Devlog #10

Devlog #10

Borrowed Daylight

Hey everyone! Two things today. Playtest signups are open, and since you are about to step into this world, it is time I told you what is going on in it.

The playtest is open

The build is live and it is the real game: the full prologue, colony management, night sieges, exploration, and possession, where you drop into your hero's body and fight it out yourself instead of watching from above. Signups are open right now, and they go through the Discord: join us, ask for access, and I will get you in.Sign up here: https://discord.gg/MEBzGzRz5QWhat I need back is simple: bugs, moments where you got lost, anything that felt bad. There is a short questionnaire if you want to be thorough, but a message saying "I had no idea what to do here" is worth more than you think.

The night is winning

Here is the thing you learn in your first week in Iskarn: every night is a little longer than the one before. Not by much. Just enough that by the time you notice, you are already losing. The zombies come out of the dark and burn off at dawn, and every day that dawn arrives a little later.That is not weather. It is a debt coming due.Before men, there were the Ancients. They raised the menhirs and stacked the cairns: stone fires, lit to keep the night at a distance. Daylight is not a natural state. It is territory the Ancients conquered, and they held it with a thousand burning cairns.Then the Ancients fell silent. Nobody knows why. One by one their fires went out, and the night began walking back. That is why your nights grow a little longer every day: the world is paying back a borrowed day.You touched your village's menhir once, as a child. That is why you can hear it now that it lies broken, why you can carry a shard of it, and why nobody else in your party can. Plant that shard and you relight the watch of the Ancients. That is your colony.So here is the job:- Found your menhir. It anchors your territory and you rise again at its foot. If it falls, the voice goes quiet and the land stops being yours.
- Light everything. Torches, campfires, forges. At night, light is not decoration: it is how far your people can see, and how far back the night has to stand.
- Go relight the cairns. They are out there in the ruins, cold and long dead. Where a stone fire has gone out, the night never fully leaves: the ground stays bruised purple, and the stain spreads. Relighting a cairn buys a day back from the dark. The night defends itself, so expect an assault every single time.
- Hold. Feed your people, arm them, wall them in, and keep the fires burning while you do all of the above.Lose your menhirs, or lose your people, and the night takes back what it lent you. There is no victory screen in Iskarn. There is only how long you held.

The world has a geography now

Ancient roads run from ruin to ruin, and where they meet a ravine they cross it on a bridge you can cut down. At the junctions sit six dead cities with generated names, Halavik, Thorburg and their kin, with signposts at the forks pointing the way. Follow a road and you will find something. That was the point: exploration you can navigate instead of wandering a noise function. The terrain got its beauty pass too: real mountain ranges, ravines, open caves.

Thirty ruins, and they fight back now

Every point of interest was redesigned: collapsed floors, real verticality, loot you climb for. And they stopped being free.- Aggro carries. Wake one guard and his neighbours inherit you. A ruin gets read and prepared, not nibbled two guards at a time.
- The site closes over its dead. Die inside and half the guards you had killed get back up. Retreat alive and your progress holds. Dying your way through a level 10 is no longer a strategy: knowing when to walk away is now a skill.
- Named guardians. From level 8, the toughest guard is crowned a champion with leader health, leader loot, and a real name pulled from the citizen pool. The fallen were people once. He never leaves his site. He is your local nemesis.

New things come out of the dark

Three creatures, each punishing one bad habit. The Burster plants just outside sword range, swells, and detonates: shoot it early or eat the blast. The Spitter is the game's first ranged threat and lobs a slow glob at where you were standing, so camping behind your shield is how you get hit. The Howler is harmless up close but screams, and every idle zombie around converges on you. Kill it first.And the Revenant now raises ghouls out of the ground when you leave it alone. Stun it, shove it, or get buried under its own dead.

