Vesperhold · independent game studio · since 2014
We are forty-one people in a converted mill, making patient, difficult action RPGs you learn by losing. Our fourth game, Pale Orison, arrives in spring 2027.
The games · four so far
Four worlds, each one harder to leave.
Checkpoint IV · in development
One lantern. No map. A cathedral that moves.
Pale Orison is our biggest game so far: a single-player action RPG set in a cathedral that rearranges itself every time you fall. Forty-one people, three years in, spring 2027.
01
The lantern is your only save
Set it down and the rooms around it hold still. Pick it up and they start to move. Every run is a choice about where to rest.
02
The cathedral rebuilds when you die
Forty-one wings, shuffled by rules you can learn. By the tenth death you will know which doors lie.
03
Every enemy tells you first
Nothing in Pale Orison attacks without a sound, a shadow or a breath. If it hit you, you missed the tell.
Checkpoint III · the studio
“We grew by three people a year so that nobody here would ever have to crunch. It made us slow. It also made us good.”
Aldous Crane, studio head, in the mill’s old weaving shed
41
people in one mill, most of whom have been here five years or more
12
years since nine of us started above a bakery
3.1M
players across four games and one free chapter
0
weekends worked in 2025. We intend to keep it that way.
How we make a hard game
Five steps, and the fourth one hurts.
Scroll sideways · five steps
Step 01
Paper
Every game starts as ten pages and one drawing. If the drawing doesn’t make us want to play it, we stop there.
Step 02
Greybox
Grey rooms, no art, no music, until the fight is fun on its own. This takes longer than anyone expects.
Step 03
Strangers
212 playtests with people who owe us nothing. Nobody from the team speaks. We watch where they stop.
Step 04
Cut
We cut about a third of everything we build. The map went in March. Nobody has asked for it back.
Step 05
Patch
Then we keep patching for years. Mossvigil got update thirty-one last spring, ten years after launch.
Checkpoint IV · dev diary
Notes from the mill.
Checkpoint V · careers
Come and build the hard parts.
Six open roles. Four-day weeks every August, no crunch clause in every contract, and a mill with a river running under the floor.
Checkpoint VI · press
Everything you need to write about us.
SVG · PNG · 2.4 MB
Studio logo pack
Wordmark and lantern mark in light, dark and gilt. Please leave space around the lantern.
Download
JPG · 4K · 18 MB
Pale Orison key art
Four key art images with and without the logo, plus two phone crops.
Download
ZIP · 64 MB
Pale Orison screenshots
Twelve in-engine screenshots from the reveal build. Not final quality.
Download
The newsletter · one letter a month
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