Last Torch

You're trapped below a rockfall with one torch. The screen is dark except for the light around you, and that light is also your clock: the flame shrinks as it burns. Oil flasks on the cave floor refill it. Find the stairs up in each of five caverns before it goes out.

Your flame leans toward fresh air, so it points the way out. Bats, spiders and slimes knock oil out of the torch, and in the flooded cavern the pools slow you to a wade. Each cavern is bigger than the last.

Arrow keys or WASD to move. P or Esc pauses, M turns the sound off. On a phone, use the on-screen arrows. Every cavern keeps your best time, and the last screen adds them up.

I made it for AI Browser Game Jam 5 by typing what I wanted into mChatAI+, an app I'm building for the Mac. This was the first request:

Make a top-down cave exploration game in one HTML file. The screen is black except a circle of warm, flickering torchlight around the player. The torch burns down over time and the light circle shrinks with it; picking up an oil flask refills it. Find the exit on each level before the torch goes out. Arrow keys or WASD to move, on-screen arrows on phones. Five levels, each a bit bigger, with a level timer and best times saved.

And the second, after playing it:

Rename the game to Last Torch everywhere (the page title, the title card, every heading, and the saved best-times key), and on phones keep the on-screen arrows from covering the last line of the start card.

Everything you see and hear comes from the game's own code: no image files, no sound files, no outside fonts.

More games made by typing: https://mchatai.com/hub?utm_source=itchio&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ai-jam-5