Itch page, draft

How the Game Off 2026 page would read. Hover or tap anything for the detail. Nothing is published; the name is a placeholder. Text in /Users/yassineboujida/workspace/game-jams/game-off-2026/hollowtide/docs/itch-page.md

Hollowtide placeholder name

By day you build a factory. By night it has to keep you alive.

Hollowtide is a small factory and tower defense game made in one month for Game Off 2026. By day you cut wood, dig stone and lay beltsA belt is a moving strip that carries items. Here one wood rolls down the belt into a tower and becomes 10 arrows. that carry everything to your towers. At dusk a horn sounds. By night the Hollow pour out of a riftThe hole the monsters come from, at the far end of the valley. Every night a wave walks out of it toward your camp. and run for the coreThe crystal at the heart of your camp. It is what you lose if they reach it, and the thing you level up. Called Hearthfire in the code for now.. Your towers have no crew: they shoot whatever the belt brings them. A small hero chops by hand before the factory exists, carries a stack of wood to a tower that ran dry, and shoots with you. Deliver to the core and level it upEach level costs a bill paid from your pile, level 2 is 30 wood. A level sees further, opens one more resource (stone at level 2) and the buildings that use it.: each level sees further, opens a new resource and new buildings. Survive the nights, and after three the season turns.

Start with First Night: a five minute walk through the first belt, the first tower and the first wall. Then Play opens the full run.

Tower DefenseAn itch tag. Judges and visitors find the game by tags; these are my pick, to confirm.AutomationItch tag for belt and factory games.StrategyItch tag.Low-polyItch tag for the KayKit look, chunky and few polygons.HTML5Plays in the browser, the web build.macOSThe Mac app download.
HOLLOWTIDE
The cover, 630 by 500 on itch: the core crystal at dusk, the tower line in silhouette, the title over it, no interface. A sketch, not a shot.
wood 37 level 1 day 1
Screenshot 1, day: the belt, the fork row, three towers, the hero carrying. A sketch; the cards below say the shot.
Screenshot 2, night: ten runners hit the wall at once, arrows fly, the core glows. A sketch.
winteror the phone
Screenshot 3, the shift: winter on the ice, or the phone with the zoom window. A sketch.
1
Day to night

By day a factory game. By night a tower defense.

By day you build and the belts run. By night the Hollow come and what you built must hold. At dawn anything of theirs still standing burns away.

Lumber campLumber camp. Built on trees, makes one wood every 2 seconds onto a belt.BeltBelt. Half a wood per tile, carries items from a giver to a taker.Arrow towerArrow tower. 10 wood. Eats wood, 1 wood is 10 arrows.RunnerRunner. The first enemy, fast and weak, comes in batches of ten.
Dawn burns themAnything of theirs still alive at dawn burns away in 5 seconds. A night can be survived by holding, not only by killing.
buildhold
2
What the belt carries

A tower shoots what it is fed.

Wood is plain arrows. Stone arrows from the combiner hit three times harder and kill a runner in one shot. Change what rolls down the belt and you change the fight.

WoodWood. 1 wood is 10 plain arrows. A runner has 16 health, a plain arrow does 4, so 4 hits.StoneStone. From the mine, level 2. Alone it does nothing at a tower.CombinerCombiner. Level 2. Takes 3 wood and 1 stone, gives one stone arrow item worth 30 shots.Stone arrowStone arrow. 16 damage, one shot kills a runner. A tower always shoots its best ammo first.
Best ammo firstA tower holds 100 shots of each ammo and fires the best one it has. The bar over it shows two layers, the good one on top.
4 hits 1 hit
3
Summer to winter

After three nights the season turns.

Shorter days, longer nights, slower belts, and the lake freezes so the Hollow walk straight over it. The wall you built on the shore is suddenly beside the road.

