Tank
Broad, square crest
Absorbs hits. Wins blade binds.
Khaedr form The wall-breaker. Heaviest grafts, a slab shield.
I · The Game
Skill decides fights
Torvane is a skill-based online melee team game for Steam. Pick a role. Level it from 1 to 5. Earn gear that changes how it plays. Never a win button.
Swordplay that rewards skill and roles that matter, without the parts players hate.
The promises
- Every deatha fight you could have won
- The triangleeach role beats one, loses to one. Softly.
- Your unityours for the match. No counter-swapping.
- Mirror matchestank vs tank is a good fight on its own
- The storeno power for sale. Cosmetics only.
- Ring-outsnone. No free wins that skip the fight.
- Lag & cheatsnever decide a fight
- The lookgrounded and grim. Never a store-asset game.
Three roles · one triangle
DPS
Narrow, long blade, swept crest
Deflects. Punishes.
Khaedr form The reach-dancer. A long heat-forged blade.
Healer
Tall staff, rounded crest
Survives by spacing. Stays out of binds.
Khaedr form The graft-wright. Cauterizes and staples wounds shut. Healing without magic.
Levels 1 to 5 add options, not power: a level 5 should beat an equally skilled level 1 no more than about 60% of the time. Gear never changes a role's silhouette.
II · Fighters
Face your kill
III · The World
Every match is a Claim
The knights hold the iron hills. The Khaedr need iron. Their oath forbids raid and siege, so they declare a battle: a place, a time, a number of warriors on each side. Won by fighting, not by trickery.
- 01
The Far War
The Khaedr crossed between stars and built weapons that struck from the other side of the world. Cities died to killers who never saw a face. The survivors named the sin: distance.
- 02
The Oath of Reach
No killing beyond the reach of an arm and a blade. Face to face, where you can be killed back. It is why Torvane is pure melee.
- 03
The Ashfall
Their ark came down hard in Torvane's north. The mountains burned. The ash still falls, and turns the sun to copper.
- 04
Blade-debt
A warrior beaten and spared fights for the one who spared them until the debt is paid. So there are Khaedr sworn to knightly houses, and knights in Khaedr war-castes.
Working lore. The setting is still being decided, and every name here may change.
IV · Combat
The genre is the floor
The duel is built from scratch on its own engine to move better than what melee players are used to: more fluid, clearer to read, never clunky. Good enough is not enough to ship.
Impact
Every hit lands with weight. Hit-stop on contact, a short directional camera kick, layered sound, a physical flinch. Heavier weapons hold longer.
Struggle
When blades lock, it's strength and timing, not a coin flip. Both push, stamina drains, and the winner shoves, disarms or opens a strike. Good timing slips out.
Deflection
Catch the attack on the right side and it glances off, throwing the attacker off balance. A perfect parry opens more than a held block. Turtling loses.
The rules under the feel
- Feelnever changes the pace
- Motionsmooth, never choppy
- Effectsstay at the contact point
- Every mechanica switch, settled by blind A/B
- Feelmeasured, not claimed
Attacks
SlashOverheadStabAlternateHeavyJabKickFeint
Defence
Parry / Block
Familiar default keys.
Visual language
Color means who. Shape means what. Brightness means how much. The world is grey on purpose.
- Woadyour team, from where you stand
- Emberthe enemy. Always.
- White-hotskill only: a perfect parry, a clean deflection, a bind's break
The color drain. On your big hits the frame drains toward grey for a tenth of a second while the sparks stay lit. Power by subtraction.
V · The Honest Dev Log
No hype
Torvane is built by one guy who isn't a game developer, using AI tools and a custom engine on NVIDIA's RTX framework. The log shares the real costs, the fails and the wins.
Build the fight before the game
Every phase ends in a gate: a yes or no test. A failed gate means reworking the fight, not adding content to hide it.
- Pillarsdone
- Own engine & toolchaindone
- 1v1 online duelin progress
- Gateone duel, fun 50 times in a row
- Three roles, mirrors firstnext
- Levels & gearlater
- Objective modelater
- Vertical slicelater
- Steam playtests & launchlater
No release date. One gets set when it's earned.
From the log
- Log
The promises and the combat pillars get written down. Grim, grounded realism wins the first style test.
- Log
The arena gets lit like a film set: moonlight through broken roof beams, green emblems glowing in the far bays.
- Win
Unreal is retired. Torvane now runs on its own C++ engine, built on NVIDIA's RTX framework.
- Fail
The repo blows through its free large-file storage budget. Big files move off it.
- Win
The main menu gets its cipher. Hover a button and its letters turn into the sigils carved into the arena floor. Try it above.
- Win
The first two fighters, Kaelvra and the Brute, come out of AI image tools. It took pass after pass to get real skin instead of plastic, and light that comes only from their weapons.
- Log
The pit is relit by two lights only: her axe's blue on one side, his blade's crimson on the other. Everything else falls to black.
- Log
Five duel stages passed on a stand-in body. Online with friends is parked while the first Khaedr fighter is built.
VI · Mature
Mature 18+
Torvane is aiming for a Mature 18+ rating. Its violence, gore and language, in detail.