Devlog: descending into Aethelgard

Aethelgard: The Hollowing is the most ambitious thing on our bench: an action-RPG built around descending, layer by layer, into somewhere that very much wants you dead, with permadeath as the spine of the whole design. It's also the project most capable of eating unlimited time, so this is as much about restraint as it is about features.

What's actually playable

The Godot prototype has a real loop: movement, a camera and combat system, a Pyric spell tree, health and posture and death, layer descent with checkpoints, enemy AI, hazards, pickups, and proper victory and permadeath screens. Persistence is local JSON for now, on purpose: committing to a database before the design settles is how you build the wrong schema twice.

More than a game loop

There's a platform forming around it: a public project site, a closed-beta signup, and a custom launcher with account creation, login, and protected build downloads. Multiplayer runs through a self-hosted SpacetimeDB backend, with a bridge that currently owns authoritative player movement and streams snapshots to clients. Shipping a launcher with real accounts is most of the unglamorous engineering, and it's wired end to end.

The discipline

The roadmap describes a huge game. The plan does not. We're scoping a tight vertical slice (one enemy, one route, one gate, one death loop that feels good) and freezing everything else. A flagship project survives by staying playable at every step, not by chasing the full dream in one swing.