Thornveil is a side-view, story-driven action platformer. It also has light RPG-style gear progression. It is being developed in Godot 4.7 for landscape mobile, and the first target platform is Android. The Kingdom of Aldmere is covered by a purple mist that fell when the court mage Morvena's ritual went wrong: the Thornveil. Arin, a young knight and the only survivor of the Royal Guard, sets out with wooden gear.
This first devlog covers the title screen, the new chapter and map selection, the first two maps of the first chapter, and the design decisions behind them.
All images were captured in-game at 1920x1080. The game is drawn to a 384x216-pixel canvas and scaled up to the screen in integer multiples. In these images, each pixel appears as a 5x5 block.
01 · Title screen
On the title screen, the forest in the background scrolls slowly. Arin waits by the campfire while purple thorn mist rises from the ground. The THORNVEIL logo was created from the UI pack's gold letters, with a purple shadow. The menu has only three options: Continue ("Devam Et"), Settings ("Ayarlar"), and Quit ("Çıkış"). If there is no save, the first button reads "Start" ("Başla").
02 · Chapter selection
Pressing Start doesn't take you straight into the game; the map selection screen opens first. In the first window, the biomes are shown only by their numbers. The line below shows the selected chapter's name and how many of its maps are finished. The game will have six chapters: Thorn Forest, Poison Jungle, Scorching Desert, Frozen Pass, Silent Graveyard, and Masmorra Dungeon. A chapter unlocks when the previous chapter's boss is defeated.
03 · Map selection
The second window lists the eight maps of the selected biome. Finished maps have a checkmark, and maps that aren't unlocked yet have a lock badge. Highlighting a map shows its best time, gems collected, and number of deaths. Each map is being designed to take about 8–10 minutes, and the biome's boss appears only at the end of the eighth map. The screen can be used with touch, mouse, keyboard, and gamepad.
04 · Settings
The Settings panel has separate sliders for music and sound effects volume. The fullscreen option only appears on desktop, because on phones the game already opens in fullscreen. The newly added "Reset" ("Sıfırla") button doesn't delete the save right away; it first asks "Are you sure?" ("Emin misin?"). The entire UI was drawn with Franuka's RPG UI pack. The pack's own fonts didn't include Turkish letters such as ğ, ş, and İ. These letters were created using the pack's glyphs as a base and added to the game's bitmap fonts.
05 · Map 1-1: Burning Village
The first map is the border village where Arin wakes up among the ruins. Roofs are on fire, sparks drift through the air, and the first thorny slimes roam the streets. This map is also the game's tutorial section. The sword combo, air attack, dash, double jump, wall jump, and blocking with the shield are all tried out here for the first time. The hero is a modular character, dressed layer by layer. The helmet, chest armor, pants, gloves, shield, and sword are each drawn separately, so every piece of gear you find also shows up on the character.
06 · First conversation with Vesta
The story moves forward through short dialogues. Lines are typed out with a typewriter effect, the game pauses while dialogue is running, and the touch buttons are hidden. To avoid interrupting play on mobile, each line is at most 90 characters. There is no separate mentor character: guidance comes from Arin's inner voice and short "Hint" ("İpucu") lines. The villager Vesta is the first character to show Arin the way to the forest.
07 · Mill Creek
Mill Creek is where you first run into rope bridges. These are one-way platforms: you can pass through them from below and jump up onto them. If you drop into the creek through the gap at the east end of the bridge, you find a hidden chest in a small cave beneath the creek. Since the touch controls have no down button, getting down to hidden spots is always done by walking off and falling, and climbing back up takes a single jump. That way, no secret ever traps the player in a pit.
08 · The Granary's cellar
While the granary's flames spread across the ceiling, the cellar below is full of goblins. Explosive barrels are small traps whose fuse lights when you hit them with your sword. The blast damages nearby enemies and you as well, and it sets off other barrels too, causing chain explosions. The cellar's colors are cooler than the street above. Every map can change its color tint and mist density based on the area the camera is currently in.
09 · The Market Square ambush
Market Square is the first ambush arena. When you enter, the thorny vine gates on both sides close, and enemies come in three waves: first slimes, then goblins. Once the last wave is down, the gates open and the ambush counts as completed, so you don't have to redo the same fight after dying. There is a campfire right before the arena. Campfires are checkpoints: they fully restore health and save the game.
