Torchbearer
A first-person dungeon crawl in which you hold the torch, not the sword: your blind party fights only what you light.
Official site felmeric.itch.io, verified Nov 3, 2026. The developer's own itch.io page (Felmeric), linked from its official AI Browser Game Jam 5 submission page.
Where to play
Every platform this game is on. Links are checked against official sources; we never host or mirror games.
- Play free — itch.ioitch.ioReleasedFree
Plays in the browser on itch.io. No download.
Browser (no download) · Mobile · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
About Torchbearer
A first-person 3D dungeon crawler in which you cannot fight. You are the torchbearer, with a torch, a pocketful of molotovs and a party of adventurers who are completely blind in the dark: they only see what you light, so they fight lit monsters, disarm lit traps and loot lit treasure, and they follow you while your torch is burning. A torch burns for 30 seconds once lit and wall sconces for two minutes, with spare torches scattered around, so every room is a choice between lighting sconces for a fight and pushing on in the dark. The party is a tank, a ranged DPS who is not afraid of the dark, a healer who heals anyone in the light and a controller who roots monsters from a distance. Goblins see in the dark, moths are drawn to light and shades hunt whoever is left in it; at the bottom a sleeping ogre guards its hoard. Shrines bring fallen party members back, and each dungeon is generated fresh every run, with Easy, Normal and Hard settings. The credits list Robert Smith for design and direction, and the page says Claude, through Claude Code, wrote all of the game's code and built the levels, 3D models, flames and sound effects. Free in the browser on itch.io, on desktop (keyboard and mouse) or a phone held sideways; it was entered in AI Browser Game Jam 5.
How it was built
Partially verifiedThe itch.io page's “How AI made this game” section says nearly everything was made with AI: the developer directed the design and made the calls, and the AI tools did the building. Claude, through Claude Code, wrote all of the game's code (the dungeon generator, the party and monster behaviour, the light simulation that decides what the party can see, the first-person renderer and its shaders, the touch controls, menus and audio) and wrote headless simulations, including a bot that runs whole dungeons in under a second, to catch hangs and balance problems before each playtest. Claude also built the goblin, moth, ogre, props and torch by writing Blender scripts, fitted metaball heads and monster bodies to reference sheets with an optimiser, wrote the flame shader, and wrote the Python script that synthesized all 36 sound effects. No Claude model is named and no share is given.
- DeveloperAI Browser Game Jam 5 submission, AI Tools Used: “Code, levels, 3D models, flames and sound effects: Claude (Anthropic). Art: Gamelabs Studio. Music: Google Gemini. Voices: Qwen3-TTS (Alibaba Qwen, Apache-2.0)”. — itch.io (AI Browser Game Jam 5, hosted by Focaccai)
Google Gemini made the menu and dungeon music themes, per the itch.io page and the jam submission. Not a coding tool; no Gemini model is named.
Built with libGDX and gdx-gltf, plus Blender, for AI Browser Game Jam 5 (theme: Torch); the browser build is a GWT web export (observed). Claude Code wrote the code and tested it with headless simulations and a bot that plays whole dungeons. The 3D monsters and props were built by Claude writing Blender scripts; the party's bodies are Synty Studios asset-pack characters (POLYGON Fantasy Characters and others) wearing AI-fitted heads, recoloured to match their portraits. 25 images (title screen, lettering, menu buttons, portraits, wall and floor textures and the reference sheets) are credited to Gamelabs Studio, which the jam answer lists among the AI tools; the music is from Google Gemini. Each party member's voice was designed from a written description with Qwen3-TTS, run locally, and every line was pre-rendered, so nothing is generated during play. The font is Noto Sans.
- Engine / framework
- libGDX (with gdx-gltf)
- Languages
- Java
- Team size
- Not disclosed
- Initial build time
- Not disclosed
- Development time
- Not disclosed
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- Not disclosed
“Nearly everything in Torchbearer was made with AI. I directed the design and made the calls; the AI tools did the building.”Verification notes: AI use from the “How AI made this game” section and credits on the itch.io page and the AI Tools Used answer on the official AI Browser Game Jam 5 submission page, both re-read on 5 Nov 2026. The page says all of the game's code was written by Claude through Claude Code; no percentage is given, so no AI code share is recorded. The itch.io AI disclosure ticks Code, Graphics, Sounds and Text. Developer name from the credits (“Design and direction: Robert Smith”) on the account Felmeric; team size is not stated. The party's “AI” is scripted game behaviour, and the voices are pre-rendered; the build makes no calls to AI services. The libGDX engine is named on the page; the GWT web export and the Java language are observed from the build. The Synty Studios packs are credited third-party asset packs; no source states their licence terms. The same account entered Explosive Ordnance in AI Browser Game Jam 4 and another entry, Torch drive, in this jam; those are separate games. Publication (29 Oct 2026, 04:14 UTC) from the itch.io page. Jam voting was still open on 5 Nov 2026 (it ends on 7 Nov), so no placement is recorded; the submission page showed 5 jam ratings (observed; not recorded as a metric). itch.io shows no public rating. The game was not played.
Development history
Published on itch.io (04:14 UTC) and submitted to AI Browser Game Jam 5 (theme: Torch).
AI Browser Game Jam 5 submissions close; voting was still in progress on 5 Nov 2026.
Officialitch.io (Focaccai)
Game performance
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itch.io
Free in the browser (HTML5); keyboard and mouse on desktop, twin on-screen sticks and buttons on a phone or tablet in landscape.
Not publicly available: itch.io rating, Gross revenue.
Reviews & rankings
Not yet reviewed by our editors.
Not currently ranked.
Sources
| Source | Type | Published | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Torchbearer by Felmeric itch.io | Store page | Oct 29, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Rate Torchbearer for AI Browser Game Jam 5 itch.io (AI Browser Game Jam 5, hosted by Focaccai) | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| AI Browser Game Jam 5 itch.io (Focaccai) | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Official game page (language check) Felmeric | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
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