Cinderhold

Cinderhold is a small 2D dungeon crawler made solo in Unity.

Every enemy shows where it will hit before it swings: a red mark on the floor is your cue to step aside and punish. Kill slimes, bats and rats for XP and coins, level up for more health, spend coins at the smith for a bigger weapon, and find the way down. The guardian on the second floor seals the exit until it falls.

Controls

WASD or arrow keys to move. Space / J or left mouse to attack. E to interact (smith, exits). Esc pauses. Gamepad: left stick, X to attack, A to interact, Start to pause. Progress saves automatically when you level up, buy a weapon or reach a new floor; a death restarts from the last checkpoint.

What this is

A gameplay-programming project: weapons and enemies as data (ScriptableObjects), a small enemy state machine (patrol, chase, attack with telegraph, flee), pooled hit feedback, a JSON save system and floors authored as ASCII maps. Technical write-up: https://phanto17.github.io/projects/cinderhold/

Feedback welcome in the comments — especially on readability of the attacks and the difficulty of the guardian.

Credits

• Tiles, characters and items: Tiny Dungeon by Kenney (CC0)
• Fonts: Kenney Mini and Kenney Mini Square by Kenney (CC0); Liberation Sans (SIL Open Font License) ships inside Unity's TextMesh Pro resources
• Sound effects: generated procedurally in code (no recorded audio)
• Design and code: Tymoteusz Jaskólski. Most of the code was written with an AI assistant (Claude Code) under my direction: I specified the systems, reviewed the changes and did the testing.