Here is what we have been building in the dark. Delvewright is a first-person dungeon crawler with a classic turn-based JRPG heart, and it lands on Steam on October 1, 2026.
The pitch is one line: explore like DOOM, fight like Dragon Quest. You move through The Below in real time, free movement, no grid and no tiles, until something finds you in the dark. Then the world snaps into a pure menu battle right where you are standing. No random-encounter fade, no separate arena, no load screen. When the fight is over you are back to walking in the same breath. That seam, the snap from exploring to fighting and back again, is the whole game.
Inside the menu it is the real thing. Attack, Magic, Item, Defend. Four elements, MP, status effects, spell flash. I did not bolt timing minigames or momentum meters onto it, because the classic turn-based fight was never the thing that needed saving. The depth lives underneath: eight weapon classes that each play differently, a spellbook that opens up as you climb, gear affixes and relics that define a build, and bosses with signature moves. And on every incoming hit there is a timed dodge. Read the tell, defend on the beat, and you take nothing.
Every dive is a greed decision. The loot you carry out can be banked to wright your fallen town back to life, reopening the smith, the apothecary, the guild, each of which starts paying you back. Or you gamble it on going deeper, where the richest seams are. Die down there and you lose only what you did not bank. Your level, your gear, and the town you have rebuilt all stay yours. This is not a roguelike that punishes you for losing. The tension is the greed, never the cruelty. The world only ever grows.
There are fifty floors across five strata, five stratum bosses, and a campaign with a real ending. Then the bottom drops out. The Endless Shaft opens up beneath it, bottomless, with per-floor pressures that make every descent play differently, plus New Game Plus and a timed speedrun mode for the long haul.
A word on where this sits. It is not From Embers and it is not GraveCrown. No city to build, no souls-like wilds. It is a torch, a dungeon, a menu, and your own nerve about how deep to push before you cash out.
If you want to help, the single most useful thing you can do for an indie release is wishlist it on Steam. It tells the store to put the game in front of more players on launch day, and for a game like this that is most of the whole battle. The store page goes live soon. Join the Forge, our Discord, and you will get the wishlist link the moment it does, plus the first look at the snap in motion.
Delvewright. Explore like DOOM, fight like Dragon Quest. October 1, 2026.
More soon. The forge never sleeps.