MONOLITH

The sun burned the world. Now it sheds living fire.

Every day at noon the Sunborn, creatures of sunfire and plasma, pour out of their hives and march on the last shelters. Sunlight feeds them. Only shade can put them out.

You are the Warden of TERMINUS, a bunker in Sector 7 with 212 sleepers behind its blast door. Your only weapon is the Monolith: a massive concrete structure that never fires a shot. Its shadow does the work. A Sunborn that walks into the shade sputters, cools to stone and crumbles to ash.

But the sun keeps moving. Every shadow turns like a clock hand and stretches through the afternoon. The shade that saves you at noon can be gone by one o'clock.

Hold the shade

• Read the sun. Raise Monoliths beside the road and plan where each shadow will fall in thirty minutes, and in an hour.
• Bend the horde. Steer the Sunborn through your shade, but never seal the road: they always need a way through.
• Adapt. Burnt-out Sunborn drop Matter. Spend it on new Monoliths, or Recycle old ones for half their cost and rebuild as the light changes.
• Hold the window. Survive until the shift ends, clear the bridge, and earn up to three stars for keeping the door intact.

Four Monoliths

• Airlock (20 Matter): a cheap fence that bends the route.
• Blockhouse (50): a wide barrier that squeezes the horde into single file.
• Relay Tower (120): a tall tower with a long shadow.
• Lumen Spire (200): the tallest Monolith. Its shadow can smother even a Core.

Three days, ten shifts

An orientation shift and a ten-shift campaign, each shift a two-hour window of daylight:

• Day 1 · Sector 7: hold the viaduct, the interchange and the sundown causeway.
• Day 2 · Floodworks: morning fog, clouds that steal your shadows, and a storm that puts out the small ones.
• Day 3 · The Mirror Fields: sandstorms, a total eclipse, and a piece of the sun walking on TERMINUS.

Over the radio, CONTROL keeps the bunker running while Hale, a scout out in the ruins, follows the Sunborn back to where they are born.

The Sunborn

Embers, Sparks, Cores, Wisps, Novas and the Sunspot: fast swarms, heavy molten walkers that shrug off short shadows, fliers that only tall shade can reach, and a boss that needs twenty seconds of unbroken darkness. Weather changes the rules: solar flares weaken your shade, clouds erase it, rain helps, and a total eclipse turns the whole world to shade.

Controls

• 1–4 or click a card: choose a Monolith
• Click: build · Q / E: rotate · Right click / Esc: cancel
• Click Matter to collect it · X: Recycle the selected Monolith
• Space: start the shift · F: fast forward · C: switch camera

Best played in full screen in a desktop browser (Chrome, Edge or Firefox).

About

MONOLITH is an independent game designed and developed by Rakhim Nuraliyev. This is an early build (v0.1.0) that I'm actively working on, so feedback in the comments is very welcome. The game asks before collecting any anonymous gameplay statistics.

Credits: design, code & art direction by Rakhim Nuraliyev. Fonts: Saira Stencil One and Barlow Condensed (SIL Open Font License). Some sound effects built from Kenney's CC0 libraries. Made with Unity.