What’s new

Known issues

• Firefox has to draw the game in many more steps than Chrome or Edge do, so the game may run slower there.
• On an iPhone or iPad the game on the home screen keeps its own save, apart from Safari. Sign in with Google in both, as the guide says, and they are the same character.
• Fighting one monster together, ground loot that becomes anyone’s, guilds, the market and the church bells heard by others are tested by machine, but have not yet been played through by two people at once.
• Far from you, a creature or a tree in the wind can start to move a few frames late.

14 October 2026

Version 17

New

• Eldarwyn has a home of its own at eldarwyn.com. Opened at the old address, the game says so at every start and offers to take you there. Playing as a guest? Sign in with Google first (Settings, Account), or copy your save code, because a guest’s progress stays with the address it was made at.

14 October 2026

Version 16

New

• The game is called Eldarwyn now. Hollowmere is still the island and the town where your story begins, and your character, your progress and your saves are all where they were.

14 October 2026

Version 15

New

• The beacon has a place of its own: the Beacon Ring, a palisade in the meadow south-east of town, where the raiders come in through four gateways. A run is yours and your group’s: light it alone, or with your group, whose players at the Ring join in. Nobody else sees your raiders or can join, and another group can light a run of its own meanwhile. The waves and rewards are as before. The raiders no longer run through the town square.
• Knocked out in a beacon defence with your group, you are down where you fell rather than sent to town. Someone of your group can help you up (stand beside you and press Help in the beacon’s bar), or you get up when the wave is beaten, with half your health. When all of you are down, or you are knocked out alone, the run ends.
• New treasure-trail riddles send you indoors: to the church’s altar, the Rusty Kettle’s hearth and taproom, the bank’s vault and the bells’ tower. Done from outside the wall, they don’t count.
• The town hall’s records room has the town’s records. With a clue scroll they tell you near which place your step is, or who to ask; without one, a page of the town’s past.
• Rent a bed for 25 coins in the Rusty Kettle, or a room in Thornbury’s or Highwatch’s inn, and when you are knocked out you wake there instead of in Hollowmere’s square.
• Pull the bell ropes in the church’s tower, and the bells ring out: everyone in or near town hears them, softer the further off they are. Once every two minutes.

Improved

• Shadows no longer shimmer and crawl as the sun moves: they hold still, and follow the sun in steps too small to see.
• The map and the minimap show the buildings: their walls, rooms and doorways, in every town, and the Beacon Ring’s palisade.
• Coming back to the game, you go straight in where you left off: the welcome card with its Start button is only for a new player.
• Towns take less drawing: the rooms of a building, their floors and furniture, are only drawn while its roof is lifted or its door stands open. In Hollowmere’s square that is some 50 to 75 thousand fewer triangles a frame.
• At night the street lamps nearest you no longer seem to switch on and off as you walk: a lamp’s light fades in and out over a moment, and stays with its lamp until another is clearly nearer.
• Inside a building the room lies in its roof’s shade, as under a real roof, even with the roof lifted so you can see in: the sun no longer throws the walls’ shadows across the floor, and comes in only by the door and the windows. Your eyes adjust to the dimmer room while you are inside.

Fixed

• The coloured boards beside the doors of shops and houses are gone: they did nothing. The hanging signs say what a place is.
• A beacon defence stood still for good once its player was knocked out: the raiders stopped where they were.
• The Rusty Kettle is one building under one roof, with the bar, the snug and a larger kitchen inside. It was built as two, and where they met the walls and roofs ran into each other; from behind it, one roof was lifted without the other. The well stands beside it now.
• The bookcases in Hollowmere’s town hall and its records room show their books, and the alchemist’s and the store’s shelves what stands on them: all of it had been drawn inside the cases, out of sight.

13 October 2026

Version 14

New

• M opens a full map that fills the window. It opens on the part of the world you are in, and zooms out until all of it is in view: the island, the mainland, Cinderfell, Frostholm and Sunreach, with the towns, the lands and the far islands named. It cannot be dragged off the edge of the world, and Escape shuts it.
• Hold the mouse over any mark on the full map to be told what it is: a workshop and what is done there, a station, a waystone, a creature and its level, another player, a pin of yours. With a finger, the first tap on a mark says what it is and the second walks you there.
• The full map has a legend: every mark and its name, beside the map on a computer and behind the Legend button on a phone.
• The minimap has a + and a − on its rim, from 12 tiles across to 40. The mouse wheel over it does the same, and the game remembers where you left it.
• The chat has moved out of its panel to where the log is, at the foot of the screen. Press Enter, or tap the log, and it opens with a field to write in; Enter sends your message and shuts it again, Escape shuts it unsent.
• The open chat has tabs for what it shows: All, World (what players say), Game (what you did and what happened) and, while you are in a group, Group. The log goes on showing the tab you chose after the chat has shut, and the game remembers it. What you write on Group goes to your group alone.
• The open chat scrolls back over the last sixty lines of each kind, where the log kept four.

