Dreadmark: a gothic action-RPG, tested by bots that play it
A top-down isometric action-RPG in the Diablo tradition, built from scratch in Unity 6. An AI coding agent writes and tests the code, a human designer sets the direction and judges every build, and bots that play the game check each release. The store page is live on Steam as Coming Soon.
- Status
- In development, Coming Soon on Steam
- Engine
- Unity 6 (URP), C#
- Online
- Serverless ladder on Cloudflare
- Source
- Private — walkthrough on request
What's in it
Combat you can read
Every enemy attack telegraphs its real window, a swing can miss, and a dodge roll with invulnerability frames is always an answer. Two playable classes, each with its own resource and three skill trees.
Loot and builds, tested outside the engine
Items roll affixes gated by the level of the zone that dropped them, with crafting currencies and a corruption that can empower an item or ruin it. The rules for items, skills and maps live in a C# library with no Unity references, so they run and are soak-tested in plain .NET.
A bot that plays the game
An in-game utility AI moves, dodges telegraphs, picks targets and spends resources. It plays both classes through the demo campaign, and every run writes telemetry that an analyzer grades.
A bot fleet as the release gate
Six bots soak the release build, and a script grades their runs against a written pass bar: exceptions, stuck runs, campaign progress, resume and navigation faults.
Generated maps, pinned by seed
A tile-based generator builds zones from a seed. Golden outputs are pinned per tileset, so any change that alters a generated map shows up as a failing check.
A ladder built to be trusted
Clients sign requests with HMAC, race times are computed on the server, and each run is a hash-chained journal: the validator catches a single edited line at its exact position.
Relevant if you're looking for…
Dreadmark is our R&D game, so this page is for players who want to follow it and for anyone curious about how it is made.
- A gothic ARPG with combat you can read: every enemy attack telegraphs its real window, a dodge roll is always an answer, and each of the two classes has three skill trees.
- Loot and crafting in an ARPG: items roll affixes by the level of the zone that dropped them, with crafting currencies and a corruption that can empower an item or ruin it.
- Top-down action RPG development in Unity: the game rules live in a C# library that is tested outside the engine in plain .NET, and bots that play the game check each release.
We build this for clients: Custom software and internal tools
How it's made
- 01
Direct
A human designer sets the vision and the rules.
- 02
Build
An AI coding agent writes the code and its tests.
- 03
Verify
Soak tests outside the engine, and bots that play every build.
- 04
Decide
The designer plays it, gives a verdict, and a devlog entry goes out.
How it's built
Dreadmark is our test of how far an AI-augmented workflow reaches on a large real-time 3D project. It runs on Unity 6 with the Universal Render Pipeline and is split into three assemblies: the runtime, the editor tools, and a core library for items, skills and map generation with no engine references. That core also compiles into a .NET soak runner with 36 test suites, so the game rules are tested without opening Unity.
Several AI sessions work in parallel on separate lanes, coordinated through a shared set of living documents: a code map, a knowledge base where every claim is tagged as fact or hypothesis, a research journal and a test queue. Features that are not ready are compiled out of release builds, and the build tools scan the shipped binary to prove it. The public item wiki is generated from the game's own data tables, so it stays in step with the code.
Engineering highlights
- 36 soak suites that run the game rules outside Unity
- A six-bot fleet runs the release build as the demo's nightly gate
- Hash-chained run journals, validated line by line
- Four full code audits in the first two months
- Steam achievements and a Steam-linked ladder identity
Questions
When does Dreadmark come out?
Dreadmark is in development and listed as Coming Soon on Steam. You can follow it there and on dreadmark.agentas.net.
What engine is Dreadmark made in?
Unity 6 with the Universal Render Pipeline, written in C#. The rules for items, skills and maps live in a separate library with no engine references, so they can be tested in plain .NET.
Is Dreadmark made with AI?
The code is written and tested by an AI coding agent, while a human designer sets the direction and judges every build. Bots that play the game check each release.
Want something like this?
Dreadmark shows how we run any large build: keep the core logic testable outside the framework, let automated players and tests do the repetitive checking, and keep a human in charge of the decisions that matter.
Get in touch