Nightveld

Night falls on the veld. You are the last light in it.

Nightveld is a bullet heaven (a reverse bullet hell) where your only weapon is the light you see with. Widen the beam to watch the swarm close in, or focus it into a searing lance that burns a lane through, and go blind everywhere else. You can always see further than you can burn, and most of the fight happens in that gap.

The dark is alive, and dawn arrives on a clock. Survive to it and the field burns clean; there's a short rest and a new power to pick before a longer, hungrier Night begins. A run ends when you die, and your record is how many Nights you lasted.

Key  Features

• The dark is alive

  Eighteen enemy types, each with its own relationship to your light. Moths are drawn to the beam and dive at it. Hunters wait  just outside the edge and lunge when it's pointed elsewhere. Seekers chase the spot where your light was a moment ago, and glare-eaters get stronger the longer you burn them. There's also the Gleamhare, a harmless thief made of stolen light that pays out if you catch it before it vanishes. Elites spawn with modifiers like healing in your light or calling in  backup.
  
  

• The dark has terrain. So do you.

  Relight cold braziers with a focused beam to hold a position. Murk pools smother your light down to an ember and need a  wide beam to cleanse, and voidcracks pour out shades unless you keep light on them. Some Nights a Moonwell rises, and defending it is optional but worth it.
  
  

• Night omens and  dares

  From Night 4, an omen rewrites each Night's rules: Mothstorm, The Long Hunt, a mid-Night eclipse called The Swallowing, 13 in all. Most come with an optional dare that  pays a bonus at dawn.
  
  

• The Gloaming

  Every tenth Night. A multi-phase boss that aims where you're going instead of where you are. Punish it too efficiently and it  adapts. Below a quarter health it changes form.

• 30 powers, chosen between Nights

  Every level up banks a pick of 1 of 3 upgrades, and picks are always made during the rest between Nights so they never interrupt a fight. The pool covers five categories (Economy, Wards, Searing, Optics and Mobility), each power tiered three deep. A deep run has room  for about 20 picks, which is nowhere near enough to take everything. One reroll and one banish per run.

• Eight light-forms

  Kills drop timed weapon blessings that  burn for 12 to 20 seconds: Orb, Wisp, Pyre, Lighthouse, Comet, Lens, Radiance and Spectrolabe. They layer on top of whatever you're building without replacing it.

• The cairn

  Dying leaves a cairn standing at the Night you fell. Reach that Night again in a later run and you can kindle it for a reward.

• Scoring that rewards aggression

  A kill-streak multiplier climbs while you keep killing and resets when you take a hit, so diving the swarm scores better than circling it. Best Night and best score  are saved per difficulty. Nightmare mode removes the minimap entirely, so you only ever know what your light is currently showing you.

• An adaptive soundtrack

  One  continuous piece mixed live from stems. It thins out at dawn and builds back up as a Night fills in, and when murk smothers your light the music drowns with you. Boss Nights get their own  arrangement.

Hold your light until dawn. Then do it again.