Factsheet

• Game KNELL
• Developer Mainframe Gaming — solo-developed, two-person studio
• Genre Survivors-like / bullet heaven, folk horror
• Platforms Steam (Windows, Linux, macOS on Apple Silicon); Android & iOS to follow
• Release Early Access following Steam Next Fest, October 2026
• Price $3.99 — complete game, no ads, no microtransactions; price will not change at 1.0
• Engine None — a bespoke C++ engine, built from the metal up
• Press contact hello@playknell.com
• Site / Discord / X playknell.com · discord · @playknell

In one line

You are the last bellkeeper of a plague-dead parish, ringing the night office while the dead answer — a grim folk-horror survivors-like where the bell keeps the time and the time keeps getting worse.

Description

Each night you ring the passing bell for the dead, as the office demands — but the bell has begun calling something back. Survive from the first toll to matins: twenty minutes of dark, eight violent rites drawn from grave-craft and sexton's tools, a night that changes as worse things answer, and two Tolling Ones — things the bell named directly. Fall, and the ash you swept buys the parish back a little at a time. Survive, and you may press on into an endless dark that ends every run eventually — how far is up to you.

Every word in KNELL is a real one: the rites, the offices, and the bell-lore are drawn from plague-era church practice — vivos voco, mortuos plango, fulgura frango. The parish keeps a lexicon.

Feature points

• The bell keeps time: every minute tolls a worse congregation; elites, surge floods, and two Tolling Ones on a fixed liturgy.
• Eight rites, each evolving with its paired relic into something the parish never sanctioned.
• The Wick, the ash, the Reliquary: run-based play with a permanent restoration meta between nights.
• Endless mode past dawn, where the bell falls silent and the dark compounds without mercy.
• Full controller support everywhere; native Linux build; no engine, no ads, no dark patterns.
• An audio identity of drone and bell — no soundtrack, on purpose. The toll is the score.

About the developer

Mainframe Gaming is a studio of two: one who backs, one who builds. The building half is a freelance mobile developer of more than a decade who wanted a survivors-like with the lights off, and built one from the metal up — no game engine, a bespoke C++ engine written for this game alone, one codebase from Steam to phones. Every line of KNELL comes from one keyboard. It is the studio's first game.

Art & logos

Screenshots and trailer land here with the store page. Right-click to save; all assets may be used in coverage.

The boring but important part

KNELL™ is a trademark of Mainframe Gaming LLC. Monetization disclosure: paid up front on Steam; free with a single $3.99 unlock on mobile; no ads, no currency, nothing consumable. Streaming and video coverage, monetized or not, is welcome and needs no permission. Privacy.