u/civilizedcomics

I’ve been working on my first game, Dreadlight, and I’m getting close to publicly releasing the demo.

The basic structure is intentionally familiar: short waves, automatic attacks, a shop between waves, and builds assembled from weapons and items. I like the decisions in Brotato’s formula, so I wasn’t trying to disguise that influence.

The part I’ve been experimenting with is a persistent arena system. As Dread rises, ritual scars open on the floor. Standing inside one weakens your movement and damage, but enemies killed there drop additional scrap. Between waves, you can spend scrap to seal individual scars. Any scars you leave open grow stronger, so the arena gradually reflects the risks you took during the run.

I’m curious whether that feels like a meaningful addition or simply another system layered onto an already busy genre. I’ve also been trying to make the scar screen and the relationship between light, Dread, and enemy visibility easier to understand.

The demo currently has three survivors, multiple starting weapons, three difficulty levels, ten waves, and a final boss. I’d especially appreciate feedback on:

• Whether the scar decisions are understandable
• Whether builds become overpowered too quickly
• Controller navigation
• Anything that feels needlessly complicated
• Whether you would play another run

Demo: https://thebeesknees13.itch.io/dreadlight-demo

Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5003470/Dreadlight/

This is my first commercial game, so candid criticism is genuinely useful. I’d rather learn what isn’t working now than after release.

I am looking for blunt roguelite-player feedback on Dreadlight, a horror arena-survival game where your lantern is safety, visibility, and pressure.

I am trying to answer a few specific questions before I put the demo on itch publicly:

- Does the darkness create tension, or does it just hide too much?

- Does the combat look readable once enemies/projectiles stack up?

- Do the weapons and shop look interesting enough for another run?

- Would the first 10 minutes make you keep playing?

The current test build is playable, but I am still tuning wave pacing, weapon identity, darkness/readability, shop clarity, difficulty, and performance.

If you are willing to play one 10-20 minute run and be blunt, leave a comment or DM me and I’ll send the private itch link.

I’ll send the private build link directly. Please don’t repost it publicly yet; I’m trying to fix the obvious rough edges before the itch test.

Useful criticism is much more helpful than politeness.

I am opening private testing for Dreadlight, a horror arena-survival roguelite where your lantern is safety, visibility, and sometimes a bad bargain.

I want feedback before I put it on itch for a public test, then eventually Steam for the actual demo.

Looking for people willing to play 10-20 minutes and tell me:

- Was wave 1 too slow?

- Did the shop make sense?

- Did weapons feel different?

- Was the darkness atmospheric or frustrating?

- Did performance hold up?

- Would you play another run?

Reply here or shoot me a DM and I'll send you the itch link

I’ve been working on a small Godot prototype called Starclaim.

It’s a top-down space mining game where you launch from a station, mine asteroids, extract, sell your haul, buy upgrades, and go back out for another run.

I used AI pretty heavily while building it, mostly as a coding/dev assistant. It helped a lot with getting systems connected faster: UI screens, upgrade logic, station flow, some GDScript cleanup, and turning vague ideas into first-pass implementations.

But the more I worked on it, the more obvious it became that AI didn’t really solve the game part by itself. The hard parts were still things like:

• deciding what the core loop should actually be
• tuning the pacing so mining didn’t feel dead
• making the UI readable
• figuring out when the run should end
• spotting all the little moments where technically-working code still felt bad to play

The video is a mostly uncut loop from menu → launch → mining → extraction → selling → upgrade. It’s still very prototype-y, but it finally shows the full loop working.

Playable build is here if anyone wants to poke at it: https://thebeesknees13.itch.io/starclaim