Death Leaves a Trace
Death Leaves a Trace
Here, the dead do not always rest
You wake up in a temple, a weapon in your hand, with no past. A stone in your pocket binds you to this place: when you fall, it brings you back. But never whole.
On the island of Ravenholm, every death leaves something behind. It is a mechanic and a world in the same idea.
An island of grey stone, marsh and deep forest, beyond the roads of the mainland.
Sailors named it for its ravens.
Here, the dead do not always rest.
For what is left in the ground comes back.
And what is bound comes back too.
But not whole.
From the prologue
Three generations came here for the stone, the fish and the land. They built a well, then a village: Greywell. Later, a richer town, Newborough.
Yet in the south of the island, no one builds. The land there is dead. There is iron under the black grass, bones under the earth, and things that should have stayed there. The elders call it the Bonefield.
No one knows who died there. No one knows who won. And no one knows why the ravens still go there.
A fixed camera, seen from above. You click to walk, you click to strike. The fight starts on its own and goes on as long as the target stands. It is slow, readable, and it leaves you time to look around.
You walk. There is no other pace.
You engage it, you close in, you strike — to the end.
One decides whether the blow lands, the other what it costs you.
The bond brings you back to the Temple. You return. But not whole.
No sprint. · No jump. · No camera rotation. · Nothing to buy to go faster.
The servers are small, and that is deliberate. With two hundred players, you end up knowing the names, who forges, who heals, and who you never turn your back on.
A community, not a crowd.
Most games at this stage show pictures. Here instead is where this one stands, today.
In the game today: one account with several heroes, a character shaped by their answers, their weapon and their looks, Ravenholm and its temple, the first quests, a merchant, a trainer, the inventory, the character sheet, the quest log, potions, and a chat to talk from one end of the island to the other.
These images are captures of the game as it runs, untouched. The rendering, the light and the mood are still ahead of us — the illustration at the top of this page shows where we are going, not where we are. We would rather say so.
The world is not built in a game engine. It is drawn in a painting program: an image where one pixel is one metre, one colour per kind of ground. Green becomes grass, blue becomes the sea, and the island comes out in a few seconds.
The rest — the houses wall by wall, the creatures, the items — goes through three tools written for this game and for no one else.
This game is made by one person, helped by an assistant that codes and tests. No publisher, no team, no imposed schedule.
One working rule: one thing at a time, and working before moving on to the next.
The game is not open yet. It will open first to those who followed the work.
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