TorchBearer

TorchBearer is a first-person survival-horror game for the browser, made for AI Browser Game Jam 5 (theme: TORCH). You wake in AshGrave Manor with a torch, a handful of matches and five days to escape: collect gun parts or keys, find the secrets, and keep the flame alive while something moves in the dark. The HUD tells the whole story at a glance — torch fuel draining, matches remaining, day count, and objectives for gun parts, keys and secrets.

The opening is the game's strongest stretch: a title card, prologue pages and a camera intro that locks the door behind you, then exploration through the Great Hall, the Grand Staircase, the Upper Gallery and the Nursery, lighting candelabras, searching drawers and finding notes — including a torn-page note about the crypt key — and a music-box secret. Matches are a real resource, not decoration: light carefully, because the dark is not empty.

The jam page's AI disclosure is explicit: "Code: Claude Sonnet 4.5; Images and Graphics: Nano Banana; Game Tester and Bugs Resolver: Copilot." The jam's playtest thread also records the author responding to feedback in October 2026, adding touch movement, swipe-to-look and on-screen action buttons for phones after testers found the manor unplayable on touchscreens. It is free to play in the browser; the itch page slug is "ash" (AshGrave Manor), while the game's title is TorchBearer.