EMBERFALL is an entry for the GMTK Game Jam 2026 (theme: COUNT DOWN).

Built with LOVE 2D. Top-down action roguelite where your light is your ammo, your dash and your vision — all at once.

The sun is gone. All that is left is what you can still hold in your lantern. Descend three rooms of a drowned nave and spend your Glow wisely — every action makes the world darker.

Fall below 25% Glow and DARK mode kicks in: you deal more damage, but you also take more. Hit zero for three seconds and the run ends.

How the game fits the theme

COUNT DOWN, layered four ways:

• The intro cinematic literally counts down 03 → 02 → 01 as the ember is pulled through the portal.
• Your Glow bar counts down with every action — vision, spells and dash all drain the same pool, and the screen visibly darkens as you spend it.
• Each room shows a foes X/Y counter — you count down enemies to unlock the exit.
• Hit zero Glow and a 3-second dark-out timer starts. Find light in time or the run ends.

The countdown isn't a HUD number in the corner — it's the world going out around you.

Features

• Three hand-crafted rooms with escalating pressure (bandits → ranged acolytes → crossfire)
• Unified Glow resource: vision + Light Cast ammo + Ember Dash from one bar
• DARK mode (below 25% Glow): x1.5 damage dealt and taken
• Three selectable heroes, 5-way directional sprites
• Lives system with in-room respawn and medkit pickups
• Screen shake, hit stop, enemy flash, floating pickup text
• Intro and ending cinematics
• Menu, character select, settings (music/sfx/lights/fullscreen/language/cursor), pause, credits, gameover with run stats
• i18n: English / Italiano / Français with OS auto-detect
• Letterboxed fullscreen + windowed 800x600
• Standalone Windows .exe (no LOVE install required) + cross-platform .love

Controls

• WASD / arrows — Move
• Mouse — Aim
• LMB — Melee sweep (refills Glow on hit, capped per swing)
• RMB — Light Cast (spends Glow)
• SPACE — Ember Dash with i-frames (spends Glow)
• ESC / ENTER — Pause / resume
• Q (paused) — Abandon run

The run

• Room 1 — three bandits. Learn the melee dance.
• Room 2 — bandits and a ranged acolyte. Learn to keep moving.
• Room 3 — crossfire. Learn to spend your light like water.

Death shows you the light card: time, kills, damage dealt and taken, and how much Glow you burned to get there.

Credits

• Code and design: Antonella De Chiara (Lythande) — Itamde
• Framework: LOVE 2D 11.4+
• Heroes, laser, cursors, slime sprites — topdown_shooter pack (Itamde library)
• Head torch, medkit — Mucho Pixels Survival Kit pack
• Cyber floor / wall tiles — Cyberpunk Market Street by Free Game Assets / CraftPix
• Glow orb, brazier — Pixeltiers Tiny RPG Assets V2
• Menu backdrop — Pixel Sky by CaniaEast
• Music — Itamde library (no time, Dungeon 1, Dungeon 3)
• SFX — Swish Pack 1, GAME SOUND FX PACK, ouch pack (Itamde library)
• UI menu SFX — 512 sons retro 8bits by Juhani Junkala
• Font — Kenpixel by Kenney.nl (CC0)
• Windows .exe icon injection — rcedit by electron

Note on assets

GMTK 2026 disallows generative-AI assets in both the game and on the itch.io page. No generative AI was used for art, audio or this page. Every sprite, tile, sound and music track comes from a pre-existing personal asset library or from third-party packs credited above.