VELSCOUR
A world built upon something that should have stayed dead.
An isometric, retro-pixel action RPG in the spirit of Diablo II that runs in the browser on PC and mobile. Choose one of sixteen classes, gear up in the town of Herrington Hollow, then descend 500 procedurally generated depths to slay Demon Lord Velscour.
Status: rough draft. Everything is playable end to end. Live placeholder sprites have painted replacements (see Art); full animation and broader effect art remain future work, and balance is a first pass.
Play it
On GitHub Pages (PC and phone)
- In the GitHub repo go to Settings → Pages.
- Under Build and deployment pick Deploy from a branch, choose the branch (
main once this is merged, or claude/amazing-rubin-kguehz to try it now) and the / (root) folder, then Save.
- After a minute the game is live at
https://<your-user>.github.io/velscour/.
On a phone, play in landscape. "Add to Home Screen" launches it fullscreen, without the browser bars.
Locally
The game is plain HTML and JavaScript modules, so there is no build step. It does have to be served over http, because browsers block modules on file://:
cd velscour
python3 -m http.server 8000 # or: npx serve .
# open http://localhost:8000
Progress saves automatically in the browser (localStorage), and you can keep up to six heroes in separate save slots.
Controls
| PC | |
|---|
| Left click | Move / attack / pick up / talk (hold to keep moving or attacking) |
| Shift + left click | Attack in place |
| W A S D / arrows | Move directly |
| Right click | Right-click skill at the cursor |
| ` 1 – 9 0 - = | Cast that slot's skill at the cursor (hold to repeat): 13 keys plus both mouse buttons, 15 skills in all |
| Z X C V | Healing, mana, rejuvenation and fury potions |
| I / K / B / Q | Inventory & character · Skill tree · Skill book · Quest log |
| Tab / M | Map overlay |
| Esc | Close windows / pause menu |
| P / Auto button | Auto-play on or off |
| Mouse wheel | Zoom |
| Mobile | |
|---|
| Left thumb | Floating virtual joystick |
| Tap the world | Move / attack / talk / pick up |
| Right-hand button cluster | ATK (left-click skill), then RMB and 1–8 on page one and 9 0 - = ` on page two (the ⇄ button flips pages). Tap to cast with auto-aim, hold to repeat, long-press to change the skill |
| Potions on the bar | Tap to drink |
| Auto button (top right) | Auto-play on or off |
What's in this draft
- 16 classes (Paladin, Ranger, Wizard, Necromancer, Barbarian, Dragoon, Totem Master, Death Knight, Astronomer, Carrion Witch, Bard, Slime Lord, Boomerang Knight, Lancer, Dragon Knight, Gunner). Each one uses its sprite from the design sheet.
- Lancer spinning shields: the seven Bulwark orbit abilities now use four distinct, transparent golden 8-angle sprite animations (round, diamond, kite and tower). Shield orbit direction and eight-angle sprite-frame playback are both reversed from the prior build, with wider spacing between the seven abilities. Individual shields correctly pass behind and in front of the Lancer, walls and nearby actors as they orbit. See Lancer Spinning Shields.
- 1,000 unique skills, 60 per class plus a fourth 20-skill tree for the Necromancer (Skeletal Legion) and Dragoon (Spearstorm), laid out as 5 tiers × 4 prerequisite chains (tiers unlock at levels 1/6/12/20/30). Skills cap at level 20 and gain synergy from points in the same tree. Default abilities are granted automatically at levels 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 16, 22, 28 and 34.
- 23 behaviours combine with 10 elements and around 40 visual styles: projectiles (pierce, bounce, homing, split, boomerang return, lobbed, frozen-orb spray, gravity pull), novas, meteors, channelled death lasers and breath cones, chain lightning, walls of fire/ice/slime/thorns, ground zones, orbiting blades and spinning hammers, cyclones, whirlwinds, leaps, dashes and omnislash, blinks, summons, totems and turrets, auras and transformations, curses (amplify, weaken, fear, confuse, charm, decay, life tap, iron maiden, living bomb, doom), traps and mines, rains of arrows/meteors/blades, sky strikes, fissures and corpse explosions.
- Skill bar: 15 skills (LMB, ` 1–9 0 - =, RMB) plus 4 potion slots (Z X C V) built on the provided HUD art, with live life/mana orbs, XP bar and cooldowns. Drag skills onto it from the Skill Book or Skill Tree, or click a slot to choose one.
- Combat & gore: crits, resistances, armor, block, leech, thorns, knockback, burn/chill/freeze/shock/poison/bleed/acid shred. Blood sprays, pooling blood decals, bouncing gibs, corpses, overkill explosions and screen shake. Gore can be set to Off, Bloody or Extreme.
