Releases: aebrer/deep-yellow
Release list
v0.13.0 — The Poolrooms
v0.13.0 — The Poolrooms
Play it now: aebrer.itch.io/deep-yellow
New Features
- Level 1: The Poolrooms is now accessible from the Lobby. Find a wet tiled stairwell and descend into the submerged corridors.
- New level architecture: Room-based poolrooms with white ceramic tile, shallow walkable pools, and blocked deep-water hazards.
- Three new enemies:
- Sodden — slow, resilient waterlogged humanoids that drag themselves through the shallow pools.
- Drowner — dark submerged figures that ambush from deeper water.
- Ambassador — a rare, tall ethereal silhouette that flees when observed too closely.
- Destination-aware stair routing — every stairwell now has an explicit route definition. The tutorial leads to the Lobby, the Lobby leads to the Poolrooms, and the Poolrooms lead back.
- New textures and lighting — Poolroom-specific floor, wall, ceiling, and water textures, plus recessed cyan ceiling fixtures with organic entropy-locked flicker.
- Auto-explore visited-stairs tracking — stairs you have already approached are skipped during auto-explore, preventing ping-pong loops.
Improvements
- Border hallway cutting now preserves water tiles and exit stairs when carving connectivity between chunks.
- Dead entity cleanup now correctly removes entities from SubChunk storage on all levels.
- Exit stair decals now render with proper depth testing and no z-fighting.
- Level 1 environmental entities have poolrooms-appropriate examination text.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a case where Level 0 stairs to the Poolrooms could overlap with light fixtures and become invisible.
- Fixed entity spawn overlap prevention so enemies cannot spawn on generator-placed exit stairs or other pre-placed entities.
v0.12.0 — Entropy-Locked Lighting Flickers
Entropy-Locked Lighting Flickers
Fluorescent lights now flicker with unique personalities using entropy locking — each light gets its own seeded RNG that probabilistically reseeds, producing deterministic-but-unpredictable patterns. Most lights settle into a permanent on/off state, while a few keep flickering with recognizable rhythms that feel organic. Computationally near-free (~15k pixel writes per lightmap rebuild).
New Features
- Procedural light flickering (#64): Each fluorescent light gets a unique personality (reseed_threshold + on_weight) rolled from its world position hash. Steady lights stay on, dying lights flicker chaotically, and everything in between emerges naturally from two
randf()calls. - Control hints: Persistent MOVE/WAIT hints at top of viewport, auto-switching between gamepad and keyboard glyphs.
Improvements
- Auto-explore now cancels immediately when movement is blocked (wall, entity) instead of silently retrying.
- Auto-explore re-entry now paths from current position instead of stale cached target.
Internal
- Unified
fluorescent_light/fluorescent_light_brokeninto single entity type with continuous personality spectrum. - Flicker state is deterministic from
hash(world_position)— no serialization needed. - State mutation moved to
LightFixtureBehavior.tick()to respect EntityRenderer's render-only contract.
Play in browser: aebrer.itch.io/deep-yellow
v0.11.0 — Dynamic Lighting & Performance
Dynamic Lighting System
Complete shader-based point lighting system with per-level brightness tuning. Fixtures (fluorescent lights, barrel fires) are baked into a 256x256 lightmap for zero per-fragment cost, while the player light remains real-time.
What's New
- Dynamic lighting — lightmap-based fixture lights with quadratic attenuation
- Entity animation — AnimatedSprite3D support for spritesheet animation (idle, walk, attack cycles)
- Chunk loading indicator — viewport overlay shows "chunk loading.......done" with fade in/out
- New textures — fluorescent lights (working + broken) and barrel fire sprites
Performance
- -22.8% CPU — removed action preview UI that was rebuilding DOM nodes every frame
- -1,269 lines of dead code scrubbed across actions, items, and UI
- Lightmap system — replaced per-fragment point light evaluation with texture lookup
Downloads
- Linux and Windows desktop builds
- Web build playable in browser at aebrer.itch.io/deep-yellow
🤖 Generated with Claude Code
v0.10.0 — DOORS
DOORS
- DOOR
- DOOR
- DOOOOOOORRRRRRS!
