Extract or lose it all
Everything you carry is at risk until you're through the gate. Insure one item. Pray for the rest.
A multiplayer dark fantasy extraction dungeon crawler
Enter the cursed forest. Descend into forgotten places. Take what you can carry. Decide how far you're willing to go. Escape before the darkness takes you.
Everything you carry is at risk until you're through the gate. Insure one item. Pray for the rest.
Every run grows four new tiers from a fresh seed: new paths, new vaults, new places to die.
Co-op for up to four, hosted from your own Sanctuary. Carry a fallen friend's loot home from their grave.
Low-poly by design, with a Potato preset and a Compatibility renderer for old laptops.
Latest from the depths
Drakes take to the sky and set the forest burning, a great Matriarch guards her eggs, and the dead are joined by flesh: zombies, goblins and wendigos.
New: drakes in the sky
Drakes take off, circle out of a blade's reach and pour fire down. Where it lands, the ground burns. Bring one down with an arrow, a musket ball or a spell.
Take a look →
New boss
In some forests a great crimson drake broods over a nest of eggs. Wake her and she fights for them, and hurt her badly and they hatch.
Take a look →
New: the beasts
Flesh among the bones: limping, lurching zombies, goblin packs with brutes and cutthroats, and antlered wendigos in the deep.
Take a look →The loop
Leave the Sanctuary through the forest gate. Every run is generated from a fresh seed.
Find the stairs down. Each depth hits harder, pays better and hides more.
Weapons, armour, relics, keys, materials. Your backpack only holds so much.
Push one room further, or turn back while you still can. The deeper you go, the more it costs to stay.
Reach a waystone or gate and hold it while the dead come for you. Die, and you lose everything but one insured item.
Trailer
Recorded in the game itself. Here's what you're seeing:
The world
Every run builds all four tiers from a single seed: forest clearings, ruined courts, crypt halls and catacombs, never laid out the same way twice. The deeper you go, the harder they hit and the better the loot.
The trees here grew over the graves. Mind where you step.
Rolling hills, a winding river and a dark lake, all grown from one seed. Clearings hide camps, a cemetery, a stone circle and caches. Deep in the trees the Broodmother waits in a lair strung with silk, and in some forests a Drake Matriarch broods over her eggs in a nest of burnt branches.
The river runs red from somewhere inside the cliff. Nobody knows what it bleeds from.
Roofless courts on the edge of sheer cliffs. A river of blood springs from the rock, winds between the ruins under arched stone bridges and pools in the Blood Mere, where a skeletal fishmonger keeps a shack on the shore.
Below this line, corruption builds every second you stay.
Listen for the click. Then roll.
The crypt is booby-trapped: spike plates inside doorways, dart passages and pendulum blades in the corridors. Every trap clicks or whooshes before it strikes, a roll beats all of them, and they hurt the dead as much as you.
The Warden holds the last way out. You will have to take it from him.
The deepest tier. Seventeen rooms, a chasm with no floor crossed on narrow bridges, a Reliquary behind an abyssal lock, and the Bone Warden waiting in the farthest hall.
New Weather
Every run rolls its own sky over the Cursed Forest and the Hollow Ruins. Most nights are clear. Some are not.
A full moon, a sky thick with stars and a river that glows violet. The forest at its kindest, which is not very kind.
Rain begins to fall.
Cloud rolls over the moon and rain hisses through the canopy, splashing off every stone. The ground takes on a wet sheen, puddles gather in the hollows, and lightning shows you the whole forest for a heartbeat before the thunder.
Snow is falling.
Flakes drift in on the run's wind and settle on the ground, the ruins and the pine boughs until the forest goes white. No thunder, only the wind.
A Blood Moon rises over the forest.
The moon swells and turns red, and everything under it is lit the colour of a wound. Brighter than a clear night, and far less welcoming.
The Blood Moon bleeds. It is raining blood.
The rarest sky of all. The Blood Moon bleeds through the cloud, red rain stains the leaves and the paving, the fog glows crimson and the lightning comes down red.