- Monsters: 370 painted monsters (skeleton warbands, liches, bone horrors, flesh brutes, demons, tentacle and eye horrors, fiends, dragons and hydras, mages, bandits and knights, goblins, kobolds, slimes, birdfolk, and towering titans) playing 22 archetypes with distinct AI (melee, ranged kiting, casters with telegraphed AoEs, chargers, swarms, nova casters, beam eyes, exploders, summoners, slimes that split). Every level rolls its own bestiary from the biome's roster, palette-swaps it with the biome's colours (29 swaps), and adds a darker "greater" breed. Unique monsters get their own colouring. Champion and unique packs get elite affixes (Fire Enchanted, Cold Aura, Lightning Enchanted, Vampiric, Multishot, Thorns…). Traditional dungeon depths end with a multi-pattern drawn from 99 boss-worthy monsters (slams, bullet novas, spirals, charges, meteor rains, beams, summons, enrage at 50%).
Project layout
index.html, css/style.css page shell + UI styles
manifest.webmanifest installable / fullscreen on mobile
assets/source/ your original sprite sheets
assets/sprites, ui, tiles/ game-ready slices (generated)
tools/process_assets.py slices the source sheets into the above (biome packs: tools/biomepack.py)
tools/tests/ headless-browser test scripts (Playwright + Chromium)
docs/HANDOFF.md, CLAUDE.md developer hand-off notes: spec, status, open issues, subsystem reference
src/main.js boot + main loop
src/core/ input, camera/iso math, audio (samples, music, ambience), asset loading, utils
src/data/ classes, 980 skill specs, skills logic, summons, monsters, biomes, items
src/world/ tile map, dungeon generator, town layout
src/gfx/ pixel-art sprite system, VFX/gore, skill shapes, town art
src/game/ world, player, monsters/AI, combat, skills runtime, loot, render, save, flow
src/ui/ HUD, touch controls, inventory, skill tree/book, vendors, menus
Art
Asset manager: agilancer.github.io/velscour/tools/assetmanager/ lists every sprite, texture and 3D model in the game (PC and phone), split into custom art / textured 3D models and placeholder art, with previews, the source files, the rebuild command, and flags and notes for tracking new art. Rebuild its list after art changes with node tools/assetmanager/build.mjs.
The five themed dungeons (Desert Temple, Ice Temple, Hell, Astral Plane and Heavenly) now use 40 painted floor diamonds and 40 painted props cut from three approved sprite sheets, with 12 painted celestial monster designs replacing procedural first-rank Heavenly variants. All wall geometry, monster IDs and gameplay systems are preserved; see Approved Biome Artwork.
An additional compact 400 × 240 native-resolution atlas contributes one floor accent and one prop to each of those five themes, plus five Forsaken Wilds tree sprites. See Biome Variant Art.
The Forsaken Wilds' 20 static scatter designs also use a 400 × 320 transparent low-resolution atlas; see Overworld Scatter Art.
Art you provided, used directly:
- Class sprites, sliced from the design reference sheet. They serve as the player sprite, the class-select portraits, and (palette-swapped) the town NPCs and some summons.
- Logo on the title screen; it is also the source of the app icon.
- HUD bar (15 skill slots), minimap ring and the six HUD buttons (Bag, Skills, Book, Quest, Auto, Menu). The orbs, XP bar and slots are wired to the bar's exact geometry.
- Gear looks for all 16 classes: 80 body armors and 80 helms per class. The hero wears the equipped body armor's design (picked by its rarity and level) in one of 51 palette-swap finishes. Helms retain their original fitted 48 × 56 head-cell and distinctive class silhouettes; detected open-face cavities are given opaque, palette-matched metal faceplates at runtime instead of exposing the character's face. This also applies to helm icons and inventory portraits. Rare and better armor can carry an aura: glows, orbiting wisps, rune circles, flames, embers, frost, sparks and shadow smoke. See docs/CLASS_ART.md and the closed-helm QA script.
- Paladin art pack: 42 weapons and 18 shields as named catalog items, and 60 ability effects mapped onto the 60 Paladin skills. A new Mythic rarity sits above Legendary. See docs/CLASS_ART.md.
- Catacombs biome pack: 60 floors, 5 modular wall families, 3 arches, 3 doors (open and closed) and 40 scatter props on a 160×80 template. Indoor packs support palette swaps; the Forsaken Wilds uses the separate Overworld and Town pack. Walls, arches and doors are raised to suit the heroes' height and sliced for depth sorting at import. See docs/ART.md.
- Monster art: 7 sheets of 10 monsters each plus 300 single sprites (
Enemy_300.zip), cut into atlases and mapped to AI archetypes and the boss pool. See docs/ENEMY_ART.md.
The remaining summon, Velscour, ward, NPC and generic loot placeholders now use 122 painted sprites generated from the project's art references. See the replacement audit and gallery. Sources live in assets/source/replacements/; rebuild with python tools/replacementart.py. ASCII art in src/gfx/pixelart.js remains as a loading/missing-art fallback. The town uses the Overworld and Town biome pack (tools/townpack.py).
To swap in real art, replace the sheets in assets/source/ and rerun:
pip install pillow numpy scipy
python3 tools/process_assets.py
Roadmap ideas
Animated character sprites (walk/attack/cast), hand-tuned balance for depths 50–500, set items, a stash, waypoints, rune words and multiplayer.
