Runebound 2D started as a constraint-driven game project: build a dungeon crawler that feels lively and replayable without leaning on a heavy engine or toolchain. The result is a fast browser roguelite with pixel-art rooms, rune-driven combat, and procedural floors that push every run in a slightly different direction.
Most of the work lives in plain JavaScript and the Canvas API, which forced the architecture to stay honest. Level generation, collision, state transitions, enemy behavior, and combat feedback all run in a small enough codebase to reason about directly, and that has made it a good proving ground for gameplay ideas before they move into more complex prototypes.
It is currently playable in the browser as a compact vertical slice. The next step is deciding whether the sharper long-term path is expanding the content set in 2D or continuing to use it as the mechanics lab that feeds Runebound 3D.