The rot comes with the night. You are the last light.

For a thousand years the village of Emberhollow kept its sacred flame. Tonight a living darkness creeps in from the treeline — cell by cell, field by field, home by home. The elders are gone. The militia is gone. There is only you: the last cleric, a censer full of embers, and six nights to survive.

CINDER VIGIL is a top-down survival-action horror about holding one small circle of light against a corruption that literally grows while you watch — a cellular automaton eating the map in real time.

---

The Vigil

• The rot is alive. It spreads on a grid, night after night, faster and hungrier. What you don't burn tonight will greet you tomorrow.
• Your censer is your weapon. Hold the flame to cleanse the ground — but embers run out, and a cold censer takes time to catch again.
• Hunt the sources. Pulsing rot-hearts crawl out of the dark at the map's edge. While they live, the corruption regrows faster. Burn them out point-blank.
• The shrine is your anchor. It refills your embers and holds the only fire that matters. If all nine shrine tiles rot — the vigil ends.
• Save the villagers. The rot swallows houses whole, and the folk inside come back… wrong. Hold your flame on the possessed to bring them home. Every soul counts in the end.
• Six nights, one breath of daylight between them. Each dawn burns part of the rot away and grants you one blessing: a wider flame, a faster burn, torches to hold the line.

Controls

• WASD / Arrows — move
• Hold Space / Mouse — cleanse
• E — place a torch (once blessed)
• 1–3 — choose a day blessing
• R — restart

Sessions run 10–12 minutes. Defeat is real, victory is earned, and the dark whispers your name after the halfway mark. Headphones recommended.