Soul Warden: early days
First glimpse at Soul Warden — what we're building, what we're figuring out, and what we're deliberately leaving out.
Soul Warden is the first game from Apzilon. We're writing this while it's still in rough shape on purpose — the devlog is supposed to be honest, not polished.
The pitch
Soul Warden is a browser action game about deliberate movement and earned mastery. You play a fighter who channels souls to power attacks, and the core loop is built around reading the room, timing commitment, and learning to be patient in a world that rewards patience.
That's the pitch for ourselves. We'll refine the wording later. What matters now is that the core loop is legible and the early playtests feel right.
What's working
The movement prototype feels good. It's slower than most action games — deliberately so. We tried a fast-paced version in week one and it felt like every other action game. The slow version makes hits matter. Hit reactions matter. Decisions matter.
The soul-channeling mechanic is the thing that surprised us most. What we expected to be a resource system became an expression system. Players spend souls differently based on personality. That's the kind of emergent behavior you can't design — you just leave room for it.
What's not working yet
Enemy AI is too reactive. Right now it reads your inputs and counters them, which feels cheap. We're rebuilding it around anticipation instead — enemies should read the whole room, not just your hands.
Audio is a hole. We have placeholder SFX from a free pack and it feels like a placeholder. This is a week 3 priority.
Level layout is not a problem we've started on yet. One arena, no progression. We wanted to get the combat feel right before touching level design. Starting to feel like it's time.
What we're deliberately leaving out
A long list, because scope discipline matters more than anything in solo dev:
- No branching storyline - No character customization - No loot or inventory system - No multiplayer - No save slots beyond one persistent save - No cutscenes - No voice acting - No dialog trees - No skill trees
Every one of these is tempting. Every one of these has killed a solo project. We'll revisit after launch.
The hard part
The hard part is not the code. The hard part is sitting with a prototype that's only 40 percent of what you want and asking: is this actually fun, or am I just attached to the idea?
We run a playtest every Friday with two or three friends. If the answer three weeks in a row is "it's close but not quite," we pivot or cut scope. So far the answer has been "actually fun" — barely — and that's enough to keep going.
What's next
- Rebuild enemy AI around anticipation - Audio pass — SFX and a single music loop - First full arena with proper level layout - First external playtest round (not just friends)
We'll post updates as milestones land, not on a schedule. Writing on a schedule is a different kind of work than writing about work, and only one of them is what we're here to do.