Improved

• The dock’s Chat button is Social (T): world events, groups, who is playing and emotes, without the chat.
• The journal’s button is called Journal.
• North on the minimap is a red arrowhead on the rim with a small N inside it, in place of the red disc and the three white ticks.
• With all the world in view the full map marks only the towns’ workshops, the bosses and other players; stations, creatures and fishing spots come in as you zoom nearer.
• The marks that shared one tan dot (the guild registrar, the stablemaster, the notice board, the mossy chest, the shipwright’s slip) each have a colour of their own.

Fixed

• On Sunreach the big map showed Hollowmere’s island, without you on it, and Sunreach itself was painted black on both maps. The map opens on Sunreach there, in its own colours.
• The tailor’s badge on the maps was an empty disc. It has its shears.
• The ! that says Elder Maren has a task for you stood over the middle of the square, where she no longer is. It is over the town hall.
• Under the ground the maps show the caverns alone, and above it nothing of them.
• The writing table in Hollowmere’s town hall stood in the doorway of the records room. It stands against the wall by the front door now, and the doorway is clear.

13 October 2026

Version 13

New

• Hollowmere is rebuilt as a town of unlike buildings. A stone church with a clock tower and a spire stands on a green with its churchyard; the town hall and the bank are stone at the head of the square; the Rusty Kettle is a long two-storey inn with its kitchen in a range behind. Houses are two and three storeys with upper floors jutting over the street, five of them in a terrace wall to wall, and thatched cottages stand at the edges.
• Buildings have rooms. The inn has a taproom with a bar, a kitchen with the stove, and a room to sleep in; the town hall a council chamber and a records room; the bank a vault behind its counter; the smithy a store. Each is furnished for what it is: pews and an altar in the church, a counter and mannequins at the tailor’s, fish on the slab.
• Pray at the church’s altar once a day for a blessing: for ten minutes you turn aside 8% more attacks, and out of a fight your health comes back twice as fast.
• The barkeep of the Rusty Kettle sells ale, stout and sweetcorn ale, and buys what you brew.
• A fishmonger and a jeweller on Market Row pay 15% more than the merchant for fish, and for gems and jewellery.
• The tailor changes how your character looks, as Settings does.
• The town is larger, with lanes and alleys behind the square, none under three tiles wide. Trees and rocks all over the island stand in new places: the birches grow thickest just south of town now. Your cottage stands where it did, on the green by the church, with a gate of its own.
• A mouse held over a shop’s or a workshop’s hanging sign is told what the place is and what you do there. The tailor has a sign of his own.
• A mouse held over an item anywhere (your pack, the bank, what you wear, a shop) is told its name and what it does; over a skill, how far it is to the next level; over your coins, a badge or any button, what it is.

Improved

• A tall building lifts away when the camera is inside it, as a roof does when you walk under it. A building with a wing opens up whole: step into the inn’s kitchen and the taproom is open too.
• The bakery, the library, the trading post and the bathhouse each have a shape of their own when the town grows into them.

Fixed

• A trap laid where the rebuilt island now has a tree or a wall comes back to your pack. It would have stayed out unseen, and counted against how many traps you may have.

13 October 2026

Version 12

Fixed

• A bow’s two limbs bent away from its string, which hung in the air beside the bow; they have done so since the first bow. A bow is strung from tip to tip now, with a bend in each limb. Other players’ bows have a string too.
• A bow that is not being shot is carried aslant at your side, its top forward. Its string no longer runs through the arm that holds it, and it keeps its slant as you walk instead of swinging with the arm.

13 October 2026

Version 11

Improved

• Selling has the same single control as buying, at the right of every row. Its box starts at all you own of the thing, so Sell sells the lot at a press, and the arrows are for selling fewer.

Fixed

• A bow that is not being shot was held flat at the hip with its string in the air. It is carried standing by the leg now, and is brought up as you take aim. Other players’ bows too.

