Bell Before Dusk

• 

  start-screen

• 

  field

• 

  town

Inspiration

What it does

How we built it

Challenges we ran into

Accomplishments that we're proud of

What we learned

What's next for Bell Before Dusk## Inspiration

Bell Before Dusk was inspired by the clarity and immediacy of classic 16-bit action adventures, Japanese folklore, and survival games that force players to make meaningful decisions under pressure. We wanted to combine the personality of a compact samurai adventure with a focused gather, upgrade, and defend loop designed specifically for portrait mobile play.

What it does

A thief steals the clapper from Post Town’s protective ward bell shortly before dusk. The player chases him through North Gate and across a haunted spirit path before returning to gather cedar and spirit ash from a demon-infested field.

Those resources become real upgrades to the ward bell and the player’s katana. Every expedition increases the danger, forcing the player to balance gathering, combat, fog exposure, healing, and the need to return safely. The session culminates in a final supernatural breach where the chosen upgrades determine how the town is defended.

How we built it

The prototype was prompt-built with Codex using readable, unminified JavaScript inside a self-contained HTML5 Canvas game. Original environments, character sprites, interface elements, animations, music, and effects are stored locally so the complete game runs offline.

Development followed repeated desktop and iPhone playtests. Feedback was used to rebuild the town layout, correct collision boundaries, improve touch controls, deepen the upgrade economy, replace placeholder graphics, and create a connected start-to-victory experience.

Challenges and lessons

The biggest challenge was making illustrated environments behave like reliable game spaces. Attractive maps still needed explicit walkable areas, consistent gates, grounded character shadows, readable layering, and predictable transitions.

We learned that mobile readability, collision clarity, and visible progression matter more than adding numerous disconnected features. Concentrating on one complete survival-and-resource-management loop produced a stronger and more replayable prototype.

Built With

• codex
• gemini
• html5
• javascript
• openai