deepnight.itch.io

What is Deepnight Games?

Deepnight Games is the one-man indie game studio of Sébastien Benard, a lead developer and game designer on Dead Cells, founded in 2020. Its itch.io page is a catalogue of his own small-to-mid-sized games, experiments and tools, most playable in the browser, alongside a few titles he worked on with others.

What you'll find there

• Finished commercial games — Nuclear Blaze, a firefighting action game set in an SCP-style facility.
• Free browser games — short, idea-driven pieces such as Memento XII (a point-and-click adventure confined to one prison cell), Fort Loop, Zero Volt X, Sub Dragon and Cats are assholes.
• Prototypes and experiments — a Dungeon Master-style engine demo, a 48-hour game jam entry (Tenjutsu 48h), and Petit Tracteur Bleu, made for his two-and-a-half-year-old son.
• Tools for other developers — LDtk, a 2D level editor for indies, and a tabletop RPG map editor.
• Collaborations — Badass Inc., a point-and-click action game made with Motion Twin.

Who it's for

Players who like compact, mechanically curious games and don't mind browser-based play will find plenty to sample for free. Indie developers are a second audience: LDtk in particular is aimed at people building 2D games who want a level editor from someone with shipped commercial experience. If you're looking for a large, polished library in one genre, this scattered catalogue is less of a fit.

A practical next step

Start with Nuclear Blaze if you want the fullest expression of the studio's design work, or open Memento XII in the browser for a free taste of the puzzle-adventure style. If you make games, look at LDtk separately from the games — it's a tool, not a title, and worth judging on its own terms.

Benard also publishes development notes and project news on his official site, Deepnight, which is the better place to follow work in progress than the itch.io profile alone.

Who is Sébastien Benard and how does his work on Dead Cells connect to Deepnight Games' games?

Sébastien Benard is a French game designer and developer, identified on the Deepnight Games page as the Dead Cells lead developer and game designer. He founded Deepnight Games in 2020 as a one-man indie studio, and the page describes it as "a one-man indie game studio founded in 2020 by the Dead Cells lead dev and game-designer, Sébastien Benard." Deepnight Games

What the connection actually is

The link to Dead Cells is a credentials and design-lineage connection, not a shared universe or ongoing franchise work. Dead Cells is a Motion Twin title; the Deepnight page lists it only through Benard's role, and separately credits Motion Twin for Badass Inc. under "Games I've worked on." So two things sit side by side: his past studio work and his own studio's catalogue.

What carries over is design sensibility rather than content. Dead Cells is known for tight action combat, fast retries and run-based structure. On the Deepnight page you can see adjacent interests in fast, replayable, systems-driven action:

• Nuclear Blaze — firefighting inside an SCP-style facility, an action premise built around hazard management rather than fighting enemies.
• Zero Volt X — managing ship power distribution while dodging dense bullet patterns, a resource-tension idea close to the risk/reward decisions in roguelike combat.
• Sub Dragon — a shooter with two sides, one invincible and one armed, a small mechanical twist in the Dead Cells spirit.
• Fort Loop and Memento XII — puzzle and point-and-click experiments, showing the studio is not confined to action.

The other thread: tools for other developers

Benard's most direct influence on other games is LDtk, a 2D level editor described as "for indies from an industry veteran." For a solo developer building a level-based action game, this is often the more relevant part of his output: the same design experience packaged as a workflow tool rather than a game. A practical next step if you are evaluating the studio is to decide which you need — playable games or production tooling — and start there; Nuclear Blaze is the most direct showcase of the action-design lineage, while LDtk is the one that changes how you build your own project.

Which Deepnight Games titles can I play for free in the browser, and which require payment?

Most Deepnight Games titles on the itch.io page are free to play in the browser. The clearest paid item shown is Nuclear Blaze, listed at $9.99. LDtk is a tool rather than a game, so treat it separately from the free/paid game split.

Free browser games on the page

These are marked "Play in browser" without a price:

• Memento XII — a point-and-click adventure set in a single prison cell
• Tenjutsu 48h — a short action game
• Dungeon Crawler — an experimental Dungeon Master-style engine
• Petit Tracteur Bleu — made for the developer's young son
• Fort Loop — a puzzle game about escaping a looping castle
• Dumber Dwarves — a dungeon crawler where you can't control the adventurers
• Sub Dragon — a shooter inspired by Saint Dragon on Atari ST
• Sabotage — an action game
• Nightclub showdown — fast turn-based action
• Cats are assholes — a strategy game
• Zero Volt X — a bullet-heavy shooter about managing ship power
• Lost in Pandation — a short snow survival game

Paid

• Nuclear Blaze — $9.99, described as firefighting in an SCP-style facility

Other items

• LDtk — a 2D level editor for indie developers, not a game to play.
• Badass Inc. — listed under "Games I've worked on" and credited to Motion Twin, so it sits outside the Deepnight Games catalogue proper.
• Tabletop RPG Map editor II — a map-making app, not a game.

A practical next step: if you want a quick taste of the studio's design style, start with a short browser game such as Fort Loop or Memento XII. If you enjoy action with a stronger production feel, Nuclear Blaze is the one to budget for. Keep in mind that browser games are best for short sessions, while a paid title like Nuclear Blaze is the better fit if you want a fuller, longer experience.