What's New
The Backrooms now have doors. Lots and lots of doors. 30% of eligible hallway tiles spawn doors. They open when you walk into them. They close behind you. They never spawn adjacent to each other (a door has standards).
Door System
- Walk into a closed door — it opens automatically and you step through
- Walk away from an open door — it closes behind you, because nothing stays open in the Backrooms
- Doors appear as weathered wood panels set in the yellow wallpaper walls
- Open doors become floor tiles (you're walking through a doorframe)
- Doors spawn in narrow hallway segments (1-tile wide passages between rooms)
- Adjacent door prevention keeps things from getting silly
Wall Texture Overhaul
- All wall textures regenerated at 128x256 to match BoxMesh face aspect ratio
- UV scale corrected from (2, 2) to (3, 2) — finally understanding Godot's BoxMesh 3x2 atlas layout
- Textures now tile correctly from every angle. No more split seams!
- Tutorial level (Level -1) pine forest walls also updated
Code Quality
can_execute()is now a pure check with no side effects (door toggling moved toexecute())- Clean action pattern: validate → execute → side effects, in that order
Play it now
v0.9.0 — Map Overlay
What's New in v0.9.0
Full-Screen Map Overlay (X key / X button)
A full-screen map overlay with three panels:
- Center Map: Rendered from a tile cache with fog of war — only tiles you've visited are visible. Fixed north-up orientation with 6 zoom levels.
- Marker Panel (left): Place up to 10 markers per level. Select a marker to highlight it on the map, then "Go To" to auto-navigate there or "Delete" to remove it.
- Enemy List (right): Shows all entities within perception range, sorted by distance. Examined entities display name and threat level; unexamined show as "Unknown Entity".
"Go To" Marker Navigation
Selecting "Go To" on a marker closes the overlay and auto-explores directly to the marker position. Unlike normal auto-explore, goto navigation ignores items and vending machines — it goes straight to the target. If the marker is in an unloaded chunk, the system uses intermediate waypoints to navigate there as chunks load. Enemies, damage, and HP/sanity thresholds still stop navigation.
Controls
| Input | Gamepad | Mouse + Keyboard |
|---|---|---|
| Open/Close | X button | X key |
| Close | B / Start | ESC / MMB |
| Navigate | Left stick | Mouse / Arrow keys |
| Select | A | Click / Enter |
| Zoom | D-Pad L/R | Arrow L/R / Mouse wheel |
v0.8.3 - Examination Hotfix
Hotfix
Examination Fixed in Exports
Entity examination was showing "Unknown" / "[DATA EXPUNGED]" in exported builds (web, linux, windows) instead of actual names and descriptions. This is now fixed — examining walls, enemies, and objects works correctly again.
This was a latent bug introduced in v0.8.2's codex improvements, where a compile-time const reference couldn't be resolved by Godot's bytecode compiler in export builds.
v0.8.2 — Performance & Polish
What's New
Massive Minimap Performance Boost
The minimap now runs 10x faster during exploration. Instead of redrawing the entire map every turn, it smartly updates only the new tiles you can see. Auto-explore is buttery smooth now.
Minimap Loads Instantly
No more black patches on the minimap when you first load into a level — the map renders correctly from the very first frame.
Manual Movement Reveals the Map
Previously, only auto-explore would uncover the minimap as you moved. Now walking manually reveals tiles around you the same way auto-explore does.
Codex Fixes
- Items from other levels (like tutorial meat) now show their correct names in the codex instead of "Unknown"
- Non-hostile objects like vending machines and exit holes now appear under "Environment" instead of "Threats"
UI Polish
- The codex now closes cleanly when you unpause
- Action hints hide while the codex is open so they don't overlap
Under the Hood
- Removed ~820 lines of dead code across 28 files for a cleaner, leaner codebase
- Entity rendering optimized with fewer draw calls and distance-based culling
v0.8.1 - Auto-Explore & Corruption Fixes
What's New
Auto-Explore Improvements
- Enemy threat threshold: New slider in settings (0-6) controls which enemies stop auto-explore. Default stops for moderate+ threats — bacteria spawns no longer interrupt your exploration, but smilers and motherloads will.
