Thornhold

A lava Golem hunts a team of Keepers through a burnt forest

Thornhold is an asymmetric multiplayer strategy game for 2 to 12 players. One or two players are the Hunter, a huge lava Golem. Everyone else is a Keeper, a small forest builder who has to wall off a pocket of the forest, build an economy behind that wall and defend it with towers. The Keepers win if any of them are still alive when the clock runs out. The Hunter wins when the last Keeper falls.

Day and night

The match starts at night, and days and nights take turns every four minutes. At night the Smouldering wake up in six arenas next to the Hunter’s lair. The Hunter can go there to level up, or use the dark to hit a base while the Keepers expect him elsewhere. At dawn the arenas close and throw him back out. Two Lords of the Burnt Land guard coals for legendary items and the Golem’s second form.

Playing as a Keeper

• Pick a pocket and close its entrance with a wall before the Hunter finds you.
• Your house earns gold on its own. Upgrade it to earn more and to unlock stronger walls and towers. Feed gold into the Golden Hive to raise your income further, and grow fireflies in your Grove for lumber.
• Towers come in several lines, from the standard tower to heavy boulder throwers and slowing tar.
• Repair the wall while it’s under attack, shield it with the Sphere, hold the Hunter in place with Roots, and jump over walls to help a neighbour.
• Grove shops along the corridors sell consumables for your six-slot bag: patches, seed traps, a bark cocoon that makes a building invulnerable for a moment, and a root that takes you home.

Playing as the Hunter

• Search the fog for bases. The Spark, a small flying courier, scouts ahead and brings items from the shop.
• You earn gold by damaging and destroying buildings and by killing Keepers.
• Buy items in the lair and forge them together: pairs into heavier gear, different parts into builds, builds into Great items. Some recipes are secret.
• Level up to 100. Each level gives a point for a skill or for Might, Heat, Fury and Stride, and talents open at levels 10, 25, 50 and 75.
• Dying doesn’t lose you the match. You rise again in the lair after a short wait.
• Fallen Keepers come back as Hunters, so the hunt grows as bases fall.

Ash Labyrinth

The map is a grid of corridors with about fifty pockets for bases. Any corridor can be closed with one wall, so neighbours can fence off a whole block together. Waystones carry you from a corner to the centre in two seconds, and the forest turns green as the Keepers grow.

Open alpha

Free to download and play on Windows. Play online with friends or against bots. Updates arrive through the itch.io app every few days, so balance, graphics and the interface still change often. All screenshots are taken in the game. If you find a bug, press Report a bug in the game menu.

Some 3D models were made with Meshy (CC BY 4.0). Voices: ElevenLabs. Sounds: Kenney and freesound.org (CC0).