Last Ember

For generations, one flame has been carried through the warren. Your family must bring it to the surface.

Last Ember is a short, tense game about passing a torch through a pitch-black maze. No torch lasts long enough. Before yours burns out, pass it on: the next explorer carries on from where you stood, and that spot stays lit for good. Let the flame die in the dark, and the next explorer has to start again from the last light, with one less of the family left.

A run takes about 5 minutes. Every maze is new. Plays in the browser on PC and on phones (turn your phone sideways).

How to play

- Move: WASD or arrow keys (phone: put your thumb anywhere and drag)

- Pass the torch: SPACE (phone: the big button)

- Map: M · Pause: P or Esc (End run is in the pause menu)

- Zoom (PC): Z, + / -, or the mouse wheel

Tips

- Oil glints in the dark, even through walls. Walk over it to refill your torch.

- Shades flee a strong light but hunt a dying one. Red eyes behind a wall mean one is close.

- Your torch doesn't burn while you stand in a brazier's light.

- The fallen keep their oil. Sometimes the way forward is back to them.

- Feel the breeze: dust and smoke drift toward the surface.

Features

- Three explorers per family, each with their own words as the torch passes

- Light that walls really block, so corners hide what's waiting

- A new maze every run, plus a Daily maze that's the same for everyone today. Score: reaching the surface is worth 1000, minus 1 per second, 40 per handoff and 15 per oil used. Post your best score in the comments!

- The Chronicle: your family's history with each run's score, time, handoffs and oil, and the deepest explorer's name carved at the top

- Heirlooms: unlock five keepsakes from earlier explorers and carry one into your next run

- An end-screen map of every explorer's path

The first load is about 11 MB (mostly the Godot engine), so give it a few seconds.

A Torchwarren side story. If you like it, try the full game: https://needafix.itch.io/torchwarren

How I made this with AI

I built Last Ember entirely by talking with Claude (Anthropic). The idea, the design decisions and the playtesting were mine; Claude wrote all of the code. There are no image or sound files: the graphics, lighting, particles and every sound are generated by code while the game runs.

It took about 15 rounds of "play it, say what feels wrong, change it." For example:

- The first version was too hard because walking back to a fallen explorer gave you no oil. Now the fallen keep theirs, and oil refills for each new explorer.

- Six explorers per family felt like too many, so I cut it to three.

- When walls started blocking the light, the game got confusing, so a faint glow through walls, oil glints and visible shade eyes give back just enough information.

- A tester in the KilnGuild Discord said the game didn't tell you why your flame went out, so now it says whether the torch burned out or a shade got you.

Then I moved it from a single HTML file to the Godot engine. With the Godot AI addon, Claude worked inside the Godot editor itself: it rebuilt every mechanic, ran the game, took screenshots and fixed what it saw. Godot's 2D lighting gives the crisp wall shadows. Testing on my phone led to a few more changes:

- a floating joystick under your thumb and a big "Pass the torch" button

- a brighter, zoomed-in view on phones (the minimap shows the rest of the maze)

- corner assist, so you slide into side passages instead of snagging on walls

Tools: Claude (code and design), Godot 4.7 with the Godot AI addon.

Made for the AI Browser Game Jam 5, theme: TORCH.

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Make games with AI too? Come to KilnGuild, a free Discord where AI game makers play each other's games and share honest notes: https://discord.gg/ptXRj5eC5U