Crawling Darkness

The holy fountain of Ashenmoor ran red. The dead are walking. And one of theirs has come home with an axe.

Alpha testing open for a limited time Full launch · Halloween 2026
The Red Spring
“Heaven struck. The holy water turned to blood. I told them it was a judgement. God forgive me, I believed it.”
Brother Anselm Quill, bell-ringer of Ashenmoor

For three nights a storm circled the town, and no rain fell. On the third, a plague rat found the blessed fountain.

By morning Ashenmoor had drunk its fill. By night the dead were walking. Crawling Darkness is a gothic action RPG of blood, bone and bad faith: hack through a sick country, follow the red water to where it comes from, and find out who has been lying about it.


In game: the berserker casts Blood Wind into a pack of the dead
In game: Blood Wind. Raise the weapon hand, scream for more blood.
The Feral Berserker

Rage is the only prayer he knows

Every hit feeds his fury. When the bar is full, he goes Berserk: double damage, a crimson haze, and the dead thrown aside like straw.

  • Two ways to fight. The great axe cleaves crowds; sword and shield hold the line and turn every block into rage.
  • Skills from a real world. Teachers in town, relics dragged out of the dark, rites sworn at blood-moon shrines with trophies taken from the dead.
  • Oaths at rank three. Every active skill swears one of two oaths that change how it plays. No two berserkers grow alike.

Instinct

Born in the blood. Earned by surviving.

Teachers

The smith, the healer, the watch captain: help them and they show you how.

Relics

Carried out of barrows, mines and graves.

Rites

Sworn at shrines under the blood moon, paid in ribs, idols and tokens.

The Red Spring

Earned chapter by chapter on the main story.

The Blood Tree: skills are earned in the world, then learned with Blood Marks One Mark a level, one for every named boss you fell

Act One

The Red Spring

A masked stranger called the Beak arrives in Ashenmoor with a flask and a theory. Thirteen chapters from the fountain square to the doors of the cathedral, from level 1 to around 25.

In game: Ashenmoor's square at night
The town

Ashenmoor

Your home, and the last lit place for miles. The smith, the healer, the tavern and the watch still hold out around a fountain nobody drinks from.

In game: the Forest of Ash
The wild

Forest of Ash

Ash-grey woods where the wolves hunt in packs and the trees remember fire.

In game: the Blood Fields
The fields

Blood Fields

Old stones, older bones, and robed singers who do not want you here.

In game: the Cursed Swamp
The lowlands

Cursed Swamp

Black water, plague rats, and serpents that spit venom.

In game: the cathedral of Ashenmoor
The finale

The Cathedral

Where Ashenmoor prays, and where the Red Choir's hymn is loudest.

Grathmaw

Alpha of the Ash · the Forest of Ash

The pack's grey king, grown fat on what the fire left behind.

Maligast

Cantor of the Red Choir · the cathedral

He sings, and the dead remember how to stand.

Skugarth

The Broken King · Depth IV

He sits on a throne of bone above a red lake, and he warns everyone off.

In game: a depth of the Broken Fortress
In game: the Broken Fortress.
The Broken Fortress

Four depths under the old walls

An order of knights once held these walls. The fortress is a dungeon of its own, woven through the story: go in at the gatehouse, and down.

Every enemy in the fortress is an elite. Every named fight pays a Blood Mark the first time it falls.

Depth I

The Breach

Bone Thralls in rusted mail, and the captain who holds them.

Depth II

The Ossuary

Two Deathcallers keep the ranks of the dead standing.

Depth III

Weeping Mines

Flooded galleries, and something down there that builds.

Depth IV

Skugarth's Pit

The Broken King, on his throne above the red lake.

In game: fighting in the Broken Fortress
In game: fighting in the Broken Fortress
In game: fighting in the Broken Fortress
In game: fighting in the Broken Fortress
Act Two · coming at launch

The Red Moor

Beneath Ashenmoor the road goes down: through ancient caves, out of a hole in the side of a mountain, and into a marsh that was never meant to be found.

Below

The Ancients' Road

Caves older than the church, cut by hands nobody remembers.

The reveal

The Mountain Mouth

A ledge in the rock, and the whole Moor laid out under you.

The land

Seven regions

Reed mazes, drowned orchards, salt barrows and bell-fens, redder the closer you come to the centre.

The foothold

Old Harrow

An empty capital of the Ancients. Nobody lives there. Take it back, district by district.

See the Red Moor concept art

Water at the edgesBlood at the centre
the size of Act One's land
6story dungeons at launch, more after
25–50levels, to the cap
1Mother of Leeches, and she is hungry
The Endgame

The moon does not stop

The story ends. The hunt does not. Under the blood moon the red comes back into the places you cleared, and it comes back stronger.


Limited time

Take up the axe

The alpha is free to play while testing lasts, and it will not stay open for long. Download the launcher, run it, and it installs Crawling Darkness and keeps it up to date with every patch. Want the full game? Buy it on Steam.

SystemWindows 10 / 11, 64-bit
GraphicsDirectX 12 GPU
Diskabout 4 GB free
UpdatesLatest patch notes