13 October 2026

Version 10

Improved

• Buying is tidier. Each ware has one control, Buy with its box for how many, and the row of numbers after it is gone. The control stands at the right of every row, one under another, whatever the ware is called. Runes and glass vials start at 25 in the box, everything else at 1.
• Selling, and taking from and putting into the bank chest, have the same control with “All” beside it.
• So has making things at a station: Make with a box for how many, and “All” beside it, where there were only one and all.

Fixed

• Drawing a bow looked wrong. The arrow on the string swung with the elbow, pointing at the sky as the draw began and at the ground as it ended, and the string hand rose over the brow. Now the bow is held straight out at the monster, the string is drawn back to the corner of the mouth, the arrow lies level along that line, and the string bends to the hand.

13 October 2026

Version 9

Improved

• The game no longer draws ground and ground cover that lie wholly behind the fog, where they could not be seen. With the camera low and far out, that was up to half of everything drawn: on a phone that slowed down there, the game runs smoother. The picture is the same.

13 October 2026

Version 8

Improved

• The picture is no longer drawn less sharp by itself than the Balanced level draws it. On High it still takes that one step when the game cannot be kept smooth; the steps below it made the picture soft and the game no smoother.

Under the hood

• The trial of what a frame costs (?trial at the end of the address) has the button “Send to the developer” under its table, as the record has.

13 October 2026

Version 7

Improved

• When a phone or computer cannot keep the game smooth, the picture is drawn a step less sharp by itself, at any graphics level, and the game says so. If that makes it no smoother, the sharpness is put back. Performance stats show how sharp.
• On a phone or computer that cannot keep up 60 frames a second, shadows are drawn afresh on every other frame, as they are at 60, and no longer on every frame, which made a slow game slower.
• Performance stats (in Settings) say more, for reporting a slow game: under the frames and draws, how long a frame takes in the game’s own work and in its drawing, how often the shadows are drawn afresh, and the graphics level in use.

Under the hood

• The ground is drawn with about a quarter of the triangles: a tile with level ground all round it is drawn as its top alone, since its sides could never be seen. The picture is the same.
• A slow game can be reported from the game itself. With ?record at the end of the address the game writes down, second by second, how it is running, and a new button, “Send to the developer”, sends that record. Nothing is sent unless the button is pressed, and the record holds nothing of your character but where it stood and what it was doing.

8 October 2026

Version 6

New

• The smithy has two stations where it had one. Ore is smelted at the furnace, and everything else of metal (nails, tools, blades, armour, rings) is hammered out at the anvil that now stands beside it, in Hollowmere, Thornbury and Highwatch alike.
• Smelting has a sound of its own, the furnace’s roar and hiss, and at the anvil every blow of the hammer is heard.

Improved

• At the merchant’s and at Thornbury’s specialists, buying and selling are two tabs, Buy and Sell, each a list by itself with your coins shown over it.
• Buttons answer you: one lifts under the mouse and dips when pressed, the one you just used gives a short pulse, and your coins light up when they change.
• In winter it no longer rains or thunders. Snow falls thick where rain would have, and where a storm would have come a snowstorm blows in: driving snow, a rising wind and the land closing in white, with no lightning. Both do what rain and storms do for fishing, fires, sailing and the cold on Frostholm.

Fixed

• Thunder from a bolt close by was played at nearly twice what a speaker can give, far louder than anything else in the game. It is now about as loud as a boss’s slam, and thunder far off is softer still.
• Near a smithy a hammer was heard every few seconds with nobody at work. A smithy is quiet now until someone smelts or strikes.

8 October 2026

Version 5

New

• A mouse held over a button that has a key is told which: “Inventory (I)” over the pack, “Settings (O)” over Settings.
• The site has a changelog: this page.

8 October 2026

Version 4

New

• One game at a time plays your character. Open the game somewhere else and the older one stops, says “Playing somewhere else”, and offers “Play here instead”. Before, two open games wrote over each other’s progress.
• On a computer the game goes on while its window is covered or in a tab behind another: trees keep falling and fights go on. So a monster can knock you out while you look elsewhere. A phone still puts the game to sleep.
• Bram the brewer stands in Thornbury’s inn. He buys ales, stout, wine and mead, and sells Farmhand’s ale.

Improved

• The game starts sooner: about a sixth off the wait for the first picture.
• The sea’s mirror of the sky takes far less work to renew, which every two seconds cost about as much as a whole frame.

