itch.io

Hello, tiny adventurers!

I’ve released Bitiverse, a free browser-based multiplayer RPG where everything is one bit, everyone is underqualified, and the goblins have somehow entered upper management.

Play it here: https://fortisq.itch.io/bitiverse

Explore a persistent shared world, fight monsters by aggressively walking into them, gather resources, craft equipment, learn magic, trade with players, join guilds, complete quests, explore dungeons, build a home—or become the mysterious local citizen who owns seventeen chairs.

Bitiverse is playable now but still actively in development. The core multiplayer, crafting and progression systems are taking shape, while more hand-authored locations, quest chains, bosses and meaningful group objectives are on the way. Feedback is very welcome, especially if something is confusing, broken, excessively noisy or unexpectedly full of rats.

The world’s base terrain is procedurally generated, while player activity and persistent changes are saved. This allows the world to be enormous without requiring an enormous download.

Tiny pixels. Big world. Poor decisions.

-- Fortisq

Quick correction: I genuinely misunderstood itch.io’s “No AI” label as referring to generated art and content. After reading the full policy, I realized AI-assisted code also counts, so I’ve corrected the tag. That was my mistake, not an attempt to hide anything. Thanks for pointing it out.

Thanks for taking the time to play and leave detailed feedback, Merlin. I think your central criticism is fair: progression needs meaningful reasons to exist. 

Your synchronized-boss example is exactly the kind of idea I find interesting. I want professions, equipment and character progression to eventually feed into hand-authored dungeons, quest chains, bosses and shared objectives that actually benefit from other players. The procedural world gave me a huge foundation, and I’ve been concentrating on getting crafting and progression working. The next challenge is filling that foundation with memorable places and reasons to use everything you’ve built.

I also read your in-game feedback. I’m planning changes to make the map less visually noisy, along the lines you suggested. The middle chests should be working in the current version, but please let me know if you still find one that isn’t.

Regarding the No AI tag: I used it to mean that the game contains no AI-generated artwork, audio or game content. The art comes from the well-known Urizen 1-bit tileset, which predates the current generative-AI boom. I hand-code and design the game, while using AI as a programming assistant. I’ve tried to be upfront about that. However, if itch intends “No AI” to mean no AI assistance anywhere in development, then I’ll correct the tag rather than misrepresent the project. If any AI involvement is a deal breaker for you, I completely understand.

You’re right that Bitiverse currently has more systems than meaningful destinations for those systems. I appreciate you being direct about itand especially that you want to see the project continue. That is exactly what I intend to work on.

- Fortisq

Hey everyone, Fortisq here.

I recently decided Bitiverse’s crafting system needed “a little more depth.”

This seemed harmless.

A few days later, the game had tiered lumberjacking, carpentry, furniture, rare herbs, alchemy, mining, smelting, fishing, cooking, equipment progression, skill requirements, bows, Marksmanship, and ranged combat.

Apparently I don’t understand what “a little” means.

Bitiverse now has around 201 items and 93 recipes. You can harvest different grades of wood and ore, catch increasingly suspicious fish, cook meals with temporary bonuses, brew tiered potions, smelt metals, craft equipment, furnish a house, and work your way toward materials that appear to have been named by an unsupervised wizard.

The less glamorous half of the update has been fixing everything this growth disturbed.

Meals were healing too much. Equipment failures weren’t properly shown. Tooltips sometimes displayed old information. Scrollbars could activate panels underneath them. Stairs refused to work in perfectly valid houses. Remote players lost their smooth movement. Some character sprites began facing the wrong direction.

Each new system has a habit of walking into three existing systems and knocking over their drinks.

The project now contains more than 1,100 tests because multiplayer inventories, crafting materials, equipment, skills, housing, and a persistent economy provide many creative opportunities for disaster. I use Codex extensively as an AI development assistant, but I still direct the design and architecture and decide whether the world genuinely needs eleven tiers of fish.

It does.

The newest build is live now. If you try it, I’d love to hear what feels fun, confusing, unbalanced, or broken. Bug reports are welcome, especially if they include what you were doing immediately before reality stopped behaving properly.

Thanks for playing and helping me turn this tiny one-bit world into something increasingly unreasonable.

— Fortisq

Tiny pixels. Big world. Scope containment failure.

@ProjectLevel – Thank you so much for this. Seriously.

You nailed exactly why good feedback matters, especially from another dev who knows the solo grind. It can be lonely, and having someone actually take notes and point out blind spots is invaluable. I really appreciate the time you're putting into this.

On the boss room cheese: You're 100% right – and Peazy Game Studio just confirmed the same experience with their mage, so this is clearly a universal pain point. Your suggestion is spot‑on:

• A passable barrier at the entrance that you must cross to deal damage.
• Once you're in, you can't leave (or if you do, the boss heals over time to punish retreating).

