Hollow Crown
A rooftop stealth game in Godot about a thief who robs a greedy crown to feed a village, with a ten-night roguelite mode, The Long Winter.
The constraint
Stealth games usually end the moment the heist does. The question here was whether what you steal could matter after you get home — whether a village with needs could turn a run of rooftop thefts into a reason to go out again.
The approach
A loop in two halves: rooftop heists through the town with a kit of vault powers, and a village that the take goes back to. The Long Winter compresses that into a ten-night run.
- 1Greybox in waves
Built the game in greybox waves and played each one, so the feel was settled before anything was expensive to change.
- 2Headless tests for a game
Scenes run headless in a test harness, so a guard's sight cone or a vault's timing is checked the same way a function would be.
- 3Playtest, then fix everything
Took a full playtest's notes as a backlog and closed every one, instead of picking the convenient half.
Outcomes
- Three waves of greybox gameplay, then two architecture passes
- The Long Winter, a ten-night roguelite mode
- Every note from the 26 October playtest fixed
- A first trailer
- Five more vault tricks.
- Seed codes so a Long Winter run can be shared and replayed.
- Voiced guard barks.
Building a rooftop stealth game in Godot 4.7 with a village-economy loop and a ten-night roguelite mode, tested with headless scene suites.