10 · The Watchtower
The Watchtower is the game's first vertical section. Wooden steps zigzag their way upward. A bear trap waits on the path: step on it and you can't move for a while. There is a hidden chest in the tower's attic. From the top, a rope bridge runs over the burning roofs, and at the end of the bridge there are dirt platforms that collapse when you step on them. On the main path, climbing steps were kept to at most two tiles high, so no required climb needs a double jump.
11 · Arriving at Forest's Edge
At the end of the map, the village ends and the forest begins. The mist is at its thickest here. Brown mushrooms are the new enemies: when you approach, they hide under their caps and take no damage, and when you get right up close, they open up and spray spores. After spraying, they stay exposed for a short time, and that is the right moment.
12 · End-of-map card
At the end of every map, a short summary card appears: time, gems collected, and number of deaths. The best result is saved and shown on the map selection screen. Gems and hidden chests are optional. Collecting them all means leaving the main path, but none of them are hidden anywhere you can't come back from.
13 · Map 1-2: Forest's Edge
The second map takes place at night. The village's orange flames give way to a cold blue, fireflies, and blue-leaved trees. Each map can choose its own color theme: the sky, ground texture, grass color, drifting leaves, mist, and fireflies are each set individually. When a map first opens, its name briefly appears on a card at the top of the screen.
Note: Forest's Edge is still in development; the images in this section show the map as it currently stands.
14 · The Rotten Bridge
The first big obstacle in Forest's Edge is a rotten bridge that crosses water darkened by the Veil. Some of the bridge's planks are missing, and some collapse when you step on them. Falling into the water costs health but doesn't end the run: the bottom of the water is walkable, and there are two-tile steps on both banks that lead back up. It's a tough section, but its penalty isn't devastating.
15 · Cave mouth
After you come down the mossy cliffs, the path leads into a hollow beneath the roots. In the first version of the hollow, the ceiling looked like a thin slab of rock hanging in midair. In this version, the cliff has its own rock face and a cave mouth. Once you step inside, the color tint darkens and only torchlight remains.
16 · Bat Hollow
Root bats sleep upside down on the ceiling. When you pass beneath them, they wake up and start hovering a little above the player, diving when they get the chance. When the player moves away, they return to their roosts and go back to sleep. A chest is hidden on the hollow's root ledges. The steps up to the ledge are spaced two tiles apart.
17 · Root pit
The pit in the middle of the hollow is crossed using two dirt steps that shake and collapse when you step on them. The steps reappear after a while, so the way back never closes. Players who drop down into the pit find the gallery beneath the hollow waiting for them.
18 · The Thorn Rift raft
The bottom of Thorn Rift is thorns from end to end. One way across is a wooden raft that travels back and forth between the two sides. The raft waits briefly at each end, and you need to catch that moment to get on. It also carries along everything standing on it.
19 · Dark Forest Gate
The map's final climb opens into the depths of the forest. The mist thickens again, bats roost on low branches, and the last hidden chest sits on a wooden ledge along the path. After this comes Mushroom Hollows.
Behind the scenes: every map gets tested
Before a map counts as finished, it goes through automated tests. These tests check map loading, enemy and object counts, the arenas, and the end-of-map flow. On top of that, there is a reachability analysis: by simulating the player's movement physics frame by frame, it verifies that every platform, every gem, and every chest on the map is actually reachable, and that the player can get back from there. The analysis also checks that the main path doesn't require a double jump or a wall jump, and that there is no pit where the player could get stuck. Because the touch controls have no down button, no required passage relies on dropping down from a platform.
What's next?
- The Thorn Forest's remaining six maps: Mushroom Hollows, Watchtower Ruins, Misty Grove, Root Cave, Goblin Camp, and the Slime King's Swamp.
- The first copper gear, the first Heart Crystal, and the Slime King at the end of the chapter.
Credits
- Character, enemy, tile, and item art: Eduardo Scarpato (im-dagon), Dagon's Fantasy packs: eduardscarpato.itch.io
- UI and title lettering: Franuka, RPG UI Pack: franuka.itch.io/rpg-ui-pack
- Text font: Silver, Poppy Works (CC BY 4.0): poppyworks.itch.io/silver