Shadow Gates

Cross 5 Gates. Collect the shadows of the slain. Become the shadow.

  You are a Hunter who has just awakened the **System** — the ability to extract a Shadow from every boss you defeat and command it in your next descent.

  Five Gates stand between you and what lies at the bottom:

  - Gate  — Forest of the Lost (lvl 1, *Goblin Warchief*)

  - Gate D — Necromancer's Crypt (lvl 10, *Crypt Lich*)

  - Gate C — Shadow Rift (lvl 30, *Shadow Lord*)

  - Gate B — Frozen Cathedral (lvl 50, *Frost Queen*)

  - Gate A — Volcanic Forge (lvl 80, *Magma Tyrant*)

  Each Gate has its own roster of enemies, room layouts, and a boss with a telegraphed Phase 2 AoE attack. Roll out of the red ring or eat it.

⚔️ Features

  - 5 playable classes — Mage, Warrior, Rogue, Knight, Paladin. Each has a unique basic-attack mechanic: projectile, 3-hit combo, dash-strike, heavy windup, every-4th-hit holy nova.

  - 27 enemy types across 5 biomes

  - 40-node skill tree (8 per class) — persistent meta-progression, refundable

  - 8 active abilities for the Q/E/R slots: Frost Nova, Chain Lightning, Berserker Rage, Healing Wave, Leap Strike, Phase Step, Aura Burst, Void Slash

  - Shadow Army — every boss kill extracts a Shadow you can deploy in future runs

  - 20 achievements, 7 boss modifiers, upgrade + curse rewards

 🎮 Controls

  | Action | Key |

  | Move | WASD |

  | Attack | Mouse / J |

  | Dodge (i-frames) | Space / K |

  | Ability slot 1 / 2 / 3 | Q / E / R |

  | Pause | Esc |

  🚧 Status

  This is v0.25 — an early demo. All five Gates are playable; the foundations work; balance, audio, and polish are still ongoing.

  I'd love to hear what you think — comments are open below. Specifically interested in:

  - Feel of the class attack styles (which one feels best?)

  - Boss difficulty curves (D → A scales steeply, intentional)

  - Skill tree pacing (1 SP per level — too slow?)

  - Bugs / crashes (please include reproduction steps if possible!)

 🛠️ Built with

  - [Godot 4.6](https://godotengine.org/)

  - Art: PixelLab (generated + processed)

  - Audio: placeholder for now (next pass)

  MIT License — source on request. Made by a solo dev. Thanks for trying it!