About
Who we are
Pale Crow Studio is an independent game studio founded in 2026 in Portugal. Right now it's one person, a lot of coffee and a very stubborn crow.
We make games we'd want to play ourselves: dark worlds, deliberate combat and stories that don't hand you the truth.
Codename
Project Lazarus
A 3D isometric soulslike roguelike.
A continent swallowed by an endless night. A kingdom that fell in a single evening. And Arion, an ordinary man the goddess of Life will not allow to die.
Every death sends him back. Every return costs him something.
Combat that demands respect
Stamina, posture, parries and heavy blows, inspired by Dark Souls 3, seen from above.
Death is part of the story
Each run changes the road. Each death leaves a scar.
Gifts with a price
Gear granted by Life, Death and something older than both.
A story told in fragments
What everyone believes happened is not what happened.
In motion
Early footage. Visuals are work in progress and placeholder art will be replaced.
Parry: block at the last instant and the attacker is left open. Charged heavy attack: hold to hit harder and break posture. Fighting a group of Echoes, with thorns bursting from the gear set. Exploring a room: a river, a bridge and ruins at the edge of the dark.
Screenshots
The isometric view: a room, a river and the dark below. 
Charging a heavy attack, with the area marked on the floor. 
Every big attack is announced on the floor before it lands. 
Thorns, damage numbers and posture bars during a fight. 
Gear comes in sets, with rarity, bonuses and weight. 
Rooms are surrounded by ruins, mist and a drop into the dark. 
Echoes keep repeating their last gesture until you come close. 
Four Echoes surround Arion beside a boulder.
Tech sheet
- Engine
- Godot 4 · GDScript
- Visuals
- 3D, fixed isometric camera
- Genre
- Soulslike roguelike
- Controls
- Controller first · keyboard and mouse supported
- Platforms
- PC (Steam) and Steam Deck
- Performance target
- 60 fps at 1280×800
- Status
- In development, early vertical slice
Under the hood
- Built for the controller. Every action is designed around a gamepad first, so it plays the same on a desk or on a Steam Deck.
- Stamina, posture and parry. Rolling, running, blocking and charged heavy attacks all draw on the same stamina bar. Break an enemy's posture and it is left open.
- Gear with weight. Armour comes with random stat rolls, set bonuses and a weight class, from light to overloaded. It shapes how you roll, and how much stamina you recover.
- Branching roads. Each region is a map of roads with different risks and rewards, so every run is a different route.
- Hand-built rooms, layered depth. Combat rooms are shaped by hand and surrounded by ruins, mist and a drop into the dark, so the world never seems to end.
- Data-driven and tested. Weapons, gear and enemies are Godot resources that can be tuned without touching code, and more than 300 automated tests guard the core systems.
Collaborate
Join the Flock
Pale Crow is one person for now, but Project Lazarus is bigger than that.
If you're an artist, musician, developer, writer or tester and this world speaks to you, tell us what you do and how you'd like to help.
Collaboration is currently volunteer-based and/or revenue-share, depending on the role and the project. Nothing is promised up front; we agree the terms together, in writing, before any work starts.