Death Before Decaf

Auto-combat roguelite. Your caffeine is the resource. Too much is also fatal.

DEATH BEFORE DECAF is a 20–35 minute roguelite where combat runs itself and everything else is your problem.

That "everything else" is one thing: your caffeine meter.

The caffeine system — the whole game

Coffee items drop as you fight. Every item tempts you to drink more. Every drink risks pushing you over the edge. The optimal play state is always the edge of disaster.

Crash (0–20%): Slow, weak, vision tunneling. You are losing. The Drag (21–49%): Functional but fading. Drink something. The Zone (50–80%): Peak performance. Move faster, hit harder. This is where runs are won. The Jitter (81–99%): Massive damage output, expensive mistakes. Overdose (100%): Six seconds of god-mode. Then a crash that ends runs.

Every 60–90 seconds you level up: choose 1 of 3 upgrades. No aiming — combat is automatic. All skill lives in caffeine management and build decisions:

Which coffee items to drink and when Which upgrades to stack Whether that espresso shot is worth the overdose risk right now

Three floors. One very bad day.

You are Mira Volta — a fired barista fighting her way up a corporate tower in a city that has run on coffee instead of sleep for sixty years. The enemies are made of espresso and bad workplace decisions. The final boss called a mandatory meeting. You are not on the agenda.

Floor 1 — The Extraction Level: Where the city's caffeine supply used to be made. Now it makes enemies. Compacted steamed milk with espresso cores. There are a lot of them. Floor 2 — The Break Room: The espresso machine became a god. The walls are wet. Temperature: slightly too warm. Floor 3 — The Executive Suite: Cold. Clean. The managers who ran this floor pushed espresso theory past its limits and didn't come back.

A hand-illustrated world that runs on caffeine and bad decisions.

Every environment is hand-illustrated in dark café-gothic style — bold flat cartoon illustration, clean ink outlines, amber espresso light against cold blue. Mira's portrait changes as the run wears on. She looks ready when she enters. She looks different when she doesn't make it out.

Early Access — What's in right now

Full 20–35 minute roguelite core loop 3 biomes with distinct enemy sets and environmental hazards 5 character builds with unique caffeine metabolism profiles 50+ upgrades across weapons, caffeine passives, and stat modifiers Loot with affixes, a stash, and loadouts that carry between runs A full skill tree: ~30 nodes, 5 build-defining keystones, free respec — grounds earned in runs convert to XP The Director boss fight (3 caffeine-mechanic phases) Full death variety — overdose, crash, and the classic HP-zero defenestration

Planned for 1.0

2 additional bosses Endless mode (post-20-minute survival gauntlet) Daily run challenges Expanded enemy roster per biome Full localization (EN, DE, PT-BR, KO, JP)

Wishlisting is the correct choice. Your doctor disagrees. Trust yourself.