From an empty folder to a playable level

Crystal Dream started on 13 August 2026 with one goal: a side-scrolling action platformer in the spirit of Wonder Boy in Monster Land and Monster World, built with Phaser 4 and Vite. This first devlog covers the first four days, from the empty folder to a level you could actually play.

The first title screen: an illustrated parchment with the title spelled "Cristal Dream" and the line "A Tolkien-inspired adventure" — The very first title screen. Note the spelling, and the subtitle: the story would change completely a week later.

Squares first, art later

Everything on screen was a placeholder: the hero was a green rectangle, the enemies red squares, the ground flat brown. That was on purpose. Before drawing a single sprite, the important part was the feel: how the jump rises and falls, how enemies take hits, how coins burst out of a defeated monster.

By the end of day one the game already had:

Gold coins flying out of defeated enemies, with a counter in the HUD.
Combat formulas and enemy health bars split into tiers, with enemies that respawn.
Zelda-style hearts for Ash’s health (hand-drawn, black outline, a little shine, hollow when empty) and a pixel-art spinning coin.
A design document and a work plan: the long list of everything a Wonder Boy-like game needs.

The hero, still a green rectangle, swinging at red-square enemies on a grassy hill — Placeholder combat: a green rectangle, red squares, coins and health bars.

A real level

On day two the hand-coded test level was replaced by a Tiled tilemap, which is how every map of the game is built today. A new level arrived with it: hills with diagonal slopes, floating platforms, a parallax sky, and an underground area. You fall into it through a well and climb back out on zig-zag ledges.

The underground area: a dark shaft dug into grey rock, below the grassy surface — Down the well: the first underground area, and the zig-zag ledges to climb back up.

The jump was tuned twice in two days. First it got snappier, with gravity of its own for the hero. Then it got higher, to reach the new floating platforms.

Menus, gamepads and a title screen

A game needs a front door, so there is now a title screen with a logo and “Press start to begin”. Pressing the menu button in game opens a secondary screen with three tabs: map, inventory and options. The controls can be remapped, and an external gamepad works out of the box: A to jump, B to attack, Start for the menu.

The pause menu: three tabs (Map, Inventory, Options) and a list of eight worlds, all locked except the first — The first menu. The map lists eight worlds with names from the original, Tolkien-flavoured story.

That map tab is a small time capsule. At this point the hero was called Dren, there were eight worlds, and the setting borrowed heavily from The Lord of the Rings. None of that survived week 2.

By the numbers

30 commits in four days.
Versions 0.1.0 and 0.2.0, and the start of 0.3.0.
One level, zero sprites, and plenty of red squares.