Bellwarden

About the game

Ring the bell. Hold the night.

Bellwarden is a stationary action game built around medieval English bell ringing. You play a bell-ringer in a cathedral tower at the heart of a village. Eight folkloric monsters approach from the dark countryside, and you defend the village by ringing the bells of the tower. Each bell produces a circular sound wave that radiates outward and damages everything inside its reach.

Game features

- Eight hand-designed folkloric monsters drawn from public-domain British and Northern European folklore: the Barghest, the Kelpie, the Will-o-Wisp, the Drowned Ringer, Black Annis, Spring-Heeled Jack, the Padfoot, and the Shellycoat. Each monster has its own approach, hit points, and special resistances. - Six real change-ringing methods modelled on the standard works of English campanology: Plain Hunt on Six, Plain Bob Minor, Grandsire Doubles, Kent Treble Bob Minor, Stedman Triples, and Bristol Surprise Major. Each method's opening rows are encoded in the game as they appear in standard ringing diagrams. - A stationary, pattern-driven action mechanic: you do not move. You stand at the tower and ring the bells in real campanological sequences. Successful method rows raise a score multiplier that boosts every kill until the next miss. - Overlapping sound waves stack damage. Two waves passing over the same monster at the same time grant a 1.5x bonus on the second strike, with a further bonus for three or more simultaneous waves. - Roguelite night-by-night progression. Each successful night earns tithes you can spend on permanent upgrades: faster bell cooldowns, heavier clapper strikes, repair speed for worn bells, a Village Watch militia, and the Great Bell at the eighth slot. - Bell-physics audio synthesis. Each bell is built from real partial harmonics (hum, prime, tierce, quint, nominal, and octave nominal) with per-partial decay envelopes, so each bell's voice is distinct without using any licensed audio. - Ambient procedural score that modulates with the night-time clock. The score warms toward dawn and cools at midnight. - Twenty hand-curated achievements covering monster kills, method completions, scoring milestones, and a no-breach perfect night. - A full bestiary with public-domain folkloric notes for each creature, a campanology primer explaining change ringing in approachable language, and a methods reference page that shows the opening rows of every method. - On-device SwiftData persistence for nights, achievements, tithes, and unlocks. Stats screen aggregates lifetime kills by kind, longest night, and best score. No subscriptions. No advertisements. No in-app purchases. No tracking.