New Puzzles & obstacle courses
From the Hollow Ruins down, some doors lead to rooms with no monsters in them. That is not good news. Each one is a puzzle or a deadly course, and each one ends in a prize.
Solve it and the bars over the vault alcove rise.
Read the tablet by the door, then light the braziers in the order they burned.
A tablet replays a sequence of coloured flames, each with its own bell. Light the braziers in the same order: four flames in the Ruins, up to six in the Catacombs. Choose wrong and the fire bursts in your face, and deeper down it wakes the dead at the door.
Turn the watchers until every one of them looks on the altar.
Stone watchers on turning plinths, bound together by grooves cut in the floor. Turn one and the ones it's linked to turn with it. Get every pair of eyes on the altar and they burn gold.
Every rune stone must burn. Each one you step on flips its neighbours too.
A grid of rune stones, three by three in the Ruins and four by four below. Every step flips the stone and the ones beside it. Light them all. In the Catacombs, the dark runes bite.
Cross it alive and the prize on the far dais is yours.
A blade doesn't just cut. It throws you off.
A causeway a stride and a half wide over a pit, with pendulum blades sweeping across it out of step. Three of them, four in the Catacombs.
Look before you leap.
Stepping stones over the pit, a running jump apart. Each one cracks the moment you land and drops into the dark a breath later. The cracked ones beside the path go the instant they're touched.
Watch the rhythm, then go.
Rows of grates from wall to wall, each roaring on its own clock in a wave down the room. Deeper down the rows split out of step and spike plates wait between them.
Weapons & loot
Six slots on your belt, drawn with 1 to 6. Every weapon class trains its own skill, so the more you fight with one, the harder it hits.
Rare drops land with a beam of light in their colour. Mythics are one of a kind, glow in your hand, and only a trader who trusts you completely will ever part with one.
Enemies
The dead don't stand still waiting for you. They wander, they spot you, and they turn on whoever is closest. Crouch to stay out of sight.
New The Cursed Forest & the Hollow Ruins
Under the open sky the drakes don't stay on the ground. They climb above the trees, circle out of reach of any blade and hang in the air to pour fire down on you. Where it lands, the forest burns.
A few seconds into a fight it crouches and launches itself up on heavy wingbeats.
It climbs above the trees and circles you, banking into its turns. No blade reaches it there.
It slows to a hover, leans over you and pours a roaring stream of fire across the ground.
Sooner or later it comes down near you to fight on foot. That's the blade's chance.
Multiplayer
Home base
A walled keep above the forest, lit by lanterns and a campfire that never goes out. Bank your haul, trade, take a contract and lose a little gold at the tables before the next run.
The Sanctuary
Through an arch in the Sanctuary's east wall, a smoky hall of green baize and brass lamps. Rack up against your friends between runs, or put your gold on the line against a skeleton who's been practising for three hundred years.
Drop into the cue-cam behind the cue ball. A guide shows where it meets the object ball and where both of them go after.
Strike high for follow, low for screw, or either side for english that bends off the cushion.
Hold to pull the cue back. The further back you draw, the harder you strike.
Every ball slides, grips and rolls like the real thing, and every machine in your party sees the same shot.
The Cursed Forest
Something glows between the roots. Eat it and your wounds close. Then the trees start to sway, the colours run, and for ten long seconds the forest is not quite where you left it.
Glowing clumps grow at the feet of the Cursed Forest's trees. In the dark they're hard to miss.
Kneel, pluck one, take two bites and swallow. Your health comes back by nearly a third.
For ten seconds the forest breathes: colours cycle, edges split into rainbows, a kaleidoscope blooms at the corners of your eyes, and every sound bends.
Characters & skills
Up to eight characters, each with their own skills, stash and gold. Skills level by doing: swing a sword to train Attack, take hits to train Defence, land a fish to train Fishing.
Every skill climbs to level 50, through Novice, Apprentice, Adept, Veteran, Expert to Master, with a burst of light at every milestone.
Shape your character's face, hair, beard, scars, warpaint and eyes. There are millions of combinations, and a few eyes that glow.
