Akumajō Dotrider / 悪魔城ドットライダー

"Welcome to Violent Castle!"

In her neverending quest for the Mini Dot remedy, Dot has wandered into a haunted castle full of ghouls, ghosts, and other evil residents.  Will she survive the horrible night?

Akumajō Dotrider is a time attack shmuplike fangame featuring streamer dot_lvl (https://twitch.tv/dot_lvl) built for the PICO-8 fantasy console.

Controls:

Arrow Keys / D-Pad: Fly Dot around the arena.  Don't worry about colliding with terrain, the bat will find a way around it.

Z / Button O: Whip + Subweapon (Axe Toss)
Swings the whip in a short range attack.  If sufficient energy is available, also tosses an axe in a forward arc.

X / Button X: Item Crash
Channel spirit energy to summon a wave of fiery axes across the field.  Requires 20 hearts.

Ctrl-M / - / +: PICO-8 volume controls (mute/down/up)
Note that - / + usually conflicts with the browser zoom shortcut, which can be reset with Ctrl-0 (zero).

Enter / Pause: PICO-8 pause menu
Includes the same volume control options, and some others like cartridge hard reset.

Items

💛 Heart: Pick it up for spirit energy to power subweapons and item crashes.

💰 Money Bag: Pick it up for 1,000-10,000 points.  This is the primary scoring item.

😶 Coin: Pick it up for bonus points (worth 1/10 of the bag equivalent).

❓ ???: Pick it up for ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Version History

2026-08-09 beta release v013 (token count: 7694/8192)

Known issues:

• background doodads don't scroll correctly
• zombie spawning and movement may have issues (e.g., phasing through walls)
• moneybag launch arcs may need a rework
  • while a distant bag is _supposed_ to require a bomb to properly retrieve, i should still tweak the launch arcs to be more charitable
• invuln "aura" bubble is still very placeholder