The Hollow Deck

Descend nine dead decks. Salvage what you can. Try not to become part of the ship.

The Hollow Deck is a top-down action roguelike built in Godot. You play as HULL-E, a salvage drone sent into the silent colony ship Tithonus, a wreck that went dark eighty years ago.

The ship is not empty.

Fight through procedurally generated decks, collect XP motes, pick upgrades, bank scrap, unlock permanent upgrades, and push deeper toward the reactor heart.

Controls

Action	Keyboard + Mouse	Gamepad
Move	WASD	Left Stick
Aim	Mouse	Right Stick
Fire	Hold Left Mouse Button	Push Right Stick Past 50%
Dash	Space	A / RT
Interact	E	X
Reroll(if unlocked)	R	Y
Minimap	Tab	Back
Pause	Esc	Start

What to expect:

• Top-down action roguelike combat
• Nine procedurally generated decks
• Six enemy types
• Three boss encounters
• Eighteen in-run upgrade cards
• Twelve permanent unlocks
• Three starting weapons
• Gamepad and keyboard/mouse support
• A full run from title screen to final boss
• Retro pixel art sci-fi ship atmosphere

The Loop

Fight through sealed combat rooms, survive long enough to level up, choose 1 of 3 upgrade cards, grab scrap, and descend.

Death is not a total loss. Half your scrap is banked and can be spent at the Fabricator in the Cryo Bay on permanent upgrades. Win a run and you keep it all.

Decks 3 and 6 contain minibosses. Deck 9 holds the Reactor Heart.

Threat Colors

The game uses color-coded threats:

• Amber = melee threats
• Teal = ranged threats
• Red = explosive, elite, or boss threats

Everything dangerous is telegraphed. Whether you respect the warning is between you and the skitterbots.

About the project

The Hollow Deck was created with AI-assisted development over two days. Claude handled the code, art/audio generation pipeline, tests, telemetry, balancing passes, and devlog structure, while I acted as producer, playtester, bug reporter, and person repeatedly getting murdered by space bugs.

The result is not a giant commercial roguelike. It is a compact, complete, weird little sci-fi action game that somehow escaped the lab.

Tech Notes

• Engine: Godot 4.6
• Palette: 16 colors
• Art/audio: generated through deterministic project scripts
• Testing: roughly 1,550 automated checks
• Telemetry: simulated playthroughs used for balance passes

Credits

Built with Claude Fable 5. 

Directed, tested, prompted, judged, and repeatedly killed on Deck 3 by John Pacey.