Infralight was our love letter to Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday on the Sega Genesis–a game our whole family agrees is the best retro RPG ever made (we will not be taking questions on this).

Built for Dungeon Crawler Jam 2023, the theme was “Duality.” We ran with it literally: two types of light, two types of enemies. Robots you can see normally, mutants that are invisible unless you switch to infrared. The game is set on an asteroid mining base, and you’re assembling a party, exploring corridors, and fighting tactical turn-based battles where you issue orders and then watch them resolve simultaneously.

The ambition was there. The execution got about 60% of the way. The combat system was the centrepiece, and it was too big a stretch for the jam timeline. The first level plays through fine, but there’s a bug that stops you getting past the second combat encounter. We’d planned additional party members for levels two and three, but the clock ran out.

Our friend Miles from Bad Juice Games joined us on this one–partly as a way for us to hang out together, and partly so Fintan could learn from someone who actually knows what they’re doing. I’m a regular software guy, not a games guy, but Miles is the real deal, with experience on shipped titles like Marvel Puzzle Quest. Even with that firepower, we’d bitten off more than a week could chew.

No artists or composers on the team, so we leaned on Synty asset packs and the Badlands music pack. The focus was code, story, and level design–which is a polite way of saying “we couldn’t draw.”

Still, the core of something good is in there. The infrared mechanic genuinely changes how you approach each room, and the tactical combat (when it works) has that satisfying “plan and pray” feeling that made Buck Rogers so compelling.

Download Infralight on itch.io (Windows only, first level fully playable)