I'll implement something like that in the next patch. I'm committed to growing this with community input, so please keep hopping in and firing off notes – even the "small" stuff matters. Thanks again

@Peazy Game Studio – Thanks so much for the thoughtful feedback and the kind words! Really glad you're enjoying it and already thinking about the next layers. Let me go through each point:

1. Crafting UI cutting off materials You're absolutely right –Fixed

2. Post-Maze challenge Currently, the Maze wraps up the main story, but I know players want more. I'm exploring ideas, What kind of endgame would you want to see?

3. Bed on the second floor That's a technical limitation with the current building system – room logic is tied to the ground floor. It's on my radar, but it'll take some restructuring. I hear you, a proper upstairs bedroom is a must!

4. Recall scroll Great QoL idea – outdoor-only teleport to your bed or starting town. Added to the feature list. Should help with long treks.

5. Roadmap / future plans Yes, absolutely. I'm planning more areas, recipes, and quests. No public roadmap yet, but I'll announce updates as they firm up. Keep an eye out!

Again, thank you for the encouragement and the constructive critique it means a lot. Keep the suggestions coming!

You totally nailed the vibe that early 2000s Newgrounds era is a huge inspiration for me. I wanted to capture that scrappy, creative energy where a single developer could build something weird and ambitious without needing a AAA budget.

The 1bit art style and procedural world are part of that philosophy: keep the client light, lean into constraints, and pack in as much depth as I can. It's awesome to hear it's resonating with people who remember that era.

If you end up diving deeper, I'd love to hear what other nostalgic buttons it pushes or any features you'd want to see added. Thanks again for the kind words!

Thanks for the great feedback! Just to clarify on a few points: I didn't use AI for the art, and the game is currently flat (2D). I'm leveraging well-established procedural generation tech to build a massive world, which I plan to gradually fill with hand-authored content.

I am leaning heavily on AI for the repetitive, tedious stuff like generating loot tables and boilerplate code but even with that help, you still need to be a decent developer to stitch it all together and make it actually work.

On the technical side: the entire visual library comes from a single 250KB sprite sheet. The full world weighs in at over 2GB, but thanks to streaming, your PC will never hold more than about 20MB of it at any given time. The client itself is tiny all the heavy logic runs in the database, using just 66 tables and 125 reducers. This setup is efficient enough to run on a free-tier VPS with 100+ concurrent clients indefinitely.

My goal from the start was to make an MMO, and I know the ins and outs of what that entails. Since I'm no artist or animator, the 1-bit sprite aesthetic is the perfect creative constraint—it allows me to pack a ridiculous amount of content and design complexity into the game without being gated by my artistic limitations.

Bitiverse – a tiny browser MMO with one-bit graphics, guilds, housing, and a persistent player economy

It's like a MUD that grew pixel art eyes. Persistent world, player-driven economy, no install, no microtransactions, no battle pass – just a cozy multiplayer RPG you can open in a tab and forget exists until you remember your house is still there.

Fight monsters, cast spells, gather resources, craft gear, trade with players, join guilds, build a house, run a vendor, explore dungeons, and make deeply questionable financial decisions.

Free to play: https://fortisq.itch.io/bitiverse

@ProjectLevel - You're an absolute legend for this write-up! 🧡

First off - huge thanks for taking the time to type all this out. This isn't just "feedback," this is a full-on QA report with love sprinkled on top. You're the real MVP.

Regarding "Wings over the Ruin" - Yeahhhhhh about that... I may have broken the sprite when I replaced it right before launch. 😅 It's fixed now! The quest should work as intended. Sorry for the confusion - classic "launch day dev brain" moment.

Now for your suggestions:

• Bandage stopping movement - Yep, totally intentional... but also kinda annoying, right? I get it. Might revisit this one. Consider it "under review" on the whiteboard.
• Harvesting sprites not changing - You caught me. I got lazy. Fixing this ASAP. The "E" prompt is also a no-brainer - why didn't I think of that sooner? 🤦‍♂️
• Sprite flipping - Cheap and cheerful. Adding this to the next patch just for you.
• Footstep sounds - takes headphones off ...wait, there ARE footsteps? I've been listening to them for months and I literally don't hear them anymore. You're right. Turning that way down.
• Inventory sorting - Noted. Manual sort vs auto-sort. That's going on the list.
• Bugs (Westhold doors, ability panel X button) - Both squashed. Fixed 'em already. You're welcome. 😎

Seriously though, feedback like this is GOLD. It helps me make the game better for everyone. You clearly care about the game and that means the world to me as a solo dev.

Keep the suggestions coming - I'm reading every single one. And if you run into any more weirdness (or broken sprites), hit me up!

Now go enjoy the fixed Wings quest and let me know if the new boss patterns make you rage. 😈

— Fortisq

Fight monsters by aggressively walking into them. Gather resources, craft increasingly pointy objects, learn magic, trade with players, join guilds, complete quests, build a home, and lose your gold in a deeply embarrassing corpse run.

https://fortisq.itch.io/bitiverse