What’s in the game

A short tour of what the game has today. Each section links to the page that explains the rules.

Creatures hunt you, fight, shoot, cast spells, and die. Your own death is permanent. You grow by experience levels and by skills that improve with use.

The world

You come into the Ascmearc through a mountain pass that closes behind you. It is an overworld with a 12-month, 30-day calendar, day and night, and weather. Every step across it takes real travel time: a road is quick, a swamp slow, and mountains cannot be crossed. Its locations lead to the market town of Cēaptūn and to the dungeons. Two of them stay hidden until a quest tells you where they are. Any other cell opens an outdoor area made for your run (meadow, forest, hills, swamp, or riverbank), which you leave by walking off its edge.

The dungeons lie under the barrows, the fen, and the hills. Their levels, rooms and corridors or caves, are made anew for each run, with hand-made vaults set into them. Creatures of the floor’s danger keep coming. Some levels have a special room that changes the rules inside it, such as a shadowed room that drains all light or a sanctuary where wounds heal fast and nothing hostile follows you in.

Light, sight, and sound

Every cell carries light from torches, lamps, crystals, braziers, and your lantern. Walls and pillars cast shadows, and creatures cast soft ones. Firelight drifts gently in hue and strength; magical light holds steady.

What you see depends on your eyes. Normal vision needs light. Low-light eyes see by faint fungus glow. Darkvision sees in the dark, in fading grey. UV sight reveals runes no one else can see. Explored ground stays on the map as dim memory.

Footsteps, doors, and fights make noise that travels around corners. You hear what you cannot see as faint marks on the map and short messages (“You hear footsteps to the north-east.”). Creatures hear you too, and come to look.

The sky

The sun crosses the sky of outdoor levels: warm and low at dawn and dusk, white at noon. Shadows from trees, walls, and stones turn and stretch with it.

By night a faint moon lights the land, waxing and waning with the month. Under a full moon you dimly make out open ground. Low-light eyes see by a half moon. A new moon leaves you to your lantern.

Weather comes and goes with the season: clear, overcast, rain, and heavy rain. Clouds dim the sun and the moon for you and every creature alike. Rain shortens your sight on the overworld.

Every place has a temperature. Water freezes slowly in the cold and thaws in the warmth, even while you are away. Ice holds by its thickness against your weight: a laden dwarf breaks through where a light elf crosses, and falls into the freezing water.

Your character

You make a character at the start of every run. There are thirteen races, each with its own eyes, three genders, and twelve classes to choose from, from berserker and wizard to aristocrat, though not every class is open to every race (Who may take which). Your year of birth gives you a horoscope sign. Characters are not balanced, on purpose: some are a challenge.

Six stats describe you and every creature. Skills such as Stealth and Open lock grow with use. Every kill you make earns experience; levels run to 60. One menu (a) holds everything you can do because of who you are.

Fighting

Every blow and shot is rolled with two twelve-sided dice against Defence. A miss tells you why (“You block the kobold’s spear with your shield.”). Criticals hit hard, and armour and hides soak damage (“Your sword glances off the cave beetle’s shell.”). Creatures look as hurt as they are, and drop what they carried when they die.

Weapon skills and fighting styles improve as you fight. Ranged combat has bows, a crossbow, a sling, and throwing weapons; you aim with a cursor and pick up your arrows where they fell. Big hits leave blood on the floor and the walls.

Wounds can bleed, bites can poison, and diseases take points off your stats. Hit points come back with time, twice as fast while you rest.

Magic

Spells cost mana. A few come with a casting class; the rest are learned from scrolls. Wands cast their spell from charges, for anyone. Rods do what no spell does, such as digging or sending a creature away, for your own mana. Some classes use resources of their own, such as a berserker’s rage.

Things to find and use

Objects lie in piles to pick up and drop: weapons, armour, tools, potions, scrolls, food, gems, coins, rings, and amulets. Each is made of a material, from tin to nicrosil. You put things on in the equipment screen. Everything you carry has weight, and too much leaves you burdened.

Magic items roll prefixes and suffixes: “Sharp long sword of the Bear” in blue, or a rare one with a name of its own, “Grim Bite, long sword”, in yellow. They work even while unidentified.

You get hungry. Eat rations, bread, and apples before they spoil, or the corpses creatures leave behind.

The dungeon’s defences

Some doors are locked: open them with a key, or kick them in (k). Traps lie hidden until someone steps on them. Secret doors look like the wall until you search (s, or any wait) or notice them in passing. With a pick-axe you can dig through walls.

People, quests, and shops

Cēaptūn has folk to chat with (C). Some have topics to ask about, and some sell services for gold. Quests come from the people you meet: kill something, bring something, go somewhere, or carry something to someone. Some tell you where a hidden place lies.

Shops show the price of their goods. What you pick up you owe until you pay (p). Your Presence and the Negotiation skill get you better prices. Cēaptūn has two shops on its square, and now and then a dungeon level has one.

Effects and settings

Ponds glint in the torchlight, streams flow and foam against rocks, torches flicker, and braziers throw sparks and heat haze. Every effect can be turned off on its own in the settings, and a reduced-effects preset turns them all off. Settings also cover font size, color palettes (including high contrast and a colorblind-friendly one), °C or °F, and fully rebindable keys.

The game saves one file per run, when you quit and as you play. When you die, the save is deleted. It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, and in the browser (WebGPU).

See also: Controls, Your character, and Combat.