Thumb & Tomb devlog #2 · October 21, 2026

Fights you play

For most of its life, a fight in Thumb & Tomb was a menu. ATTACK, DEFEND, ITEM, RUN, a line of text saying what the monster was about to do, and the numbers decided the rest. It worked, but it never felt like a fight. I want the game to feel visceral, the way the last three DOOM games do, and you can't feel a menu in your hands.

The old fight screen: a skeleton on the left, and a menu on the right reading ATTACK, DEFEND, ITEM and RUN. — Where it started: a fight was four buttons.

Read the monster, not the text

So in the middle of October I threw out the turns. The brief I gave myself: timing only, visual cues only, no words in the arena. Let the lizard brain do the work. Before touching the game, we built a little fight lab that runs in a browser, with sliders for every window and wind-up, and played it until the numbers felt right.

Now every attack is something you read. A monster winds up, a ring closes in on it, and the blow lands when the ring touches. A full ring with B in it means press: B as the ring closes parries the hit and opens the monster up. A heavy blow can't be blocked. The monster leans one way, a half ring sweeps in from that side, arrows point the other, and you dodge where they point with the D-pad. Every blow freezes at full draw for the same beat before it lands, so once you've got the rhythm you've got it for every monster.

A skeleton winding up an attack, a ring closing in on it, and a B prompt in the middle: parry. — A blow to parry: press B as the ring closes.

An orc leaning into a heavy swing, and arrows telling you to dodge right. — A heavy one leans. Dodge where the arrows point.

Four buttons, a lot of fight

The controls fit on a handheld: tap A to jab, hold A for a heavy, B to guard and parry, the D-pad to dodge. Clean play builds FLOW, a counter that raises your damage in steps, and getting hit drops it to zero. We tried punishing sloppy play and rewarding clean play, and rewarding won by a mile. It's the difference between being told to stop and wanting to do better.

A hit landing on a skeleton for 31 damage, and FLOW X1.1 across the screen. — FLOW climbing as you play clean.

Mashing was winning

Then the run logs came in, and they said what I'd felt: mashing jab was the best way to play. I was landing 46 jabs for every heavy. Our best player landed 4 and won fights in half the time, but mashing still paid. So we changed what pays:

Swings got slower, and the third jab in a string becomes a finisher that hits much harder but commits you.
Every hit fills four stars over the monster's head. Fill them and it reels, wide open.
A full heavy landed during a wind-up knocks the monster out of its attack.
A perfect parry opens a moment where your heavy charges twice as fast and hits twice as hard.
Weapons have weight. A dagger's heavy is quick and light, an axe's is slow and crushing, and the heavy commits you until it lands.

An orc staggered, WIDE OPEN across the screen, and a heavy attack fully charged. — A charged heavy, ready for an opening.

A skeleton reeling, STAGGERED across the screen, its four stars burst over its head. — Four stars full: it reels.

Then the heavies

Fix one exploit and players find the next. Theodore Roll, who draws the monsters, told me he'd been spamming heavies and it was carrying him. I tried it and flew up to floor 21 on almost nothing else. So heavies tire now too. Two in a row are free, then each one charges slower and hits softer until you mix in a jab. And a monster can't be stunned over and over: each stagger in a fight takes more to build than the last.

None of this ever stops you attacking. It just makes reading the fight the best way to win it, which was the point all along.

What's next

Next week, the art: where the monsters started, and where they are now. Thumb & Tomb is in development and coming to Steam.