Alien Life Arcade
Survival ยท Defence

Emberhold

The fire is the only thing holding the dark off, and sap is the only thing holding the fire.

PointerTouchKeyboardGamepadReduced MotionPausable
The GamePlay
Play full screen best held upright
The ControlsHow to Play
The IdeaAbout

The map is open from the first second. Nothing fences you in, and nothing tells you where you may go: the land is graded by what lives in it, so you learn the border by meeting it. Close to home things hit for eleven. Out in the Bloom they hit for fifteen, and in the Deep for twenty-one, and the only way to find that out is to walk there. Everything runs on sap. It feeds the fire that keeps your hold lit, it buys every tier of wall and every rung of your own strength, and it is the ammunition you pour on whatever gets close. Those are not three separate economies, they are one pool, and spending it wrong is how a run ends: not beaten, just unable to finish. Raids muster from three war camps that stand on the map and walk in, on a clock that jitters later but never earlier. At the top of the map is the Shard Redoubt, and in front of it the Warden. Beating it ends the level. It refuses you below level five and says so, which is the game being honest rather than coy.

The RecordChangelog
  1. 1.0.0 2026-09-11
    • First public build. Open map graded into three bands, three mustering war camps, the Shard Redoubt and the Warden as the run's destination.
    • The wizard levels: four branches of three rungs, each moving a number that already existed. Nothing unlocks a verb.
    • Forty-five automated gates pass, and every live gate has been shown to fail under its own planted defect across thirty-three arms.
    • Sap unified as fuel, currency and ammunition, so every purchase is a real choice against the next raid.