Hatchbar

Your desktop has a basement now.

Hatchbar is a small idle game that lives in a thin strip along the bottom of your screen. While you write, code or watch something, a pixel village goes about its day down there: adventurers hunt, eggs hatch, and Hatchlings, the tiny monsters you raise, grow up.

Something is watching from above

The village lives under your taskbar for a reason. Up there, past every window you open, is the Rift Lord: terrifying, and a little clumsy. The village journal tells the story one entry at a time as you play.

Poke the village

You do not need to open a menu. Click a building to go straight to it, tap a warm egg to hatch it, pet a Hatchling and it talks back. Some of them get annoyed if you keep going.

Requests and a focus candle

The village board always has a few small requests to work toward. Light a 25- or 50-minute focus candle while you work; when it burns down, an egg is waiting.

Your Hatchlings become their weapons

There are no classes. Hand an adventurer a Hatchling, and when they set out from the village it bursts into sparks and comes back together in their hands as a weapon. Every species turns into a different one and brings its skill along. When they come back to the village, it hops back down and follows them around.

The weapon grows with you

A Hatchling in the weapon slot earns experience from every hunt. Enhance it all the way to +10: at +5 and +10 the weapon takes on a new look, and its skill hits harder and looks bigger. Enhancement never fails.

Armor and trinkets come from the hunt

Bosses always leave something behind, and ordinary hunts sometimes do. Armor keeps your adventurers standing. Trinkets push critical hits, speed and how much the village brings home. Compare, lock, or break down what you do not need.

Mix two into one you have never seen

Pick any two Hatchlings and they become something new, usually one tier higher. Tier 4 needs two of one element, though, and tier 5 only comes from certain pairs. There are no dice: what you get depends only on the two Hatchlings you pick, so every discovery is real knowledge. Pairs you have never tried show only ???.

Grow, branch, and dead-end on purpose

Hatchlings gain experience in battle and glow when they are ready to evolve. Some lines branch. Some end. Then there is the altar: offer two to six Hatchlings and see how it answers. Cold, warm, hot. The right offering wakes something that is not on any chart.

Rebirth and carry one friend

Clear enough hunting grounds and you can start the village over with one Hatchling of your choice. Every rebirth opens something new.

Built to be ignored

Close the game and your village keeps going at half pace for up to 12 hours. Clicks pass through the empty parts of the strip. Leave your PC alone for a while and the adventurers pitch camp by the fire and keep hunting on their own, using almost no CPU. When you come back, one line tells you what they brought home.

What you get

47 species across six star tiers, including hidden ones you will only find by trying

Every Hatchling becomes a weapon in battle, with a new look at +5 and +10

Armor and trinkets with their own stats, dropped by bosses and hunts

An equipment window and inventory to compare and break down gear

Six personalities with their own lines

A guest who visits once a day, no streaks to keep

46 Steam Achievements, a weekly boss leaderboard, Steam Cloud saves

Mornings, evenings and nights that follow your PC clock, and a winter village every December

A focus candle that turns finished sessions into eggs

Rumors from guests and requests that hint at hidden recipes

17 decorations earned by playing, never sold

A weekly work card that turns your week into a village summary (stays on your PC)

Program detection, off unless you turn it on (the game asks first): special Hatchlings appear depending on the kind of program you are using. Only executable file names are checked, never window titles or screen contents, and this information never leaves your PC. Every Hatchling can also be found another way

30 languages, including English, Korean, Japanese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, German and French

One price

No ads. No energy. No premium pass. You buy it once and it is yours.

Thai and Arabic text use the Silver font by Poppy Works and Arabixel Basic by ArabianDev (CC BY 4.0).

Music by 1144ghost on itch.io.