Expanded Fishing
Swap your sword for a rod and the forest lake for a while. Fishing in VAEL is a full game of its own, with a skill to master, rods to find, records to break and a water that runs red.
Time the meter and throw up to thirteen metres. The ring turns green over deep water.
The float twitches. Nibbles come first, and a fish's shadow circles in. Strike too soon and it's gone.
A splash and a “!”: you have under a second to set the hook.
Keep the fish inside your hold as it darts up and down the line. Big ones fight longer, and sometimes there's treasure to snatch on the way.
It arcs out of the water into your hand. Note the weight, chase the record, and look for a perfect catch.
Thirty species, from a finger-long minnow to a ninety-kilo leviathan.
| Rarity | The forest lake | The Blood Mere Fishing 20 |
|---|---|---|
| Common | Murk Minnow · Bog Roach · Gloomgill Perch · Ashen Carp | Clot Minnow · Veinfin Dace |
| Uncommon | Lantern Eel · Bonefin Trout · Pale Pike | Rustgill Perch · Leechmouth Eel |
| Rare | Widow Catfish · Moonscale Salmon · Wraithfin | Scabscale Carp · Sanguine Pike |
| Epic | Duskmaw Gar · Amethyst Lurker · Hexed Sturgeon | Marrowjaw Gar · Crimson Lurker |
| Legendary | Crowned Grimfish · The Drowned Bishop | Heartsblood Sturgeon · The Red Abbess |
| Mythic | Heart-Koi of Vael · Starspawn Angler · The Old One Below | The Bleeding Leviathan · Ichor Seraph |
Rest & respite
The glowing clumps on the forest floor can be picked and eaten. Two bites and a swallow win back your health, and then the forest begins to breathe.
Some runs turn up a tavern mid-depth. Buy stew, black ale and spare keys, and rest by the hearth where the dead won't follow.
Stand by the flames, hold out your hands and get your strength back, as long as nothing is hunting you.
Performance
Low-poly by design and tuned for low-end laptops and integrated graphics.
Roadmap
Where VAEL goes next: more places, more skills, more trials, pets, and a market run by the players.
FAQ
A multiplayer dark fantasy extraction dungeon crawler. You go down into four procedurally generated depths, take what you can, and try to get back out alive with it.
Yes. Every run works alone, or with up to three friends.
You lose everything you carried except your one insured item. In co-op, a grave holds your gear so a friend can bring it home.
It changes how it looks, sounds and feels: rain and lightning, settling snow, a Blood Moon. It's rolled per run for the forest and the ruins, and the whole party shares it.
Shoot it. Arrows, musket balls and spells reach it in the air, and raising your weapon lets you aim almost straight up. Break its poise and it crashes to the ground stunned. With only a blade, survive until it lands, then hit it while it's on its feet.
A boss who guards a nest of dragon eggs in about two Cursed Forests in five. She wakes when you come close, flies, breathes fire, won't be led far from her nest, and hatches her eggs into drakelings when she's badly hurt.
Puzzle rooms and deadly obstacle courses that turn up from the Hollow Ruins down. Solve a puzzle to open a sealed vault, or cross a course to reach its prize.
Yes. The Ivory Pocket in the Sanctuary has two pool tables and a full-size snooker table. Play your friends or a skeleton hustler, for banked gold or for nothing. There's chess and poker too.
Eat one of the glowing clumps in the Cursed Forest and you get back nearly a third of your health. Then, for ten seconds, the world starts to breathe.
It's a whole game of its own: thirty species, a Fishing skill, rods with their own stats, fishmongers who pay in gold, and the Blood Mere's rare catches for anglers at level 20.
VAEL is built to run on low-end machines, with a Potato preset and a Compatibility renderer for integrated graphics.
The Godot Engine.
Yes. VAEL is made by a solo developer using AI-assisted development: AI tools help write the code and optimise performance, while the design decisions, direction and playtesting are the developer's own.
VAEL is in active development. Leave your email and we'll tell you when playtests open.
VAEL is in active development. Wishlist it on Steam, pull up a seat by the fire on Discord, or leave your email and we'll write once when playtests open.
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