How can I use LDtk to build levels for my own indie game?

LDtk is a 2D level editor aimed at indie developers, offered by Sébastien Benard's one-man studio Deepnight Games (the Dead Cells lead dev). The practical path is: design a level in LDtk, export its data as JSON, and have your game engine read that file to spawn tiles, entities and collision at runtime. LDtk is editor-and-data only — it doesn't run your game — so the real work is the importer you write on the engine side.

A concrete starting workflow

1. Sketch a small test level in LDtk using one tileset and a couple of entity types (player start, enemy, door).
2. Export the project and open the JSON to see how layers, tile grids and entity fields are structured.
3. Write a loader in your engine (Unity, Godot, GameMaker, custom) that reads layers and instantiates entities from their field values.
4. Iterate: add auto-layers or rule-based tile placement once the basic import is stable.

Who it suits, and the trade-offs

• Suits: 2D teams who want a dedicated editor separate from the engine, reusable entity definitions with typed fields, and a data format they control.
• Trade-offs: you own the import code and any tooling around it; there's no built-in runtime, so engine integration effort is on you. If you prefer everything inside one editor, an engine-native tilemap may be simpler.

The page also lists the studio's own games (Nuclear Blaze, Memento XII, and others) built with these tools — useful as reference points for what a small-team 2D pipeline can ship.

Next step: build the smallest possible level-to-engine round trip before committing to a full project, so integration surprises surface early. For engine-specific importers and format notes, check the official LDtk documentation at LDtk and the studio's site Deepnight.

What is Nuclear Blaze like as a firefighting action game set in an SCP facility?

Nuclear Blaze is a fast, arcade-style firefighting action game: you play a firefighter working through a facility in flames, and the SCP framing supplies the setting and the sense of an anomalous containment site rather than a realistic fire-safety simulation. The listing on Deepnight Games places it under Action and describes it as "Firefighting in a SCP facility"; it is a paid title rather than a browser demo like several other games on the same page.

What that combination implies in play

• Firefighting as the core verb. Expect water management and advancing through burning rooms to be the main loop, with the fire itself as the obstacle to push back rather than enemies to shoot.
• Short, replayable arcade pacing. The studio's catalogue leans toward compact, high-score or quick-session designs; Nuclear Blaze fits that pattern better than a long narrative campaign.
• Setting as flavour and tension. The SCP facility gives you corridors, containment rooms and a reason for the fire to feel wrong, but the game's identity is firefighting action, not horror investigation.

Who it suits

Players who like tight action games with a single clear mechanic, and who enjoy the joke of a mundane job dropped into a weird facility. If you want a realistic firefighting sim with equipment procedures and civilian rescue management, this is not that. If you want something you can finish in an evening and replay for better runs, it is a good fit. Sébastien Benard's background as lead developer and designer on Dead Cells is the relevant signal: expect responsive controls and combat-adjacent pacing applied to hoses and flames.

A practical next step

Watch a few minutes of unedited gameplay and check two things: how the water resource is limited, and whether the SCP elements change the rules or only the scenery. That tells you quickly whether it is the arcade challenge you want or a mood piece. For context on the developer's other work, including the free browser games and the LDtk level editor, see Deepnight Games and the studio's official site at deepnight.net.

What kind of games has Sébastien Benard worked on beyond Deepnight Games, such as Badass Inc. with Motion Twin?

Sébastien Benard's work outside the Deepnight Games label is best known through Badass Inc., a point-and-click action game made with Motion Twin in which you play a chain-smoking cat working as a contract killer. It sits at the opposite end of the spectrum from his solo studio output: a collaborative, studio-produced title with a comic noir tone and action-driven point-and-click mechanics, rather than the small experimental prototypes he publishes under Deepnight.

His wider catalogue is unusually broad for a single designer, and the Deepnight page itself shows the range he works across:

• Action and arcade: Nuclear Blaze (firefighting in a containment-style facility), Sub Dragon (a Saint Dragon–inspired shooter with a shielded and an armed side), Zero Volt X (power management under bullet-hell pressure).
• Puzzle and adventure: Memento XII (a point-and-click confined to one prison cell), Fort Loop (escape a looping castle), Lost in Pandation (short survival).
• Experimental and playful: Dungeon Crawler (a Dungeon Master engine experiment), Dumber Dwarves (a crawler where you can't control the adventurers), Cats are assholes, and Petit Tracteur Bleu, made for his two-and-a-half-year-old son.
• Tools: LDtk, a 2D level editor for indie developers, and a tabletop RPG map editor.

What this tells you as a player or developer

If you're coming from Dead Cells (where he was lead developer and game designer), Badass Inc. is the closest thing to a commercial, authored action game in this list, and it shows the Motion Twin-era craft behind the solo work. If you're interested in design process, LDtk and the Dungeon Master engine experiment are more instructive than any single game: they show how he builds the tools and constraints first, then makes small games inside them.

A practical next step: browse the full catalogue on Deepnight Games and filter by genre, then compare a jam-scale piece like Fort Loop with a polished release like Nuclear Blaze to see how the same designer scales scope. For the Motion Twin side, check Motion Twin directly rather than relying on storefront listings.