CROWN CRAWLER
A dungeon on your wrist. Turn the crown, swing the sword.

Developer   Sean Henley, independent
Release     1 December 2026
Platform    Apple Watch with watchOS 27 (Series 9 or later, Ultra 2 or later,
            SE 3rd generation), with an optional iPhone companion: journal,
            bestiary, deeds, and a plain-words guide to the dice
Price       US$2.99; US$1.99 at launch, until 4 January.
            No ads, no in-app purchases
Genre       Roguelite dungeon crawler
Controls    The Digital Crown is the sword; a tap looses your calling's power
Languages   English, German, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese
Content     Five callings and ten paths, ten places each with its guardian,
            twenty-eight creatures, six spells and the Fighter's four Battle
            Arts, eight bargains and prisoners to free, a daily dungeon with a
            Game Center leaderboard and challenges, sixteen deeds, three
            watch-face widgets
Contact     seanhenley@gmail.com

ABOUT
Crown Crawler is a roguelite dungeon crawler made for Apple Watch. The Digital
Crown is the angle of your blade: turn it, and the sword sweeps across three
lanes of kobolds, ghouls, orcs and worse.

For a thousand winters the Crown kept Ardmoor. Then the old mines breathed out
an orc-host, Castle Ardmoor fell, and the gold the horde strewed through its
halls drew something out of the dark beyond the world. Now fire burns in
Ardmoor. You are the last of the Crown's sworn. Take the long road home:
through the burned country and the horde's war camp, along the siege-broken
castle wall, then in by the way the horde came out, down through the mine, the
crypts, the caves, the sunken vault and the forge, and up through the castle to
the throne.

Four callings set out from the first run: Fighter, Rogue, Wizard and Cleric. A
fifth, the Barbarian, joins once the Warlord, guardian of the war camp, falls.
Each fights its own way: a tap looses the Fighter's Battle Arts (fuelled by
fury), the Barbarian's rage or the Wizard's spells, and her book holds three
that no one else can learn: Magic Missile, Meteor Swarm and Time Stop. At third
level you choose one of your calling's two paths, and later levels bring feats
or ability gains, so every run builds a different hero.

Every roll is on the table. Real tabletop rules, from the SRD 5.2.1 and 5.1,
decide every blow, and you watch the d20 land: a creature's attack against your
Armour Class, your saving throws, initiative against each guardian, and, when
you fall, your death saves. Fights are about timing: cut a creature as it winds
up, parry a blow as it lands, and keep your wind. A new daily dungeon is the
same for everyone, down to the dice.

HOW IT'S MADE
- The crown is the sword. It sets the blade's angle and a sweep is a swing.
  There are no buttons to learn; a tap looses your calling's power.
- A film score, played live. A main title, an action cue for every guardian's
  fight and a fanfare when you level up, all synthesised on the watch.
- Every sound is made on the watch, live. The game ships with no audio files:
  the score, the foley and the storm come from a small synthesiser running on
  watchOS 27's real-time audio thread.
- A world that reacts. Everything from the wood at sunset to the castle's
  halls is drawn with SpriteKit shaders, and spells change it: Ice Storm
  freezes the stone, Fireball sets the mortar glowing, Chain Lightning lights
  the whole passage at once.
- Epitaphs and greetings. On supported watches, Apple Intelligence (Private
  Cloud Compute) can write the line on your grave and the shopkeeper's
  greeting. Built-in lines stand in otherwise.
- Where the art comes from. Portraits and illustrations began as
  AI-generated images, reduced to the game's pixel art. The creatures, the
  corridor and its stonework are drawn in code.
- Built for the wrist. Runs pause when you lower your arm, the daily dungeon
  surfaces in the Smart Stack, and three watch-face widgets keep the game in
  view: Today's Dungeon, Road to Ardmoor, and The Scout's Book.

The screenshots in this kit are from an earlier build; a new set follows in
late October.

Screenshots and the icon may be used for coverage of the game.
Crown Crawler includes material from the System Reference Document 5.2.1 and
the System Reference Document 5.1 by Wizards of the Coast LLC, under CC BY
4.0. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Wizards of the Coast. Apple, Apple
Watch and Digital Crown are trademarks of Apple Inc.
