Graveshift Devlog 01 — MORT-1 Goes Online

The RektTek Orbital Boneyard doesn’t run itself. Someone has to clean it up.

That someone is MORT-1, a sanitation bot whose midnight shift started roughly four weeks ago — in code terms — and has expanded into something considerably more dangerous than anyone in the Dark Factory originally anticipated. Graveshift is the seventh game in the lineup, a horror roguelite built in Love2D, and this is the first time we’ve talked about what’s actually in it.

Short version: quite a bit. Let’s get into it.

What Graveshift Is

Graveshift is a top-down horror roguelite set aboard the RektTek Orbital Boneyard, a graveyard of derelict starships in low orbit. Dead ships are reanimating. MORT-1 — a sanitation bot with a flashlight, an arc welder, and very limited warranties — has been dispatched to sanitize them.

The game is procedurally generated: each hull is a grid of interconnected rooms with a guaranteed path to the core. Complete the core, advance to the next hull. Die, lose your per-run items, keep your permanent BITS upgrades. Classic roguelite loop.

The design target is 50 sections across five zones. Right now, the Boneyard is running, and so is MORT-1.

Phase 1 and 2: Foundation

The first two phases were all infrastructure. Phase 1 established MORT-1’s core movement, combat, and the initial room generator. Phase 2 expanded the hull generator into a full multi-room system with fog of war, cone-of-vision flashlight, and a persistent minimap.

The flashlight isn’t decorative. It defines what you know and don’t know about each room. The Boneyard is dark. MORT-1’s torch cuts a narrow cone through that darkness. Whatever is outside that cone could be anything.

Fog of war on a grid that reanimates. That’s the loop.

Five Enemy Archetypes

With the structure in place, enemies came next. The Boneyard currently has five types, each designed to force different decisions:

BLOATER is the opening threat — slow, tanky, dies with an AOE explosion. You learn fast not to kill it at point-blank range. Teaches spatial awareness. The player’s first lesson in the Boneyard.

CHARGER has a line-of-sight sprint attack. Once it sees you, it runs. If it hits a wall, it’s briefly stunned. That stun window is the counterplay. Miss it and take the hit.

SPITTER stays at range and fires acid projectiles. Forces you out of cover, forces you to close distance. Low HP but annoying as a second wave unit.

PHANTOM is the glass cannon. Phases invisible, teleports adjacent to you, strikes, then warps away. Low HP means one or two clean hits ends it — but you have to catch it first. Its ghostly pentagonal body fades in and out of visibility, the warp sweep SFX the only consistent warning sign.

SKITTER is the mine layer. Moves fast with erratic, hard-to-predict pathing, dropping proximity mines while it skitters around the room. Mines arm after half a second, explode when you enter range. Rooms with Skitters become minefields. You have to track the bot AND track the floor.

Each type has its own audio signature. Warp sweeps, mine-lay blips, explosion bursts. The sound design is procedural — zero external audio files — but it carries weight. You learn to react before you see.

The Hull Boss

At the core of every hull is the HULL BOSS, a three-phase encounter with a guaranteed perk drop on kill.

Phase one is a standard aggressive pattern. Phase two introduces split-phase behavior — the boss changes attack style at roughly half health, forcing a mid-fight adaptation. Phase three increases speed and attack frequency. Three phases means three different fights inside one room. The perk drop is the carrot; staying alive through all three is the stick.

Boss kills also reset your run momentum. The core-clear is a natural checkpoint — you take your perk, you hit the salvage shop, you move on. The rhythm matters.

The BITS Shop

Between hulls, MORT-1 can spend BITS — the run currency — at a salvage shop. Eight items are currently in the shop rotation, covering HP recovery, damage boosts, movement upgrades, and utility. Some are permanent; most are per-run.

BITS drop from enemies and scrap. The economy is tight by design. You usually have enough for one or two shop items per hull, which means every purchase is a real choice. Do you buy HP now, or save for the damage upgrade two hulls out?

The shop is also where the between-run economy lives. Permanent upgrades cost more, persist through death, and shift the baseline difficulty curve over sessions. This is the roguelite meta-progression hook — early runs feel rough, later runs feel like MORT-1 is actually qualified for this job.

Horror Atmosphere

The Boneyard is not just a combat sandbox. The visual and audio infrastructure is built around dread rather than stimulation.

The horror atmosphere layer adds panel overlays, static noise, and glitch bands to the rendering stack. The effect is subtle when things are going well — a faint scan line, a mild color offset. When things go wrong, the interference climbs. The ship is fighting back.

Death triggers a full summary screen: run stats, floor reached, enemies killed, BITS earned, persistent high score. The final frame before the death screen is a horror reveal — whatever killed MORT-1 gets a moment on screen. It’s a small thing but it lands correctly.

Floating damage numbers went in recently: every arc-welder hit rises and fades over the target. Immediate feedback, visual confirmation that the shot connected. In a game with fog and procedural rooms, moment-to-moment clarity about what your shots are doing is important.

Attract Mode

Idle on the title screen long enough and MORT-1 starts playing the game. A full AI-driven demo loops on the title, showing the fog-of-war mechanics, the flashlight cone, combat flow, and the general feel of a hull run.

This matters more than it sounds. A player sitting at a title screen is already deciding whether to start. The attract mode shows them gameplay without requiring input. The Boneyard on demo looks like a place worth investigating. That’s the pitch.

Where We Are

Graveshift is in BUILDING status — the foundation is solid, the enemy roster is taking shape, and the systems are working together. Five enemy types and a boss give the Boneyard genuine variety. The BITS shop and perk system give runs structure and momentum.

The next phase is zone differentiation — each of the five zones should feel distinct from the others. The Scrap Ring teaches. The Military Graveyard escalates. The Colony Ship Catacombs goes full horror. Each zone needs its own encounter composition and visual identity on top of the shared procedural skeleton.

The path to itch.io is clear. MORT-1 has a long shift ahead.

Graveshift is in active development. Follow x00f.com/games/graveshift/ for updates.