Gearshift is a loot-fusing strategy game where your job is to change and upgrade your hero's gear: buy from the shop, equip what you find, and fuse matching items into stronger ones. Help your hero to defeat 9 bosses and survive 100 waves of enemies.

How to Play:

• Between waves, buy gear from the shop and equip it on your hero.
• Drop an item on another of the same kind and rarity to upgrade it. The equipped item, or the one underneath, keeps its stats.
• Loot is worth gold: fuse it before selling, because fused items sell for more.
• Choose your weapon: the dagger is fast and have a chance to double hit at crits, the sword splashes nearby enemies, the axe knocks crowds back, and the bow hits harder the farther away the enemy is.
• Start the wave and watch your hero fight. Your gear is locked once the wave begins, but fusing in the bag still works.

Controls:

• Left mouse (drag): move items, or drop one on another
• Right mouse: equip, or upgrade what you wear
• S: sell the item under the cursor
• Shift + hover: compare with what you have on
• Shift + drop: swap instead of upgrading
• Space: start the wave
• R: reroll the shop
• C (hold): show character stats
• Esc: pause menu

Development
This game was created as a submission for OLC CodeJam 2026, theme: Change, and was built using C++ with the olcPixelGameEngine by OneLoneCoder.

AI Disclaimer
I planned from the very start to use AI for the graphics. About 99% of the art was generated with Claude 5.5. I drew a few sprites myself and used them as references in the prompts.

Early in development, I built the scenes, inventory, and interactive side of the game myself: the buttons, tooltips, inventory, gear slots, overflow bag, sorting, equipping, fusing, shop, buying/selling, and basically everything on the left side of the screen in-game.

After I had created the hero and got monsters spawning, I relied more and more on AI as the deadline got closer. It helped me finish the combat, wave system, and other gameplay code that basically exists on the right side of the screen in-game.

As a rough estimate, I’d say the code is about 70% me and 30% AI-assisted. For the graphics and animations, basically 100% were generated with Claude 5.5.

I also used ChatGPT to help build the value tables for balancing: damage, health, item values, upgrades, etc. These have gone through a lot of tweaking, but they’re definitely not perfect.