- Stops adjacent to items: Auto-explore now stops next to items instead of walking onto them, letting you examine before picking up. Especially useful for corrupted items.
- Path caching: Auto-explore caches its path instead of recalculating every turn — smoother and more performant.
Corruption System
- Dynamic corruption scaling: Corrupted item debuffs now scale with world corruption in real-time — debuffs get stronger as corruption rises.
- Easier debuff visibility: Corrupt item info now requires half the clearance level it used to (e.g., level 3 items need clearance 2+ instead of 4+).
Balance
- Clearance perks 3x more common: Clearance Level now appears in level-up choices much more frequently — it's a viable build path, not a lottery ticket.
UI Fixes
- Vending machine: Fixed gray focus box and auto-selection issues.
- Item combine display: Now shows correct additive formula (Lv2 + Lv2 → Lv4).
- Cancel button: Fixed keyboard activation in item slot selection.
Downloads
- Windows:
deep_yellow_v0.8.1_windows.tar.gz - Linux:
deep_yellow_v0.8.1_linux.tar.gz - Web:
deep_yellow_v0.8.1_web.tar.gz(also playable on itch.io)
v0.8.0 — Corrupted Items, Auto-Explore & Progression Rebalance
What's New
Auto-Explore (Y key)
Hold Y to automatically navigate the Backrooms. Your character will path toward unexplored areas, stopping when enemies appear, you take damage, your HP or sanity drops low, or you spot items and stairs. Press any key to cancel. Vending machines and items you've already passed on won't interrupt you again.
Corrupted Items
As corruption rises in the deeper levels, you'll start finding glitched-out items with visible distortion effects. These corrupted items carry debuffs — stat drains, HP/sanity decay per turn, damage penalties, or increased mana costs. The tradeoff: they still give their normal bonuses too. You can toggle them off if the cost gets too high. Combining two corrupted items merges their debuffs, so stacking gets risky. Debuffs scale with both item level and world corruption, meaning that innocent-looking item you picked up early gets nastier as you go deeper.
Smoother Movement
Movement between tiles now uses smooth tweening instead of instant teleportation. The game still plays turn-by-turn — it just looks better.
Progression Rebalance
- More generous level-up curve and XP rewards — you'll feel progression sooner
- Corruption now scales item spawn levels (higher corruption = higher level items appearing)
- Sanity drain rate decreases with corruption, giving a small mercy as things get harder
Quality of Life
- Stats panel updates in real-time when your stats change (no more stale numbers)
- Vending machines reset properly on game restart
- New tutorial items: Meat, Vegetables, and Mustard replace the old debug item
- Settings panel no longer causes a pause bug when closed
Performance
- Auto-explore stays smooth even after discovering vending machines (BFS caching fix)
Play in browser or download for Windows/Linux at aebrer.itch.io/deep-yellow
v0.7.1 - Rename to DEEP YELLOW
DEEP YELLOW v0.7.1
Rename Release
- Renamed game from "Backrooms Power Crawl" to DEEP YELLOW across all code, assets, documentation, and build artifacts
- Renamed GitHub repository from
backrooms-power-crawltodeep-yellow - Updated all itch.io media assets (banner, cover) with new title in deep yellow text
- Updated export presets: executables now named
deep_yellow_*instead ofbpc_* - Removed obsolete
web_deployment/directory
Downloads
- Linux:
deep_yellow_v0.7.1_linux.tar.gz - Windows:
deep_yellow_v0.7.1_windows.tar.gz - Web:
deep_yellow_v0.7.1_web.tar.gz(also playable at https://aebrer.itch.io/deep-yellow)