Game-rendered key artExtended game slice · Claude Opus 5.5
At 11:17, the city blinks. Mika was waiting for it.
Rain on Calder Avenue. A reflection that moves wrong. Then a blackout leaves something behind. Follow the clues, become the hunter and fight your way toward the Warden of Ash—all inside the same procedural city.
Enter Black Veil▶Desktop · keyboard + mouse · WebGL 2 · headphones recommended. First load prepares the world and shaders.
Supernatural horror, violence, flashing lights and sudden sounds. Reduced-flash and camera-shake settings are available.
Behind the experience
A striking shot is only the start. Here the camera must give control back, the combat must keep its timing, and the same city has to carry both the story and the fight.
The opening, transformations and encounters share one scene, one player and one physics world. Cinematic timelines commit the state changes needed for the next playable moment even when skipped. Otherwise a missing story beat can become a missing enemy, a locked clue or the wrong version of Mika.
← Back to NotesThe simulation advances in fixed 1/60-second steps. A separate action clock freezes combat and movement during hit-stop while presentation has its own timing. Parry windows, posture breaks and attack recovery belong to the combat system; the camera, sound and effects react to its events.
Procedural wet-street materials, puddles, rain and analytic light streaks make the avenue glow. A captured environment probe supplies reflections; the suspicious shop-window reflection is an authored actor, not a second fully mirrored world. It can move wrong because the story needs it to.
The shipped characters use procedural skinned rigs and authored animation clips, with foot locking and secondary spring motion. Their movement must agree with attack timing and the player capsule. It is a stylized cast, built without shipping external character models.
The Web Audio engine synthesizes ambience, music and combat cues. Separate buses let the player balance music and effects, while the music director follows the current state of the journey. The score responds to the game rather than playing as a single background recording.
Checkpoint continuation, encounter restarts, skippable cinematics and three difficulty tiers make a longer slice easier to revisit. Reduced flashes, shake reduction and readable clue feedback matter just as much as the dramatic opening.
What this version is
This is a work in progress, not a finished commercial game. The characters are deliberately procedural and stylized; presentation and balance are still being refined. Desktop keyboard and mouse are the intended setup, with Low, Medium and High graphics options. Gamepad support exists, but we have not checked physical controllers here. Mobile and touch play are not supported.
This began with a longer, detailed design document covering the city, story, combat, cinematics and implementation requirements. Development with Claude Opus 5.5 ran for more than 30 hours, followed by several rounds of adjustments. The result reflects that sustained development and refinement—not a single prompt or an equal-effort comparison with the shorter experiments.
Controls
WASD moves; mouse or arrow keys control the camera. Shift sprints, Space dodges, left/right mouse attack, Q parries, E guards and R heals. F inspects or interacts; hold Tab for hunter perception. Esc pauses and releases the mouse. The in-game Controls page explains combat combinations. Hold Enter or Space to skip a cinematic. Settings and a checkpoint are saved in this browser only; clearing site storage removes them.
The return link above the player unloads the experience and its sound.