Styles / grimoire-minions
A wizard's tower through a PS1 camera, drawn like a lost 90s strategy guide, where you play the cute little minions
A wizard's tower seen through a PS1 camera and drawn like the official guide to a dungeon crawler nobody can remember. The world is damp, dark and crawling: stone corridors swallowed by fog, candlelight that barely reaches the floor, things with far too many teeth. But you're not a hero. You're one of the little ones, a squat robed minion with a pointy hat and a big nose, there to break things and run. It's the nostalgic dread of a 90s dungeon, low-res and grimy, shared with creatures you can't help loving. The menus, maps and monster entries feel like pages of a guide: framed plates, stat boxes, a boss's weakness in red, a line of grim lore underneath.
Where the vibe comes from. Click a picture to see it large; pick one or two and say what you took.
a co-op horror game where up to six minions summoned by a wizard vandalise a rival's tower. Its makers describe the look as a dark, horror-esque vibe with PSX graphics and relatable, cute characters: chunky low-poly bodies and pixelated textures, lit by modern real-time shadows and cloth in deep indigo and candle amber. Take the cute-in-the-horror tone, the lo-fi surfaces under real lighting, and an ornate gothic UI frame around the play.
More: Steam ↗
the official guide to a game that doesn't exist, in grimy dot-matrix pixel illustrations, each page a framed plate with a gothic title, a lore box and a few lines of second-person warning. Take the page as a game object, the halftone and dither in two or three inks on black, and monsters (with plenty of teeth), insects and fungi drawn with love.
More: Hollow Press ↗
first-person PlayStation dungeons of warped stone textures, fog and slow, heavy combat, with a compass and HP bars in the corner. One of the games Plastiboo names as an influence on Vermis. Take the claustrophobic first-person dread, textures stretched and swimming across low-poly walls, and darkness standing in for draw distance.
More: Hardcore Gaming 101 ↗
ruined kingdoms, crawling bosses and lore tucked into item descriptions; also named by Plastiboo. Take the melancholy, the grotesque boss as a set piece, and lore told in fragments.
More: Steam (Remastered) ↗
an old wizard descending an isometric labyrinth of brick floors, goblins and gruesome deaths, framed in carved Celtic stone; another Plastiboo names. Take the old wizard as the hero, the carved frame around the play, and death as a little horror show.
More: Steam ↗
an isometric Mega Drive dungeon under a town, ornate gilded rooms, puzzles and grotesque blobby bosses; the fourth game Plastiboo names. Take bright, ornate rooms as a counterweight to the murk, and a boss that's both gross and funny.
More: Wikipedia ↗
Tomb of Horrors (Gary Gygax, 1978), The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, 1982, illustrated by Russ Nicholson), and the 90s official strategy guides that followed them. Hollow Press describes Vermis as drawing on "old dungeon crawler games"; this print lineage is what its guide format echoes. Take hand-inked monsters, the second-person "you" in the text, stat blocks, maps and callout boxes.
More: Fighting Fantasy ↗
an apprentice borrows the master's magic and floods the house. Not a stated influence of either source: it stands in for YAPYAP's mischief. Take magic as slapstick, and the servant's-eye view of the wizard's house.
More: Wikimedia Commons ↗Keep these. Everything else is open.
Pick a position on each on purpose, and try a different one next time. Set them in the brief builder.
Click a swatch to copy its hex. Variants list only the roles they change; the rest keep the starting colour.
the style's own palette
suggested: goblin green and rust on black, gothic titles on a guide page (Vermis I)
suggested: three inks, black, mustard and rust, your lamp the only light (Vermis I)
suggested: sepia fog and silence, melancholy instead of mischief (Vermis I)
suggested: warped grey stone, brown earth and dim gold HUD bars (King's Field)
suggested: red-brown brick floors in a carved grey stone frame, torches and skulls (The Immortal)
tokens.json holds an indigo night sampled from YAPYAP's screenshots with candle amber, wizard purple and a red health orb, plus variants for a Vermis plate (black, goblin green, rust and parchment), the pestilent mines in three inks, a sepia silver swamp, King's Field's grey stone and The Immortal's brick labyrinth. Type is Jacquard 12, a pixel blackletter, for titles and VT323, a terminal face, for lore and stats. These are suggestions.
The samples are editable: type your own words to try the faces.
Jacquard 12 400 · 44pxUnifrakturMaguntia, Old English Text MT, serifGrimoire Minions
VT323 400 · 20pxCourier New, monospaceA wizard's tower seen through a PS1 camera and drawn like the official guide to a dungeon crawler nobody can remember. The world is damp, dark and crawling: stone corridors swallowed by fog, candlelight that barely reaches the floor, things with far too many teeth.
dungeon synth drone dripping stone candle crackle muttered gibberish incantations squeaky minion yaps heavy footsteps in the fog breaking crockery PS1 reverb creaking doors
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Set the dials and pick a direction, then copy the brief into a prompt for Claude or a note for a teammate. Your choices stay in this browser.