A Sharp

The Seattle studio behind King of Dragon Pass

A Sharp, LLC describes itself on its own site as a small software development house located in Seattle. Its catalogue is led by King of Dragon Pass, the mythic storytelling strategy game, and its spiritual successor Six Ages, alongside smaller tools such as the note-taking app Opal and older products built for Macintosh and early mobile platforms. The studio has worked at a modest scale for a long time rather than chasing size.

The site gives a sense of what that scale means in practice. It notes that the studio's games each carry at least 468,000 words of text, and adds cheerfully that this makes them poor candidates for localization. There is also a blunt housekeeping note asking people not to send resumes, because A Sharp is not hiring employees or contractors. Text volume and a tight team are the studio's defining traits.

Thousand Hells: The Underworld Heists

A Sharp's newest game is Thousand Hells: The Underworld Heists. The studio's own page calls it a new game from the designers who created King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages, one that dives into mythology and mixes missions and underworlds into a fresh story each time. It frames the game as a storybook roguelike in which the player leads a hand-picked crew into a mythological underworld to plot a way to the prize.

The Steam listing describes it as a tactical narrative game where choices determine your fate and change your party forever. Four heroes risk body and mind as they descend into the underworlds, and the party must fulfil a contract set by a mysterious client called the Ambassador, whose terms change with every mission. The store page summarises the whole thing as a surreal journey into the afterlife.

How a run works

Each run begins with assembling a team. Heroes have professions and their own skills and traits, and the studio advises choosing a variety of skills and personalities so the party is ready for whatever emerges below. Planning only goes so far: the game's own description warns that no job ever goes according to plan. Encounters are resolved by playing tiles and choosing responses suited to the team's abilities.

The variety comes from how those pieces combine. The Steam page states that the game contains over two hundred unique dynamic narrative encounters, and that party skills change depending on the crew's successes and failures. A bard might calm hostile bandits, while a demonologist communicates with a possessed book. Runs are built to be replayable, with a new cast of helpers each time and the option to retry a failed mission.

Where the game is set

Thousand Hells is set in the Eternal City, described on the Steam page as a Byzantine-flavoured fantasy world with demons and riches lurking below. The player lives there until a client hires them for one last job. The underworlds beneath draw on mythology rather than a single vision of hell, and the studio's page notes that quests can range from stealing the gold of hell to retrieving two murdered boys or saving the city from an infernal plague of insects.

The presentation is part of the pitch. The game is an anthology of mythic journeys, and the Steam listing credits seven different writers alongside hundreds of hand-painted illustrations. Each underworld is described as distinct, with its own palette and its own idiosyncratic threats, and a run takes about an hour. Automatic saving and a synopsis of the story so far are included so that shorter sessions remain playable.

Release and how it was made

Thousand Hells: The Underworld Heists released on Steam for Windows and macOS on 8 September 2026. It is published by Kitfox Games, and the studio's page notes that the game is also certified for Steam Deck. The store listing places it in a stand-alone fantasy world, separate from the Glorantha setting that King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages shared, which makes it a new start rather than a continuation of that run.

A Sharp's own site dates its last update to 8 September 2026, the release day, and links out to a press kit through its publisher. It also points players to development channels including a Discord run by the publisher and the studio's posts on Mastodon, Bluesky and Facebook. For a small team, combining a publisher that handles outreach with developers who stay visible is a practical division of labour.

Quick facts

Studio: A Sharp, LLC, described on its own site as a small software development house located in Seattle. Signature games: King of Dragon Pass and its successor Six Ages, both set in the world of Glorantha. The studio notes that each of its games carries at least 468,000 words of text. Newest title: Thousand Hells: The Underworld Heists, released on Steam on 8 September 2026 and published by Kitfox Games.

Thousand Hells: The Underworld Heists is a tactical narrative gamebook built for Windows and macOS and certified for Steam Deck. Players assemble a crew of four to descend into mythological underworlds on contracts from the Ambassador. The game contains over two hundred dynamic narrative encounters, artwork described as hundreds of hand-painted illustrations, and writing credited by the studio to seven different writers.

Games

• Thousand Hells: The Underworld Heists

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