Dreadmark is a top-down action RPG set over one long night. A parish raised its own dead to fight a plague, and the dead stayed. You fight your way from a refugee camp to the cathedral where their master waits, pick up what they drop, and keep rebuilding your character until it can survive the next fight. It is hard on purpose.

Fights you can read

Heavy hitters and bosses wind up before they strike, and the ground shows where the blow will land. Rangers show their aim as a line that follows you until they let go. Step out of it or roll through it. A Templar can also take it on the shield and punish the recovery. When you get hit, it should be because you misread the fight.

Magic and rare monsters roll affixes of their own, so a rare pack can hit faster, carry more life or bring an aura. On hardcore a death is permanent, and one bad read against the big ones can end a character.

Classes, runes and loot

The Templar wins fights by standing in them. Landing hits and blocking them builds Wrath, which he spends on cleaves, smites and thrown censers. The Witch keeps her distance and lets poison and rot spread from body to body, then bursts everything she has infected at once. Each has three skill trees, every skill takes a rune that changes what it does, and more classes join after launch.

Items roll their affixes from where they dropped, so the deeper you go the better they get. Some cast a skill when you are struck, others add poison to every hit. Orbs reroll and upgrade what you find, and the Dread Sigil can push an item past anything it could roll on its own, or ruin it.

A new road with every map

Beat the Dark Lord and he leaves a Dread Map behind. Spend orbs on it and it picks up modifiers. Some make packs bigger, some make monsters tougher or their blows heavier, and the spoils grow with every one.

Open the map at the stone frame in camp and the game lays out a stretch of road for it from pieces we built, so every map is ground you have not walked. Die inside and walk back in, and the same road is waiting.

Alone on the road, together on the ladder

Today you play alone, inside a world that is shared. Live ladders rank Self-Found and Account-Found characters on boards of their own, and a run only shows up with proof that it was really played. The Reckoning times a new Self-Found character's run to the Dark Lord.

Fallen hardcore characters stay on the board as ghosts you can inspect, gear and all. When someone is the first to reach a level or to bring down the Dark Lord, the Herald names them in chat.

Bug reports and suggestions go to the Dreadmark Discord, where the people making the game read them, and the popular ideas usually ship within days.

Planned for the Early Access launch

Early Access is planned for Q2 2027. For that launch we plan a bigger endgame, a longer campaign deeper into the parish and procedural dungeons. Off the main road we want people to talk to, side areas, side missions and pieces of the parish's story to find, and new kinds of monsters beside the undead.

We also plan an Auction House for trading what you find, and a season that starts at launch with fresh ladders. Co-op with friends and PvP against other players are planned for version 1.0. Plans can change, and the Discord and the devlog will say so when one does.