Flame towerFlame tower. Level 3. Burns ghosts and ice elementals.Frost towerFrost tower. Level 4. Slows and freezes.GhostGhost. Winter enemy, walks through walls, only fire and light hurt it.Armoured huskArmoured husk. Plain arrows bounce off its plate.
Full game onlyWinter, the frozen lake and these towers exist in the full run (ring 1 and up). Ring 0 today is summer only with one rift. If ring 0 ships alone, this line and screenshot 3 change.
they walk roundthey walk over

Controls

Mouse and keyboard

Left click: placeClick a thing on the bar, then click the ground. A green ghost means yes, a red one says why not.Drag: belt, wall, rowPress and drag to lay a belt or a wall. With a tower or fork picked, a drag lays a row, refused spots skipped.Right click: the heroWalk there, chop a tree, dig a rock, load at the core or a storehouse, hand over into a tower or the core, mend a wall.R turnTurns the ghost a quarter. Buildings take on some sides and give on others, red arrows in, blue arrows out.Escape cancelDrops the tool and goes back to the hero.E editWith a building selected and no tool in hand, picks it up to move it, for free.Backspace take downRemoves a building and refunds its full cost to the pile.Tab bow or swordThe bow shoots the nearest enemy on its own while you walk. The sword needs him next to the target.W A S D slideMoves the camera. Q and E turn it, the wheel zooms.H hero, Home coreJump the camera to the hero or to the core.Space, 1 2 3Pause, and three speeds.Cmd Z undoUndoes the last placement. Ctrl Z on Windows.Cmd C stampCopies a box of buildings as a stamp you can place again, Ctrl C on Windows. In progress by shift-ui.Keys on the barEvery bar button shows its letter: Belt B, Fork F, Merge M, Lumber camp L, Mine I, Arrow tower 1, Wooden wall V, Gate G, Storehouse T.

Touch, landscape

Stick: walkBottom left. Push to walk the hero; let go to stop.Act buttonBottom right. Does what right click does on whatever he is near: chop, dig, load, hand over, mend.Bow or sword buttonThe other round button bottom right.Build drawerOne button opens the bar as a drawer. Tap a thing, tap the ground, then Place.Under the fingerThe spot is always exactly under your finger. A round zoom window above it shows the tiles the finger hides.Press, slide, lift, PlaceA belt or a wall: press at the start, slide to the end, lift, then tap Place. Slide back to shorten.One finger slides the mapOn empty ground. It never walks the hero.Pinch zoomTwo fingers.Long press: panelOn a building, opens its panel.iPhone: home screenSafari cannot go full screen from a page. Add the page to the home screen and open it from there.

Credits

Models, all CC0

CC0Free to use for anything, no credit required. We credit anyway.KayKit, Kay LousbergMedieval Hexagon Pack (towers, buildings, trees, rocks, walls), Halloween Bits (winter trees, ruins, the rift), Dungeon Remastered (rubble, chest), Character Pack Adventurers (hero, knight, archer), Character Pack Skeletons (the Hollow). https://kaylousberg.itch.ioQuaterniusUltimate Monsters, the two bats, fetched one by one from Poly Pizza. https://poly.pizza/u/QuaterniusMade with Unity 6The engine. The simulation is our own C# with no engine inside it.

Sound, all CC0 from OpenGameArt

KenneyRPG Audio (chop, step, unload, swish, thuds), Interface Sounds (clicks, ticks, the empty alarm, the frost crack, the chime), 63 Digital sound effects (the zap), 85 Short music jingles (dawn, won, lost, level up).RandomMindMedieval: The Old Tower Inn, the 50 second day music loop.Wolfgang_Crickets Ambient Noise, the night bed.Sketchman3wind whoosh loop, the winter wind.AntumDelugeFire Crackling.StumpyStrustTheir Coming, the dusk horn.rubberduck80 CC0 creature SFX and 80 CC0 creature SFX 2: deaths, the flame breath, the roar, the howl.artisticdudeSwishes Sound Pack: the arrow leaving the bow, the frost whoosh.congusbongusBones rattle, a runner falling apart.OpenGameArt nodesElectric Buzz (node 108273, the belt hum), Electric zap set (node 150369, the tesla idle, big deaths, the catapult hit), Ghost (the ghost fading).Footsteps: to confirmYassine has not picked a footstep set yet (docs/sound/CREDITS.md). If the grass set is picked, add: Footsteps on different surfaces by congusbongus, made from footstep-grass.wav by swuing, CC-BY 3.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ since that set requires credit. The other four candidates are CC0.

