You are the last firekeeper.

Your fire is dying. Its light is the only thing the raptors will not cross, and it is shrinking every second you stand still.

Walk out into the dark for wood. Walk back before the circle closes.

Survive until dawn.

How it uses the theme (Prehistoric): A single caveman, a single fire, and the oldest survival problem there is: keeping a flame alive through the night while something circles you in the dark.

How it uses the prerequisite (Survival is the goal): Survival is not a goal here, it is the only goal, and it is a single number. The fire's light radius is simultaneously your health bar, your timer, your safe zone and your score.

On FORAGER the fire going out is the only way to lose: raptors rob you and shove you back, but they cannot kill you. Every harder mode adds lives on top, so the raptors turn lethal as well as expensive. Either way the question never changes: how far do I dare go?

Controls

• WASD or Arrow keys: move
• SPACE (or ENTER): hold at the fire to feed your wood in, one log at a time
• E: open the craft menu at the fire, then 1-5 (or numpad) to build
• ESC (or P): pause; on the results screen ESC returns to the menu
• F (or F11): fullscreen (recommended)
• R: restart
• L: on a Final Night results screen, open the full world board (W/S scrolls it)

Walk over wood and stone to pick them up. Stand in the ring drawn around the fire and hold SPACE to feed logs in one at a time.

Crafting

Everything you build is made of fuel you chose not to burn. Press E at the fire, then a number key:

• 1. TORCH (2 wood). Your own light for 26 seconds, so you can go deeper.
• 2. SPEAR (1 wood + 1 stone). Drives off one raptor instead of you losing a log or life.
• 3. STONE RING (3 stone). The fire burns 25% slower for the rest of the run. You only get one.
• 4. SIGNAL FIRE (2 stone). Light radius ×2.4 for six seconds, scattering the pack. Costs no fuel.
• 5. EMBER POUCH (2 wood + 1 stone). One more log carried on every trip from then on. You only get one.

Modes

Four nights to choose from at the title screen.

FORAGER is the gentle one. You have no lives at all, so the raptors can never kill you, they can only rob you. Scores at ×0.7.

FIREKEEPER is the intended experience: three lives, no score penalty either way.

LAST EMBER gives you a single life and scores at ×1.6. One wound and the dark takes you.

FINAL NIGHT is endless, with three lives. Dawn never comes. Pressure keeps ramping for seven minutes, and stone stops spawning after five so spears cannot be farmed forever. Your 4-letter name goes on a shared world leaderboard, where everyone keeps their best three runs and the board shows the top 8 with each run's time beside its score.

The night

Three minutes, in five named beats, each with its own burn rate and spawn pressure: DUSK → DEEP NIGHT → THE HOWL → LAST WATCH → DAWN. THE HOWL is the spike: 30% faster burn and the heaviest pack of the night. LAST WATCH eases back to near-normal burn, and DAWN drops it to nearly half while the raptors thin out.

Wind gusts strike every 16-30s, multiplying the burn rate by 2.1 for 7 seconds. There are no gusts during dawn.

Two things want your fire

• Raptors will not cross the firelight. They punish you for leaving it: every hit steals your best log.
• Microraptors invert that rule. They are not afraid of the light, they run straight to your fire and eat the fuel out of it at 5.5/sec. You cannot ignore one, so it drags you home exactly when you wanted to push deeper.

Wood is not all equal

Fuel value scales with distance from the fire (deadfall 8, dry log 14, resin 26), and raptors steal your best log.

Score

An itemised breakdown, so you can see how to improve: fuel burned, resin hauled, raptors and thieves driven off, deepest trip, gusts survived, items crafted, a time bonus, a penalty for fuel stolen, and +500 for surviving to dawn, then multiplied by the difficulty.

Ranks: EMBER → KINDLER (550) → FIREKEEPER (950) → FLAMEBEARER (1400) → SUN-BRINGER (1900).

Credits

• Design, code, art, audio: SunlessMango
• Built with Godot 4.7 (4.7.1) and Ziva - Opus 5
• All sound effects synthesised from scratch for this jam
• Sprites generated and hand-tuned during the jam