First Steps
Patch 0.2.5 is out for everyone with a key. It brings the iron menus, the Gambler and the Account-Found boards from the last three entries, and the changes…
The Gambler
Vane, the Gambler, reaches the pilgrims' camp once the Dark Lord has fallen. He sells wares that do not say what they are. A tile on his shelf reads ? Axe or ?…
Forged in Iron
The interface is iron now. The hotbar, every window and the loading screen share one set of forged pieces, with blood-red enamel on the buttons that matter.
Every Character Climbs
From the next update the Eternals rank every character that plays online. Until now only Self-Found characters had a place on the boards. A character that…
Roads That Lead Somewhere
A Dread Map now has one road, from the pass you arrive through to the pass at the far end. It bends once or twice on the way and never doubles back.
The Herald Learns Your Name
The Herald now says who you are. When someone is the first to reach a level, or the first to bring down the Dark Lord, the line in chat names the character and…
Nothing to Squint At
Most of Dreadmark is something you read before you click it. This round went through the windows you read and the buttons you press, screen by screen.
A Voice in the Ash
Launch Dreadmark and it tells you a story first. A chronicler narrates six illustrated panels about the parish gravedigger, and the ash from those panels now…
The Ledger Opens
Hirelings are in the demo. Kill the Dark Lord and Osric the Almoner opens his ledger in camp, and your first hire is free.
A New Road Every Time
Every Dread Map opens onto a different stretch of parish road. The pieces are authored, and the game decides which to use and where each one goes, so the…
The Endgame Is a Map
The demo's endgame used to be a stone pillar and three sliders. It is a map now. The Dark Lord leaves one behind, you shape it with the same currency you spend…
What Waits Past the Gate
The demo is a slice. It's a proper one, played and tuned and upfront about what it is, but it's still a slice. Some of what we've been building lives on the…
Every Spell Looks Like Itself
For a long time Dreadmark's combat read better than it looked. A skill did the right thing, but half the kit borrowed the same generic swing, a fire bolt and…
The Classes, Remade
Both of Dreadmark's classes got their soul rewritten this week, which took more than bolting on new skills. Each one got a new answer to the question what is…
The Demo Takes Shape
With a storefront live and Steam Next Fest circled for October, this stretch was less about new toys and more about deciding what, exactly, a stranger's first…
The Machines That Test It
Our automated test heroes have always played Dreadmark. This stretch they moved on to something more useful, testing it and balancing it. For most of a week…
A Death You Can Read
A run's worst moment is the one you don't understand. You die, and your answer to what just killed me? is a shrug. This round was a sweep across the whole game…
Open for Wishlists
Dreadmark has a real address now. It's live on Steam and listed as Coming Soon, so you can wishlist it this minute.
A Coat of Dried Blood
The gold is gone. For most of Dreadmark's life the interface wore the genre's default, which meant warm gilt titles, honey-colored selection states, and…
When a Swing Can Miss
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…
The Two Pilgrims
For its whole life so far, Dreadmark has been the story of one pilgrim, a holy crusader who solved problems by walking up to them and swinging until they…
The Machines Learn to Win
For a while now, Dreadmark has had a combat bot. It's a scripted fighter we run in a test arena to tune skills and enemy pressure, and it eventually learned to…
The Ladder
Dreadmark has been a solitary pilgrimage so far. This round it grew a spine of steel behind the scenes, with real servers and real leaderboards that make it an…
The Dark Lord
The end of the cathedral got a fresh batch of motion-captured animations and, with them, a costume worthy of the fight underneath.
New Ledgers, Locked Vaults
Two of the game's oldest screens finally got the treatment the rest of the game grew into.
A Hundred Small Mercies
Some rounds add a system. These made the game kinder to live in. First they handed you the keyboard, and then they sanded down every rough edge a long playtest…
The Blow Lands
You can build a hundred systems and still have a game that feels like moving chess pieces. This round put new toys aside and worked on weight. That's the kind…
Five Named Deaths
Until now Dreadmark's toughest fight was a big skeleton with a health pool, dangerous but anonymous. This round gave the graveyard its nobility with five named…
The Skill Forge
Until now 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 actives…
Weapons in Both Hands
For most of Dreadmark's life every weapon swung like a one-handed sword, because under the hood every weapon was a one-handed sword with a different mesh. Over…
Somewhere to Come Back To
A loot game that exists only on paper is a spreadsheet. Over these builds all of it arrived on screen, with an inventory you drag things around in, a character…
Night Falls on the Graveyard
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…
The Loot Game, on Paper
This round nothing new moved on screen, and yet it might be the biggest day the game has had. While one workstream kept dressing the cathedral, a second sat…
The Bot That Learned to Play
Dreadmark has no QA department, but its combat still needs testing hundreds of times a day. So we built an AI bot that actually plays the game. It moves,…
What Combat Is Made Of
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…
A Fresh Start
Dreadmark began as a hard reset. There was an older prototype, with different tech and a different scope, and the first serious decision of this project was to…