There is one rule, and everything else comes from it.

A shade is safe in shadow and dies in light. You are the light.

Your flame lights the room by real shadow casting — what you can see is recomputed from where you are standing, every single frame. So every pillar throws a hard wedge of darkness away from you, and that wedge is a corridor the things hunting you can walk straight up, untouched.

Move, and the safe ground moves with them. Standing still is what kills you, because your own shadows stop sweeping.

The wick

Your light burns down as you play, and the wax that refuels it is scattered out in the dark. That is the whole trade: the fuel is always in the place you cannot see. Running dry will not kill you — it just leaves you nearly blind while the room keeps filling up.

CHARGE

Hold the button and the flame draws inward, giving up almost half your reach while you hold it. Let go and it all goes outward at once — a wall of light that races through the room and ignites everything it can genuinely see. It still stops dead at every pillar. A flare is a bigger sweep, never an exemption from the rule.

Controls

• Move the mouse — steer the flame
• Hold left button — charge
• Release — flare
• M — mute

Mouse only. No install, no account. About ninety seconds to learn.

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Made for AI Browser Game Jam 4 — theme: CHARGE!

The whole game is five files and about 51 KB, with no engine, no build step and not a single image or audio file. The lighting is a visibility polygon sampled three times per frame for a soft penumbra, and the same solver that draws it is the line-of-sight test that decides whether a shade burns. All audio is synthesised live.

Built with heavy AI assistance — code, text and cover art — and tagged as such.

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The other two

Same trick every time: pick one rule and let the whole game fall out of it. Both free, both play in the browser.

Antipole — a charged particle with no thrust and no steering. One button flips you positive or negative and the field does the rest. Whatever you're currently the opposite of is coming for you, so the button that saves you is the same one that kills you.

BANNERET — tactics where you never move a knight. You plant a banner and every rider charges it at once. A knight already moving rides a pike down; one standing still next to that same pike just dies.

We also build engine tools for GameMaker, RPG Maker MZ, Unity and Unreal. Those are on the CSAF page if that's more your thing.