Build log
An HD-2D island game: pixel-art sprites in a small 3D diorama with real light, day and night. You start on a quiet island, mining and fishing to level your skills. Later milestones add crafting, fighting, and taming, raising, evolving and breeding creatures. It is made for one player, who plays every milestone with a controller on a PC and as an Android app. This page follows the build in plain words.
Play the browser buildTrailerUpdated 18 October 2026, 09:12 UTC, from the project's own progress reports.
Where it stands
Milestone 2 is built and has passed every automatic check, a fresh verification, an independent review and an agent playtest. The owner's rulings on it (calm lake, pier XP, HUD variant D with large UI) are in. The owner chose the HD-2D look and an Android app, so a new milestone 2.5 comes before smithing and cooking: the same island and gameplay, but in a 3D pixel diorama with real light and day and night, and as an app on the owner's phone. The groundwork and the first big build wave are done: the game now draws island 1 as a 3D pixel diorama with its own art (raised plateau and highland, stairs, cliffs, the pier, palms and lanterns), day turning to dusk and night with lantern light and glowing ore, and the Android app builds, signs and passes its checks with the new app icon. The second wave is in too: the HUD now fills any screen shape (the owner's phone's 2384x1216 included, no black bars), there is a Settings screen with the graphics options (pixel mode, quality, depth of field, FPS cap and readout, large UI) that works with the controller and opens from a new Settings button on the title menu, the controller's A button presses menu buttons, the HUD uses the pixel font on Android, and the look was tuned (water reads as water, softer dusk shadows, readable nights, warm ore glow). Next an independent check, review and an agent playtest, then the owner plays milestone 2 inside it, on the phone, and that one session closes both.
The game today
--view2d). Water, cliffs and rocks block you. Turn the camera a little with Z / C or the right stick, zoom with the mouse wheel.The browser build on this site is a quick test version: it runs on the simplest renderer, so it has less light, no blur and little glow. Play it with a controller or a keyboard (WASD to move, E to interact); touch is off on purpose.
Milestones
Each milestone ends with a gate: every automatic check is green, a fresh AI agent verifies it, another reviews the code, another plays it like a new player, and then the owner plays it. Only then does the next one start.
M1 done (the owner played it) · 2026-10-17
The engine room: clock, saving, data
What was built
19 problems found by tests, reviews and playtests; 18 fixed, the rest are owner decisions or accepted limits.
At the gate the owner plays a debug screen: ticks, day clock, save and load
M2 built and checked; the owner plays it in 2.5 · 2026-10-17
Walking around, mining and fishing, going AFK
What was built
62 problems found by tests, reviews and playtests; 54 fixed, the rest are owner decisions or accepted limits.
At the gate the owner plays walk around, mine and fish, go AFK
M2.5 in progress (3D world, art, app, HUD, settings and look pass done; checks, review and playtest next) · 2026-10-18
The 3D pixel look, day and night, and the Android app
What was built
35 problems found by tests, reviews and playtests; 29 fixed, the rest are owner decisions or accepted limits.
At the gate the owner plays the island in HD-2D on PC, and as an app on the owner's phone (M2's gameplay, so this session also closes M2)
M3 not started
Smithing and cooking
At the gate the owner plays smith and cook from what the owner gathered
M4 not started
Fighting with sword & shield and staff
At the gate the owner plays fight with Sword & Shield and Staff
M5 not started
Taming creatures, giving them orders, evolving them
At the gate the owner plays tame, set tactics, evolve with a branch choice
M6 not started
Breeding and eggs
At the gate the owner plays breed, hatch, inherit Heritage abilities
M7 not started
Tamer Duels
At the gate the owner plays 3v3 against the 3 NPC tamers
M8 not started
Island 1 and its guardian boss
At the gate the owner plays the full slice
Screenshots
Captured automatically from the PC version at each check (the browser version is simpler, see the last picture).
How it is built
Halcyon is made in the Godot engine by AI agents (Claude). The owner decides what the game is and plays every milestone; the agents plan, write the code, draw much of the art in code, test, review and fix. Work runs in waves of parallel "lanes" (for example the world, the art, the HUD and the Android app at the same time), and an integrator joins them at a barrier where the full test gate must pass.
The game's rules run on a fixed tick, separate from what is drawn, and are fully deterministic: the same inputs always give the same game, which the tests prove by replaying thousands of ticks and comparing fingerprints. That keeps saves safe and leaves the door open for playing together later.
Pace is measured, not guessed: bots that play no faster than a person check how long levels take, both when you play actively and when you let your character work on its own.