Every game starts as coloured rectangles. Mystified started as flat shapes and a little wizard who could run, jump and throw a single spark — the screenshots below are from the early prototype, when "the world" was a hand-built test room and the pause menu was a list of numbers.

Eight days later, this is the same game:

What changed

• The world builds itself. Every time you fall, Mystified rebuilds its regions from scratch — new rooms, new routes, new secrets — and it always checks that the new layout can actually be finished with the powers you have. What you've earned (your elements, your gear, your spells) stays with you.
• Six regions instead of one room. Frostfen, Emberfall, Verdant Marrow, Thundercrest and the Hollow Deep, each with its own look, enemies and a boss guarding its element — plus the Arcane Nexus at the end, sealed until you hold all five.
• People to meet. Wandering traders now set up shop in the deep places (that's one above, lantern and all), selling gear and spell modifiers.
• It looks and sounds alive. Rooms are lit, decorated and full of little background details; enemies have real silhouettes; and every spell, footstep, trap and boss has its own sound, made inside the game rather than from recordings.

There's a long way to go, but the bones are here — and from here on we'll post these updates as they land.

From the patch notes

Oct 5 — the beginning

• Engine scaffold: wizard movement (run/jump) and the first Magic Missile spell.
• Region graph, generator and validator: rooms are placed piece by piece and every layout is checked to be solvable before you ever see it.
• The on-death reshuffle loop: new seed, rebuilt region, respawn — with the map and fog of war.

Oct 12 — a connected world

• Linked world rework: the regions are now one connected world (gates, a Sanctum hub, a Nexus seal), and secrets always sit behind their own passage.
• Five element bosses, each with its own shrine and arena, and the final boss, The Arcanum — a four-phase fight sealed until all five elements are collected.
• Traders: merchant NPCs with a shop and their own stock rules.
• Dynamic lighting, a procedural sound system, and a graphics options panel.

Oct 13 — personality

• A new old-man wizard sprite on a bone rig, with your equipment drawn right onto him.
• 30 new decoration kinds and 30 new background kinds, five of each per region, plus extra detail on 21 enemies.
• Around 200 synthesized sound effects and per-region ambience that follows the room you're standing in.