Wickwood

One night. One town. One lantern.

Wickwood is a top-down pixel-art action game about getting out of a small town in the woods before your light runs out.

No hunger bar. No thirst. No crafting bench, no base to build, no inventory to sort. A weapon in your hands, fuel on your belt, and a road heading south.

The light is the clock

A full tank burns for four minutes. While it burns, the warm circle around you closes in: the colour drains from white to orange, and in the last quarter the light begins to stutter.

Nothing on screen counts down. You read the time you have left off the ground at your feet.

Jerry cans are out there in the dark. Finding one is not a bonus — it is the difference between finishing the job and walking home blind.

Three things come for you

The Walker takes hit after hit and never stops closing. The Runner is made of glass and crosses the gap in a single lunge. The Spitter never comes near you. It doesn't have to.

They arrive in waves, with quiet in between. Break away far enough for long enough and they lose you — but the quiet never lasts.

Everything is melee

You start with a bat and earn an axe. Both swing in an arc in front of you, and both root you in place while they do. The dodge roll has real invulnerability frames — a sliver in the middle of the roll, not the whole of it. Death costs you ground, not progress. You wake at the last campfire with full health and walk back in.

Work your way out

The campground. The old cemetery. The hollow. The dump. The worksite. The rail sidings. The Last Chance Gas station. The sheriff's office.

The jobs chain into one another until the last one: an abandoned car on the road south, missing a battery, a jack and a wheel. Carry the battery and you cannot swing at anything. Pick your route.

Plainly

About an hour from the first swing to the sunrise, in one sitting. No NPCs, no dialogue trees, no shopkeepers. The town tells you what it needs, where it needs it. One continuous night. The only sunrise in the game is the one you drive into.