You wake up soaked in the blood of the scientist that was studying your egg. The call is strong, but you are weak and small, activity is all around you, still you have to descend back into the excavation and reach the Hellgate to free your brethren, will you survive and trigger the apocalypse?

Hellbreak: Zero is a reverse horror traditional roguelike written in 14 days for the Roguetemple's Fortnight 2025 game jam.

Cover art base by dhtgip on Vecteezy.

Known Bugs

Due to the time limit on the Jam, there are some known bugs that should not break the game and have been tolerated for the release:

• Enemies may move "inside" each other or "under" a flight of stairs. They still exist and can be interacted and killed/fed upon. Fixed! I noticed I had a couple more hours after work just before the deadline.
• Sometimes enemies do not disappear when moving out of the line of sight.
  
• The awareness mechanics may be finnicky when moving in and out of an enemy's cone of sight, especially if there are multiple objects around. If it doesn't trigger... maybe, you are just lucky :)
• The "inspector dialog box" may go outside the screen borders.
• The "inspector dialog box" may not appear if moving the mouse between two objects, you can move the mouse out of the sprite and back to make it behave.

Closing Words

My main goal with this jam was actually to brainstorm and implement a framework that could be used as a foundation for future works. I think I mostly succeeded, I may write a blog post on that in the future.