Duke Vytis. The tower is on fire.Climb.

A pixel-art tower climber. You are Duke Vytis, a crowned grand duke in steel plate: run, jump and bounce off the walls up an endless tower through twelve worlds, before the rising flames catch you.

Download for WindowsInstaller · 101 MB

Windows will say “Windows protected your PC”: the installer is not code-signed. Click “More info”, then “Run anyway”.

12worlds
6companions
28awards
2,300floors a lap

What it is

Steel plate, and the tower is burning

You are a crowned grand duke in steel plate, and the tower you are climbing is on fire. Run, jump and bounce off the walls up an endless tower, from the Basement to the Zenith, through twelve worlds.

The moment you leave the ground the floor below you catches fire. It rises faster the higher you get, and standing still means burning. The whole riddle is one line: speed is height.

Pixel art · single player · keyboard or gamepad

Get it

Play it on Windows

Windows 10 or 11: an installer, or one portable file that needs no installing.

Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit · Version 1.0.2

Installing

Open the latest release and download Duke-Vytis-1.0.2-setup.exe (about 101 MB).
Run it. “Windows protected your PC” is expected: the installer is not code-signed (a signing certificate costs money every year), so Windows does not know it yet. Click “More info”, then “Run anyway”.
Choose where to install it, or keep the default. No administrator rights are needed, and a Duke Vytis shortcut lands on your desktop and Start menu.

Rather not install anything? Download Duke-Vytis-1.0.2-portable.exe from the same page: one file, double-click it and play. Portable version

You need a keyboard or a gamepad (Xbox, PlayStation, Steam Deck and other standard pads all work). To uninstall: Settings › Apps › Duke Vytis › Uninstall.

Download the installer

Every file: the latest release on GitHub

How to play

Speed is height

Climb as high as you can. The moment you leave the ground the floor below you catches fire, and it rises faster the higher you get. Stand around and it will catch you.

The game’s title screen: the gold title DUKE VYTIS with the Vytis shield, the Duke crouched to jump, the line PRESS SPACE TO CLIMB and a key reference below. — The title screen, with its key reference at the bottom.

What gets you high

Run to flyRunning fills the SPEED bar. A standing jump barely clears a couple of floors; a jump at full speed flies up to nine.
Hold jump to chainKeep the jump key down and you jump again the instant you land, without losing the speed you carried.
Air jumpsWith the SPEED bar full, tap jump in mid-air for a double jump, and, deep into a combo, a triple.
Use the wallsHit a side wall in mid-air and you bounce off it, keeping your speed. Inside a combo a bounce gives you even more.
CombosLand two or more floors above where you jumped from and a combo starts. Keep every hop that big and keep moving: standing still ends it. The longer the combo, the more it pays.
Every 200 floors the world changesThe sky, the backdrop, the ledges and the music. Reach floor 2,300, the Zenith, and you ascend, a little higher and swifter, and the tower goes on.

Along the way companions join you (the first waits at floor 350), there are 28 awards to win, and every run is kept as a replay you can watch again or race against as a ghost. The full guide: every rule, every option, all 28 awards

Controls

Action	Keyboard	Gamepad
Run	`←→AD`	D-pad or left stick
Jump	`Space↑WZ`	A
Pause	`PEsc`	Start
Stats · Help · Options	`SHO`	Y · X · Back
Replays	`R`	RB
Fullscreen · Mute	`FM`	—

Twelve worlds

From the Basement to the Zenith

Every 200 floors the tower puts on a new world: another sky, three layers of backdrop, different ledges and furniture. Each one letters its own name in what it is made of: cellar brick, cloud, gold. Over the last stretch of a world you can already see the next one fading in.

Past the twelfth the tower does not stop. Each further lap the worlds come round again, reshuffled, forever.

