Planned Release Date: October 2026

About This Demo

The Kingdom of Brightmere has never known night.

Its people, the Wicklings, have candles for heads and a Sun that never sets. Today the Procession barge came for Pip's little sister. It is a great honour to be chosen. Everyone said so.

Pip is going to catch that barge.

It plays exactly like the platformers you grew up with. Eight worlds of tight, hand-built levels. A world map with chapels, memory panels and wandering lamplighters. Seven suits: Moth Wings that let you fly when your P-meter fills, a Wax Mask that turns you into a statue, a Newt Suit for the lakes, a Bell Suit that rings enemies off the screen. Fortresses with crushers and ghosts. Barges full of cannons. End-of-level cards that pay out in spares.

And every one of those systems has been turned a few degrees toward dread.

• Your head is the timer. The level clock is the wax of your own candle. When it gutters, the music thins out, the dark closes in, and you hear your heartbeat.

• The Hush. A tall, pale thing that lives in the background of certain levels. It only moves while you face away from it. Look at it and it stops. You still have to reach the exit.

• Graves. Every death leaves a candle stub on the world map, forever. World 8's map is nothing but them.

• The Lamplighter walks the map. If he reaches your square, you run.

• Gifts, not power-ups. The kingdom is generous. It is a little too generous.

• Letters from home after every world. Her handwriting changes.

• 8 worlds, ~70 levels, 8 bosses, 7 suits, 15 map items

• Authentic 256×240 pixel art in the NES palette; optional CRT filter

• A live 2A03-style chiptune soundtrack that the horror systems bend in real time

• Full keyboard and gamepad support with rebinding; Steam Input ready

• Twelve save files, synced through Steam Cloud so a save follows your account to any machine

• A "Horror intensity" setting (Full / Reduced) that removes the flashing and the static for photosensitive players

• Windows and macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel)

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

WICKLING was built with AI assistance. Generative AI was used during development to help write the game's code, its pixel art, its level layouts and some of its writing, and to help produce this store page and its artwork.

The soundtrack is not AI-generated. Every note is a hand-written 2A03 chiptune, synthesised by the game as it runs rather than played back from audio files, which is why the horror systems can bend the music live.

Nothing in WICKLING is generated while you play. Every level, sprite, line of text and piece of music is fixed and identical for every player, and the game makes no network requests of any kind.