Hollow Wake
One more drop. One more zone.
Hollow Wake is an action RPG for players who like finding a skill and building around it. Combine skill gems, branching upgrades, and unusual loot, then take your build into a frontier of rival factions, roaming bosses, and dangerous detours. Head out alone or bring a friend.
See how far your build can take you
Start in Lastlight, follow the roads through Wayfarer's Crossroads, and choose your own route into the wilds. Each new region brings tougher enemies and more places to explore. Return to familiar ground, follow a side path, or keep pushing deeper.
Explore beyond the map
Uncover connected regions as you travel. Your map records the places you find, so a promising side route or an unfinished fight is somewhere you can return to. Enemy levels rise as you venture farther from town.
Take to the water
Sail between harbors and explore shores you cannot reach on foot. Finding a port gives you a foothold in new territory, but some are under siege. Clear the attackers to open the way inland.
Stay close to the light
The Gloaming spreads across the map. After dark, its affected regions drain your light, sending you between lamps, campfires, and gloomwells for shelter. Those refuges can run dry. Daybreak pauses the drain; it does not refill your reserves.
Pick your fights in a world at war
20+ factions compete for territory. A road held by undead on your last visit may be in goblin hands when you return. Watch who is fighting, find an opening, and decide whether to join in or slip past.
Territory changes hands
Regions can be owned, contested, or conquered. In contested areas, rival enemies fight each other as well as you. Killing a faction's troops weakens its hold on the region.
Fight for more than a clear
Defend a position, survive an assault, unearth buried treasure, or destroy the source of an enemy swarm. Zone objectives give you reasons to change pace, and some must be finished before the next exit opens.
Break up the enemy formation
Enemy crews cover each other with shields, ranged attacks, and coordinated maneuvers. Watch their windups, interrupt a dangerous cast, or draw a defender away from its allies. Sight, sound, and even your footprints can give you away.
What survives when you fall?
Mortal characters have one life. Death ends the run and turns part of your earned essence into account progress. Later, you can unlock the Immortal covenant and accept it when offered. That character survives death, but after the first fall, further deaths require a paid resurrection and no longer advance your account.
Corpse runs
Your next Mortal character can recover the equipment you wore and the relics seated in your Reliquary. Your skill gems, supports, and bag contents are lost. The corpse is marked on the world map, but reaching it means facing the danger that killed you.
Mercenaries
Recruit a mercenary at a frontier outpost to fight alongside you. Choose a companion whose skills suit your build, or retire a hero and recruit them later as a veteran.
Bring a friend
Play online or share the screen in couch co-op. Enemies scale with the party, and the shared camera keeps couch players together. Both modes are available in the prototype; combining couch and online players in one party is still in development.
New terrain, new problems
Explore forests, deserts, frozen lakes, and stranger places beyond. Fight through tall crops that hide an ambush, cross ground that crumbles underfoot, or search a stone labyrinth for its waiting Minotaur. Browse the cards for a few places you might find.
A card marked Landmark describes a special destination, such as the Ossuary or Grand Arena. Look for the route or entrance that leads there.
Take the detour. Chase the reward.
A hunt can pull you across several regions. A spreading plague can send you searching for its source. A rift can turn a quiet route into a fight for survival. Events give you new targets and rewards along the way, often with a limited window to act.
Unlock more events through account progression to expand what can appear in future runs. Some change a single encounter; others spread across the world map.
Pick where you begin
Choose a starting kit that suits the way you like to fight: heavy melee, elemental spells, traps, companions, and more. Each class has its own starting attributes and signature skills, with access to shared skill and passive pools. Develop that kit or change direction when a good drop gives you an idea.
Find a skill worth building around
Active skills and support gems drop as loot. Spend essence to improve your gems, socket compatible supports to change how a skill works, and explore branching skill trees for new ways to use it. Character levels add points to a shared passive tree, letting you bring the whole build together.
Skills, supports, and uniques
Browse all 550+ in the Database →Look up a drop. Try a new route.
Search skills and monsters, compare modifiers, and plan your passive points before your next run. These tools update with the website's game build; an older download may have different stats.
Database
Search skills, supports, monsters, and classes. Check requirements and effects before committing to a build. Browse the database →
Passive Tree
Choose your class, trace a path through the tree, and see your passive bonuses add up. Share your plan with a link. Plan a build →
Play in browser
Try the prototype free in your browser. Progress saves in that browser; the desktop version keeps saves on your computer. Play now →
Grab a build, or run the source
Download the prototype for Windows or Linux, play on Steam Deck, or run it from source.
Play a build
HollowWake-Setup-<ver>.exe · per-user, no admin → Linux & Steam Deck
.AppImage ·
chmod +x and run
→
Run from source
# first-time setup npm install # browser dev mode → localhost:5173 npm run dev # the desktop app (Electron) npm run game # type-check + production build npm run build
Hollow Wake is a playable prototype in active development. Build crafting and exploration are ready to try, with solo play, co-op, and a growing range of encounters. Art is still evolving, audio is not yet implemented, and balance changes regularly. Updates can reset characters or account progress. Feedback from your runs helps shape what comes next.