Fixed

• In Firefox, for a single frame now and then, lit windows and people showed through every roof in town. What caused it in the game is gone, though it could never be made to happen on purpose, so only time will prove it.
• With a wisp, a firefly or a shade as your pet, the camera stopped following you, and the day, the weather and much else stood still for as long as the pet was out.
• A set trap’s panel was wrong the first time it was opened.

Under the hood

• The rest of the game’s code moved into modules of its own, and the world’s builder was split by place.

7 October 2026

Version 3

New

• The pack and your equipment are two panels, each with a button in the dock (I and G). Equipment shows your totals for accuracy, power and armour.
• The game can be put on a phone’s home screen and then opens like an app, with no browser around it. The guide says how, and Settings has an Install button.
• A new version reaches you by itself. A game left open says “A new version of Hollowmere is ready”; one you come back to after a break loads it without a word.
• Buying by the number: a box for how many, with an arrow either side, at the merchant’s, the bakery and the trading post. Selling, and putting into and taking out of the bank, work the same way.
• A rainbow rises when hard rain clears by day. It was always meant to, and never could.

Improved

• Silver and gold ore look like silver and gold. They were drawn nearly black.
• On a computer, the dock keeps clear of an open panel.
• Balancing along a log or a chain sways your body.
• The FPS readout in Settings holds steady: it shows the average of its second.

Fixed

• Far from the middle of the map (Darkwood, the mainland), the trees and rocks around you blinked out for a few frames.
• Three trees stood inside two farmhouses in Greenvale.
• A shared tree could stand up and fall again for a moment, and a lightning scar stayed on a stump someone else felled.
• With one free slot you claimed a whole pile of ground loot; and “Someone else took it” was also said when the claim could not be made at all.
• In a shared fight, the monster was whole again for the helpers when the first fighter was knocked out or travelled away; a monster could pay its loot twice; and a helper saw a stale health number, or the monster a fifth of its size.
• A deer or a rabbit was not drawn for the moment of its very first turn.
• A leaf or a snowflake close to the camera was drawn as a large square.
• The cauldron’s hint said “Make a undefined at the forge”.
• The shipwright called the Frost cutter your finest boat when you had the Sun galleon.
• An enchanted staff’s picture had no stars.
• On an iPhone, a strip of blue lay under the game opened from the home screen.
• A browser could keep the old game for an hour after a new one was out.

Under the hood

• Most of the game’s code moved out of one file into modules, each with tests of its own.

6 October 2026

Version 2

New

• Mouse pointers of the game’s own: a sword over monsters, an axe over trees, a pick over rocks, a fish over fishing spots and a speech bubble over people.
• The Veiled One’s sanctum loses its roof when you step in, so the fight can be seen.
• New pictures on the landing page, with the boss fights among them.

Improved

• Drawing a frame takes less than half the work it did: in the town square on a desktop, 5.6 ms where it was 10.6.
• The world is built about a second sooner at the start.
• The game is one download, with nothing fetched from elsewhere. It needs a browser with WebGL 2.

Fixed

• The night watchman was drawn nowhere, and took every tap in town at night.
• Taps by the fountain found trees from the far south of the map.
• Bosses and yetis lost their size: the Frost Titan stood no taller than you for whoever woke it.

5 October 2026

Version 1

Hollowmere moves to a site of its own.

New

• The game at /play/, with a landing page, a guide to getting started, a wiki and every item, the last two made from the game’s own tables.
• A shared world: a tree felled or a rock mined is down for everyone, and comes back for everyone.
• Shared fights: a monster someone is fighting can be joined, with one health for all and loot for each who helped.
• Ground loot is yours alone for three minutes, then anyone’s for two.
• Weapons are blade, blunt or pierce. A monster takes 30% more from what it is weak to and 30% less from what it resists, and there are five maces to go with it.
• A character creator, and one name to a player.
• The villagers of both towns keep one timetable for every player, and the night watchman walks his round.
• Every tree has its own size and lean; gardens, woodpiles and washing lines behind the houses; grass in the wind and birds across the sky.

Improved

• Night falls properly: the sun fades at the horizon, twilight is lit by the sky alone, and lamps light the ground softly.
• The sun’s shadows reach about twice as far and fade out at their edge.
• Foggy weather brings the fog in. It never did.

Fixed

• Thin dark lines showed along the edges of tiles on grass, sand and stone.
• The leap on Thornbury’s rooftop course took you through a gable wall.
• A new player’s name was put back to “Wanderer 123” when they pressed Done.