The night has a name

The night director was rewritten: threat accumulates into a score and gets spent on spikes, and raids anchor multiple fronts on your menhirs at once. A Troll boss shows up and does not care about your fence.Some nights are now themed, always announced on the banner, never a surprise. Night of the Runners is pure cardio. Night of the Sacks is stuffed with Bursters, so read before you swing. Blood Moon is a much bigger assault with doubled leader loot.And the doom clock is not a metaphor. At full encroachment, the night simply stops ending.

You are the hero, properly

Possession got the biggest pass of the period. One universal strike aimed at your cursor: chop, mine, demolish, attack, same button, and a bad aim whiffs. You gather, haul and drop your own goods, so your hero works instead of touring. Weapons diverge: the bow has a real draw and the damage lands when the arrow hits, spears are slow with reach, the shield blocks until its guard stamina runs out. Camera sits on your shoulder, there is a dodge dash, and it leans hard into ARPG.Everything now lives in one action bar. Left: a passive shield, then 1 weapon, 2 axe, 3 pick, each showing the real 3D render of what you carry, switched manually, never automatically. Right: Heal, Dodge, Fracas, Breach, Attack, Rally, with cooldowns that tick in hundredths under ten seconds. Bandages are the only consumable: you wrap your arm while walking, and if anything interrupts you the bandage comes back. Your citizens fetch their own. Yours is on you.Two skills carry the fight. Fracas (V) is a proper ultimate now, a ground slam with a dome, a rumble and a shake, on a long cooldown that every kill pays back two seconds of. Breach (B) is new: a crevasse tears ten blocks along the ground and shatters built walls in its path, but never digs natural terrain. It is a wall breaker, not a weapon. Cut your own way into a defended site instead of using the guarded door. Your walls go down the same way.

An army at your back

Your hero can raise a squad. Select who you want, hit Escort the hero, and anyone can come: soldiers as bodyguards, civilians tagging along, which is what you want when walking a rescued survivor home.Press T and the hero winds a horn, pumps a fist, a pillar of light goes up and a golden comet flies to every citizen in earshot. Each one answers out loud.Then order them: Follow, Go there (a 3D banner under your cursor, gold on valid ground, and drag instead of click to make the line their front), Attack for a vanguard that engages what it passes, Defend for bodyguards who never chase. Underneath it is simple: a stance says how far they roam, an anchor says what they roam from. Anchored to you, running away is a valid recall order.They follow in an arc behind you, spears on the flanks, archers behind, civilians at the back, fanning into ranks past six so a big squad gets deeper instead of becoming a conga line. An escort will not wander off to bed and will not answer the alarm bell. Your order wins.Separately, your garrison keeps its own hours: set a guard window on a slider, and off duty a soldier sleeps then trains. Short watch means better trained soldiers and a night you defend yourself. On watch they now patrol as a body sweeping the territory, instead of each man wandering his own corner.Watch on YouTube

It hits harder and looks better

Swings cleave through multiple targets at full damage, zombies got four times the health and hit twice as hard against you specifically, and hordes arrive in packs. Every heavy impact has its dome, its rumble and its shake. A fight is now a fight.The full Rohirrim armor pass landed: angled plates, real depth, shading that reads as metal instead of a painted box, and the high tier sets finally look earned. Blood sprays directionally and pools where things die, crops were redrawn, territory tint moved into the terrain shader, and the title screen sits under a procedural starry sky.

And the rest

A sleep window and a guard window you can set. Comfort is now global, so a miserable colony works slower at everything. An in-game encyclopedia on O: sixty articles, five languages, every creature and ability above has its entry. Rebuilt citizen and furniture panels, readable loot, era seals, a run chronicle. A full prologue plus a twenty-one quest First Moon guide. And shaders precompile at load, so the game no longer freezes the first time you swing a sword.That's it for devlog #10! Come get access, go get lost on a road, and tell me everything that broke.If you're interested in following development more closely :
Discord: https://discord.gg/MEBzGzRz5Q
Trailer : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBPSXqBWwaU
Steam : https://store.steampowered.com/app/4586360/Iskarn/And if you haven't already, wishlist Iskarn on Steam, it really helps !