I've been sitting on this for a while, trying to figure out the right moment to put it out into the world. I'm not sure there is a right moment, so I'm just doing it.
Dread Realms is a gothic horror PvPvE multiplayer game. You play as a Hunter — a mercenary-type who makes a living doing the dangerous work that ordinary people can't or won't. You hunt monsters. You recover artifacts. You compete with other crews trying to do the same thing. At random intervals, PvP opens up server-wide and everything gets considerably more complicated. You die, and then — for reasons the lore handles in a deliberately vague way — you come back. You do it again.
The core idea is one I kept coming back to: the tension between PvE objectives and the constant threat of other players creates moments that no scripted game can replicate. You're trying to do a job. Other people are trying to do the same job. Sometimes your interests align. Often they don't. I wanted that dynamic wrapped in Victorian gothic horror. Fog. Graveyards. Bone golems. Rival crews of hunters making the same calculation you are about whether to fight or run.
I care a lot about fairness. Fixed health. Flat damage within weapon types. Server-authoritative hit detection. No pay-to-win, no level-gating. The game should be decided by the decisions you make, not how long you've been playing or how much you've spent. That's a hard constraint, not a design goal I'm willing to trade away.
Where it's at
Very early. I want to be straightforward about that. The core multiplayer framework is built. Combat systems are in. There's a working prototype with movement, sword combat, a revival system, and basic networking. It is very much a proof of concept right now — not something you could put in front of a stranger and call a game.
I'm one person. This is a solo project. It will move at the pace a solo project moves, which is slower than I'd like and faster than it probably sounds. I don't have a release date. I'm not going to invent one to put on a countdown timer.
Why post this now
Honestly, because building in private gets lonely and a little unhinged. Having somewhere to document what I'm working on, what's going wrong, and what I'm figuring out keeps me accountable. And if it ends up being useful to someone else building something similar, that's worthwhile too.
The devlog is going to be the real development process — technical decisions, things that didn't work, design pivots, the stuff I had to learn the hard way. Not a marketing channel. If that sounds interesting to you, stick around.
If you want to follow along, the wishlist is the best way to make sure you hear about it when there's something worth hearing about.
— Josh