I started working on Emberfall about a month ago. I have wanted to create a retro dungeon crawler for a while. My first PC game was Bard's Tale and it was freaking amazing at the time! Love every second of it. We knew exactly sequence to teleport to land on the reoccurring groups of 99 Berserkers and WAST them to pieces so that our party could grind out the levels. Then came Dragon Wars, Dungeon Master, Lands of Lore, the Eye of the Beholder series and many others. So I wanted to pay homage to that era of my life.
Artwork
So, let's start with the elephant in the room. I use RetroDiffusion AI for pieces that I can't do myself. I find it a useful tool but not a replacement for a real artist. I have to heavily edit much of what the AI produces but, not being an artist myself, some of it is beyond my skills to fix. Some of the smaller pieces and the UI were drawn by me either completely or by altering resources from real artists. I try to use artists' work when I can but for now my finances dictate what I can afford and what I can't.
Current Progress (Dec 5, 2025)
This is the coldest day of 2025 so far for me here in eastern Canada. It's currently -12 C with a feels-like temperature of -23 C (about -9F). It will definitely get colder but I thought it was pretty apt that I start my first Dev Log for Emberfall today. Emberfall is built on a 2D engine called Mini Micro. So far, I have created a framework to aid in:
- Signal Bus communication to decouple the framework areas
- Scenes, Scene States and Scene Management
- Input handling through defining Actions, Groups and Contexts
- Audio System that supports music in two parts (intro and a loop) as well as sound FX on separate channels
- Resource loading
- Bitmap font support using the BM Font tool
From the framework, I've been able to create
- A resource loading scene with a progress bar
- A Main Menu with a simple snowing particle system
- A freezing Scene transition effect
- An animated Adventurer's Guild where the player will be able to manage their party, save/load and enter the city.
I'm working hard to get a demo ready but it is still early days. Currently, I'm still working on the party management in the Guild interface to create, add and remove characters. If there is anything from the above feature list that you would like me to specifically talk about or if you have questions about the game itself, let me know. I'd be happy to share.
If this project seems like something you would be interested in playing, please follow my Itch account. Thanks.