The three screenshots

1Day, the factoryCore, camp, belt, fork row, three towers, the hero carrying. wood 37 level 1 day 1Mac app at 1920 by 1080, admin panel closed, no cursor, F12 saves to ~/Desktop/hollowtide-shots/. The core plinth with its crystal lower middle, a lumber camp in a grove, one belt running wood to a fork row that feeds three arrow towers, items visible on the belt, the hero walking to a tower with a column of wood on his back, the pile counter on the top strip. Says: you build a factory.2Night, the fightTen runners hit the wall at once, arrows in flight, the core glows behind. The same tower line from a little closer. A batch of ten runners against the wooden wall, arrows flying, one runner falling apart, the core glowing in the dark. No dusk banner, no admin rows. Says: it keeps you alive.3The shiftWinter on the ice, or the phone with the zoom window. winteror the phoneBest: winter, the frozen lake, the Hollow walking over the ice toward a flame and a frost tower (needs ring 1 and the winter build, not playable today). Fallback: the phone build in landscape held in a hand, the zoom window open above the finger while a belt is drawn. Says: it plays on a phone too. To confirm with Yassine when the build exists.

Itch shows them small in a column: one subject in the middle, nothing that matters in the corners. A fourth picture is the cover, 630 by 500, no interface.

The 60 second GIF

One moment per block, hover for what is on screen. Recorded from the Mac app on a replayed seed so every take is the same.

0 to 4 s. Black, then the core crystal lights up in an empty clearing, the hero beside it. The hook: one crystal, one hero, nothing else.4 to 9 s. The hero chops a tree, wood hops onto his back, he hands it to the core, the pile count rises. The first thing the player does.9 to 15 s. A lumber camp placed on the grove, a belt laid in one drag, wood starts rolling. The factory starts.15 to 21 s. A fork row dragged along a line of three arrow towers, every tower fills from the row. The one gesture that feeds a whole wall.21 to 25 s. A wooden wall dragged across the road in one gesture, the gate dropped in it. Shaping the lane.25 to 29 s. Dusk. The light turns cold, the horn, the wave preview icons appear over the rift. They come.29 to 37 s. Night. A batch of ten runners pours out together, hits the wall, arrows fly, runners fall. The fight, long enough to read.37 to 42 s. A runner takes four wood arrows; cut to a stone arrow dropping one in a single hit, the combiner making them in between. The ammo shift in two beats.42 to 47 s. The core panel, Level up pressed, the sight ring grows, the Mine appears on the bar. Levels, the reward for delivering.47 to 53 s. Winter: snow, the lake freezes, the Hollow walk straight over it. If winter is not built, the phone build with the zoom window while drawing a belt.53 to 58 s. Dawn: the last Hollow burn away in the sun, the core still glowing. You held.58 to 60 s. Title card, Game Off 2026, Start with First Night. The ask.
0 sbuildduskfightshift60 s
SilentA GIF has no sound. The same cut with the day music and the horn goes up as a video if we want sound.640 wide, 12 fpsItch takes a GIF as a screenshot or the cover, and the cover must stay under about 3 MB (to confirm on the upload form). 60 seconds at 640 wide and 12 frames a second is about that; the alternative is a 10 second GIF cover plus the full 60 seconds as a YouTube video embedded on the page.

To confirm before publishing

1The real name?shift-content proposes; every Hollowtide is replaced in one pass.The title, the short line, the cover and the paragraph all carry the placeholder. Also whether Yassine's name is shown as the author.2Ring 0 alone or the full run?Winter and the frost and flame towers exist only in the full ring.If ring 0 ships alone, the third shift line becomes the phone line and screenshot 3 is the phone. If the full run ships, the page stays as drafted.3Which footsteps?One candidate set requires a credit line.The grass set by congusbongus is CC-BY 3.0 and must name congusbongus and swuing with the licence link. The other four are CC0 and need nothing.4GIF or video?60 s as a GIF is near itch's size limit.A short GIF cover plus a YouTube embed is the safe pair. To confirm the limit on the upload form.5Compressed web build?The web build must be the compressed one at submission.CHANGELOG 3 Nov: it is uncompressed so the plain local server works; itch serves compressed files fine. And the repo goes public.
Sources