2,100 floorZENITHPolished gold under a sunburst
1,900 floorSTARFIELDConstellations
1,700 floorCOSMOSDrifting glowing orbs
1,500 floorNEBULACrystal
1,300 floorABYSSBones
1,100 floorSTORMWhite cloud and lightning
900 floorCITADELCut stone edged in gold
700 floorDOWNTOWNA night street of lit house windows
500 floorSWAMPMoss, reeds and dripping bog water
300 floorFORESTTrees growing out of the planks
100 floorDUNGEONCrypt stone, skeletons and crossed femurs
0 floorBASEMENTCellar brick and cobwebs

What is in it

More than a climb

Momentum movementRun-up, wall bounces, held-jump chains, double and triple jumps.
Keyboard or gamepadPlay it with the keyboard or a gamepad. Sharp at 4K and high refresh rates.
A proper deathThe fall down the whole shaft, and then a scoreboard dressed in the zone you fell in.
ReplaysEvery run is kept. Watch it again, or race the ghost of your best run.
28 awardsLifetime statistics and options for jump speed, gravity, ledge width and difficulty.
Its own musicIt follows the climb, and the sound effects are in the music’s key.

Six companions

In a run they join you one at a time, every 350 floors, climb beside you for 320 floors and cheer you on in Shakespearean English. Here are all six, cut from the game’s own picture.

The Grey Pilgrimjoins at 350 floorAn old hooded pilgrim with a long white beard and a tall staff capped in gold. The first, and the frailest.
The Longshotjoins at 700 floorA lean blond archer in green, a strung longbow in his hand.
The Stone-Delverjoins at 1,050 floorA broad, short miner in deep red with a steel helm and a pick over one shoulder.
The Hooded Kingjoins at 1,400 floorA tall figure in near-black, face lost in shadow under a deep hood with a gold circlet.
The Small Onejoins at 1,750 floorA small barefoot figure in olive green with curly brown hair. Carries nothing.
The Shield-Maidenjoins at 2,100 floorA warrior in pale mail with a winged helm and a round shield. Joins last and never lets go.

How it is made

Plain JavaScript and one canvas

ES modules and one <canvas>, with no game engine, no framework and no build step. Electron wraps it as a Windows application, and the same files run in any modern browser.

Build it yourself

You need Node.js (it is developed on version 26). Everything is in the source:

npm install: Electron and electron-builder: the only dependencies
npm start: play it in the desktop shell
npm run serve: or in a browser, at 127.0.0.1:8173
npm test: every fast test suite, a few minutes
npm run dist: build the installer and the portable exe

Source on GitHub

A generated tower

Every run’s tower is built from a seed, and every floor is proved reachable from the one below it. Here is the same idea drawn as an illustration: the gold dots are the jump from ledge to ledge.

A fixed 240 Hz simulationThe game moves 240 times a second whatever the screen does, and draws smooth in-between frames on top, so it plays the same on a 60 Hz laptop and a 240 Hz monitor.
Deterministic replaysA run is recorded as its inputs and its seed. Played back through the same simulation they reproduce the run exactly, which is what lets you race a ghost.
Drawn in codeThe twelve backgrounds, the ledges and their furniture, the HUD frames and the zone titles are painted by code when the game loads, one art pixel to one screen pixel. The Duke and the companions are sprite sheets generated with Grok Imagine, cut into frames and cleaned up by import tools.
Music and sound from codeThe soundtrack is written as notes and played through the Web Audio API; every sound effect is synthesized.
Tested without a browserMore than fifty test suites run the real game in Node.js, pressing keys, gamepad buttons and touch keys, and many are mutation-tested: the code is broken on purpose to prove each test notices.
Made with AI, directed by a personThe code was written with Claude Code and the sprite sheets generated with Grok Imagine; the idea, the direction, the play-testing and every decision are the author’s. Some content (the companions’ lines, the zones’ palettes, the award names, early melodies) was first drafted by a small language model running locally, then checked and corrected.

The honest account of what it wrote and what survived (DELEGATION.md)

The name

Vytis

Vytis means “the Chase”. It is the coat of arms of Lithuania: a knight in silver on a galloping white horse. The Duke is a grand duke of Lithuania after the likeness of Vytautas the Great, with the Vytis on his shield, and a game about being chased up a tower could hardly have been called anything else.

Credits

Made by Su Dievu Studios

The idea, the direction, the play-testing and every decision are Su Dievu Studios’. sudievu.lt · @justas-reverb

Co-authors

Claude (Anthropic) through Claude Code: the code, the tests and the documentation
Grok (xAI) with Grok Imagine: the Duke’s and the six companions’ sprite sheets

All rights reserved. You are welcome to read the code, and to download the game from the Releases page and play it; please do not copy, modify or redistribute it without permission. © 2026 Su Dievu Studios

The tower is on fire. Will you make it?

Download for WindowsInstaller · 101 MB

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