Custos

Step into the void—where your skill is your only salvation, and every choice carves your fate.
You are a demonic creation, thrown into an unforgiving trial to become hell’s next guardian. Survive long enough and you just might fight the devil himself.

Custos is a fast-paced top-down arcade shooter with roguelite elements. Inspired by Devil Daggers, it challenges you to survive for as long as possible against relentless waves of increasingly deadly enemies.

Armed with two attack modes—a fast, narrow shot and a powerful, wide blast—you must adapt to overwhelming odds. Demons close in from every angle. One hit is all it takes to end your run.

Slain foes drop crystals, the key to becoming stronger. When you stop firing, crystals fly to you—but only then. After collecting enough, you’re offered a choice between multiple random upgrades, each one changing your playstyle. With every upgrade opportunity, new choices are reshuffled, adding replayability and depth to every run.

The arena is a circular platform suspended in darkness. You are the only source of light. Shadows close in. The edge is deadly. Enemies strike from the abyss beyond your vision.

Your score is measured in survival time. The longer you last, the higher you climb on the leaderboard. But with each minute, the pressure mounts.

Will you embrace the chaos? Will you master the arena?
Will you become the next guardian?

About this game:

Custos is a fast-paced top-down arcade shooter with roguelite elements. Survive as long as you can in a dark, circular arena swarmed by relentless demons. Collect crystals, choose from random upgrades, and adapt your build with every run. One hit is fatal—will you rise as the next guardian, or fall into the abyss?

This game was a solo project for my uni class and my first ever game. It was heavily inspired by another game called Devil Daggers. Through its development I decided to put some of my own touches on it, either because of personal preference or my limited programing experience. Custos was made from the ground up with Monogame.

To anybody who decides to try out my game, thanks for playing! Any feedback is appreciated!

Credits:

Skull sprites: SkaldingDelight

• itch.io link: https://itch.io/profile/skalding

Dagger and blast sound effects: VoiceBosch

• Pixabay link: https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/laser-gun-174976/

Music and other sound effects: Nino Boštjančič

And thank you to all my friends and colleagues that playtested the game (credits in-game) :D

Everything else was made by me

Additional notes:

The game officially supports the next aspect ratios:

• 4:3
• 3:2
• 16:10
• 16:9

Any aspect ratios that are not listed above, will NOT prevent the game from launching. It just simply was not tested and might result in weird graphical glitches

In windowed mode the game will cycle through all supported resolutions in the order above!

In fullscreen mode the game will cycle only through aspect ratios natively supported by YOUR monitor. if you'd like to use different aspect ratios in fullscreen mode, you will have to modify the resolution of your monitor in your OS' settings

The game was tested and is confirmed running well on the following hardware specs (2011 laptop):

• CPU: Intel Core i5 3320m
• GPU: Intel HD Graphics 4000
• RAM: 4GB
• Storage: yes
• Display resolution: 1366 x 768

The game could probably run on even weaker hardware and most definitely on anything newer/more powerful, i just haven't been able to test it. The whole game is running on one thread anyway :)