Treasure spots
Chests already sit out in the world with better loot the further you go. A written hint like "something buried east of the pond" and a dig on the marked tile turns them into a hunt.
Where the hollow is heading
Roadmap
Ideas not yet built, sized honestly against what exists today. Nothing here is a promise or a date. If one of these matters to you, say so on the bug tracker or send a new idea through the feedback form.
San afternoon
Ma couple of days
La week or more
XLchanges the shape of the game
Already shipped: LAN multiplayer (v0.0.11), Four friends to find, and a camp that works (v0.0.15), Weather on the moor (v0.0.15), Going down, and a friend with a bandage (v0.0.22), Clothes, haircuts, and some of them earned (v0.0.22), First person (v0.0.24), December 1999, event nights and a Millennium Bug finale (v0.0.27), Arcade tokens, starting kits and the sticker album (v0.0.27), Mixtapes, a boombox and music made as you play (v0.0.27), The Hollow Beck line and the 18:10 (v0.0.27), Farming, fishing and a stew pot (v0.0.31), A storage box, a log store and a map table with pins (v0.0.31), Halloween to the millennium, with November's nights (v0.0.32), Floors, and an abbey to climb (v0.0.32). See the changelog for the rest.
Small
Sits on something that already works.
A goods trader
The pelt trader already arrives, waits and leaves on a schedule. A second visitor who sells rather than buys — arrows, bandages, fuel — is mostly a question of what they carry, what it costs, and how often the stock changes.
Medium
A new system, but a contained one.
Coins, and somewhere to spend them
Coins turning up sparsely out on the moor, and a trading post far enough out that you only reach it once the fire has grown. Somewhere to walk to with a purse, rather than waiting for a visitor.
Tent, then hut, then cabin
The workbench already upgrades through tiers, so the machinery exists. The work is the art, and deciding what each upgrade gives you: sleep, storage, a second fire.
An outpost
A second, weaker fire away from camp. Today the lit world is one circle around one campfire, so the mist, the spawns and the pathing all have to learn about a second one.
Large
New pillars.
Snow and fog, with clothing to match
Rain is in and it costs you firewood. Snow and fog that change the ground and the light are not, and neither is gear that gates where you can go. Touches everything at once, but it is the biggest change to how the hollow feels.
Bandits and cults
Human enemies who hold ground and are worth attacking on their own terms. Enemy camps out in the world, ranged combat that cuts both ways, raids on you and raids by you.
NPCs with lives of their own
Four friends already come home, take a job each and fight for the camp on siege nights. Next is having them follow you out, live in what you build rather than a bedroll by the tent, and want things of their own.
More people to find
The four rescues are fixed places on a fixed map. Strangers who turn up in trouble as the seasons pass would make the moor feel lived in, and give the camp a reason to keep growing.
Tame monsters and pets
A companion that follows, fights and can be lost. Shares a lot with the NPC work, so it gets much cheaper once that exists.
Extra large
Changes the shape of the game.
Caves and the treetops
Floors are in: the abbey has four storeys, stairs between them and creatures that follow you up. The same machinery can go down as well as up, so next is caves under the moor, with no sun and their own things living in them, and a way along the treetops.
Beta and full release
The things that turn a survival tale into a place you come back to. These are aimed at beta and the launch build rather than the alpha.
Online multiplayer
Sharing a fire over your own network is in. Next is the same across the internet: a relay so a friend across town can join, chat, and a friends list on your account. The button is already on the title screen, waiting.
Survival leaderboards
How long will you survive? Boards for nights survived, per world seed and per season, so the question on the title screen finally has an answer worth bragging about.
Daily challenge seed
One shared world seed a day, the same for everyone, with its own board. A reason to light the fire every morning.
Steam Deck verification
The game already plays on a pad. This is the checklist work to pass Steam Deck verification, so the Steam key at launch plays well on the couch.
Accessibility options
Remappable keys, text scaling, colour-blind palettes for the fire and the dark, reduced flashing, and a difficulty slider for the night.
Localisation
The lore and the interface in more languages than English, starting with the ones testers actually play in.
Photo mode
Pause the world, free the camera, hide the interface. Half of you are already taking screenshots, so make them good ones.
Mod support and the Steam Workshop
Share custom creatures, sprites and world rules. The bestiary is written so others can add to it.
Funded by the fire
An honest note: some of today's assets — the menu icon, the run icon and other UI art among them — are AI-generated placeholders. That was the truthful cost of one person getting a playable alpha out the door; it is not the finished game. The work below unlocks as sales and Ko-fi funding goals are met — the goals and progress bars are public on our Ko-fi page.
A human artist redraws the hollow
Every placeholder asset redrawn by a commissioned human pixel artist with one consistent hand — icons, UI, and anywhere else the alpha shows its seams. The campfire and the bestiary deserve an author.
Lo-fi music and sound design
A human sound designer and musician hired to give the hollow its voice: lo-fi campfire tracks for the day, sparser and stranger ones after dark, and effects that make chopping, crackling and shaking off a gloomling feel right.