About This Game

BULWARK: Hold the Heart is real-time strategy where the enemy always comes to you. Mine Lumen and Vapor, build production, train an army, research upgrades and hold waves of the Blight back from the Heart, the crystal monolith that keeps your colony alive. If the Heart falls, the level is lost. Between waves you get a short calm to rebuild, repair, expand and tech up before the next one hits.

Controls RTS players already know

If you have spent years on competitive RTS, you will be playing within a minute.

• Box select, control groups (make, add, steal, jump to), Tab through subgroups, Shift to queue every order, building placement included.
  
• Grid hotkeys by default, a letter preset as the alternative, and every key can be rebound.
  
• Attack-move, patrol, hold position, rally points, idle worker and select army keys, camera hotkeys.
  
• Pause the game and keep giving orders (single player).

An economy worth defending

• Riggers mine, build and repair. Saturate your crystal fields, take the gas vents for Vapor, then expand toward the richer ground near the nests.
  
• 13 units and 20 buildings. Every production building takes a Tech Module for advanced units or a Twin Bay to train two at once.
  
• 20 research lines, from infantry weapons to warp jumps.
  
• Turrets cost Power and the Blight's Bombards outrange every one of them, so a wall alone never holds a late wave. You need an army.

The Blight

Eleven enemy types: Mite swarms, armoured Husks, acid Spitters, Bursters that break walls, Brutes that knock your line apart, Bombards that shell you from range, Burrowers that surface under your army and Wyverns in the sky. Two bosses wait at the end of the chapters: the Broodmother, who births Mites as she walks, and the Behemoth at the bottom of the nests. In the last two chapters, waves can arrive with haste, extra armour, regeneration or elite strength.

A campaign of 25 levels

• Four chapters, and every level brings one new unit, building, enemy or map feature, introduced by your adjutant.
  
• 13 maps across rock, ash, snow and jungle. Each level has its own nests, calm timing and twist.
  
• Up to 3 stars per level, a bonus objective on every level and four difficulties.
  
• Retry any lost level from the start of the last wave.

Three heroes

Take one commander into each level. Heroes fight on the map, respawn at the Heart and level from 1 to 15 across your whole save, with a talent choice every three levels.

• Commander Rhea Vance leads the army: Rally Cry, Orbital Strike, Drop Pod.
  
• Chief Engineer Odo Brask builds and holds: Deploy Turret, Emergency Repair, Fortify.
  
• Prospector Kaia Lune runs the economy: Survey Drone, Lumen Surge, Crystal Lance.

The War Council

Every new record on a level pays Valor. Spend it on a passive tree of 121 nodes: small bonuses, notable upgrades and keystones such as Forward Base (start with a second Command Hub) or Overcharged Heart (the Heart shoots back). One campaign buys well under half of it, so your builds will differ from your friends'. Respec for free between levels.

Endless, the Gauntlet and challenges

• Endless: nine maps, waves that never stop and a boss every 10 waves. Checkpoints, Echoes to spend in the 20-node Endless Codex, and Ascension: reset the Codex for permanent Shards, pick one of four doctrines and push further.
  
• The Gauntlet: after each wave, pick one of three cards that bend the run your way.
  
• Five challenges with their own rules: troopers only, a lone hero, no calm between waves, and more.

Multiplayer: race to the last wave

Two to eight players each defend their own copy of the same map against the same waves. First to clear the final wave wins. Earn Ichor from capture points and kills, then spend it to send extra Blight, curses and even a boss at your rivals, or to shield your own Heart. Free for all or teams, with Steam friends, a quick match, or against AI opponents at four difficulties.

How it is made

BULWARK is an independent game designed and directed by a sole developer. The pictures, 3D models, voices, sound effects and music were made with AI tools, then chosen, edited and assembled by hand. Nothing is generated while you play. The full disclosure is in the AI section of this page.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

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

All pictures, 3D models, voices, sound effects and music in this game were made with AI tools during development, then picked, edited and put together by hand.
- Pictures (concept pictures, unit and building designs, ground and cliff textures, icons, the logo and key art): Krea 2
- 3D models of every unit, building and hero prop: generated from those pictures with TRELLIS 2 and Pixal3D, then cleaned up, rigged and animated by hand-written tools in Blender.
- Unit voices: voices designed with Qwen3 voice design and performed with IndexTTS. No real person's voice was copied.
- Sound effects: the MOSS sound effect model.
- Music: composed by the developer with the FlowMusic AI music tool.
The code was written with the help of an AI coding assistant (Claude).