This is the short version of the making-of page, written from the design documents and the git history of the repository. The owner appears only where a document records his words verbatim, each with its file and date.
What was decided on the way
- The start. The decisions so far are written down: Væ Victis, a gothic action game. The first art direction and the first title screen follow, then pre-rendered sprites: a rigged 3D model becomes eight-direction palette frames, the method every figure in the game still uses (see How Every Pixel Is Made).
- The haven. The haven, “the cathedral under the cathedral”, is built and playable (see the city and its houses).
- The voice. Wick’s voice gets a stone-hall effect chain, and all 117 lines are re-voiced.
- The graybox. The whole procession to the final boss, 37 new maps and 15 bosses, built flat first and played through before any art.
- The players. Anonymous, self-hosted play stats. Then a premise card after the intro, because players could not tell the story from the opening.
- The name. The rename: Væ Victis, with the Æ carved into the title, and its own home at vaevictis.vip.
- The gardens. The King’s Labyrinth Gardens, the Height and the Pleasance, first in graybox, then dressed (see The Labyrinth Gardens).
- The inventory. The inventory of every generated picture the game shipped: 194 keys. Then every one is redrawn in code or cut, and a guard (
tools/no-ai-art.mjs) fails the build if one returns.
The method, in four rules
- Everything is code. The pictures, the music and the sound effects are made by scripts, with recipes (see How Every Pixel Is Made and The Music).
- One palette. 32 colours, fixed in
src/core.js. The debug overlay counts what reaches the screen. - Graybox first. A level is an ASCII map in one file (
DESIGN/GRAYBOX-KIT.md), playable flat before any art. - Gameplay you do not own must not change. Each agent leased a package and wrote only its files (
AGENT-RULES.md).
In the owner’s words
Five lines are recorded verbatim in the design documents.
- 2026-09-25, on the grit pass of the art: “keep for now, just distort more with dithering and other effects” (
DESIGN/ART-PASS.md, section 3b; the document says “the lead”). - 2026-09-26, on the CRT presets: “Worn tape 5 is the winner for most scenes” (
DESIGN/ART-PASS.md, section 3c; “the lead”). - 2026-10-01, on the box front: “more impact” (
box/COPY.md, Front; “the lead”, who also said “the title one is good for this”). - 2026-10-01, on what the player’s choices are: “we can make it a lore thing, like [Wick] has decided they go so they go no matter what we choose … our player choices are felt by our character as the elder god’s influence” (
DESIGN/GDD.md, section 8; the brackets and the ellipsis are the document’s). - 2026-10-01, on the goal of the completion run: “we try to advance as much vae victis as we can … aim for maximum completion score in maps, weapons, character bosses and magic spells, as well as levels/loop” (
AGENT-RULES.md; the ellipsis is the document’s).
And on this book, 2026-10-04 (companion/DESIGN.md, section 1): “a new story bible for players, as an external document companion piece that explains the game to you to prime your brain to understand and appreciate the story. We can talk about the different systems in place like a strategy guide, with a highly designed look and feel … I want this a full walkthrough with screenshots and commentary, this might make it break the game. Lore chasers, streamers and people interested in the characters should consider this a goldmine.” His three answers on its shape were ”Web book + PDF”, ”Blend of both” and ”Layered”.
The turn: no generated pictures
The owner decided that the game goes to Steam with an empty AI-content disclosure (DESIGN/AI-ART-INVENTORY.md). Every generated picture the game shipped was removed or redrawn: 122 keys redrawn in code and 45 no longer shipped. A guard script fails the build if a generated image returns.
What is still synthetic is the voices (open-source speech models), which the inventory records as placeholders until the owner and his wife re-voice them. That is why the store page’s content survey must disclose the audio even though the picture claim is true: no generated image ships.
Where it is
The game is at vaevictis.vip. The collector’s box and the other keepsakes are in The Collector’s Box and Keepsakes.