What if basic skills could be combined from elements, but every combination was extremely strange, and its own playstyle, and all synergies were extreme and felt different? This is not a normal magic-crafter.
Gameplay
Devour procedurally generated side-scrolled rooms, each room aligned with a specific element
You have permanent flight and dash and zip swiftly through rooms while attacking with auto-homing manual attacks
Start the game as certain incarnations (12 in total) of yourself with pre-equipped elements and runes
The rooms are contaminated with various segmented bug-like enemies that can fly/jump/attach that you can destroy segment-wise and split into multiple small versions of themselves
Combine elements together to form
64 (4x4x4) prisms
- slotted into either your Cast slot or Dash slot or into Chained Prism Slots (that cause effects after the Cast or Dash Prism hits/spawns/ends) - and to generate runes
Each prism has
3 element slots
: its
damaging nature
, its
activation
and its
expression
, and the exact order
forms runes between slots
and from the slots themselves, and those runes define both how the spell acts and what arcane synergies you can pick later
Unlike in other magic crafters
,
the runes are a byproduct of element order
, not directly used
10 Runes
can activate
45
synergies
- passive boosts, but they are all
unique
,
conditional
,
intense
,
risky
and
crazy
,
no boring +30% damage kinds of passives
Prisms are chained together
, in order, a prism's attack is born from the end/spawn/hit of another prism's attack
Equipping a specific element and its associated runes makes the world oppose those elements and runes, affecting what rooms and rewards you get as a result,
elements that enable duplicate runes in different prisms won't be rewarded on room clear
Most incarnations, prisms, runes, and synergies are mysteries, until you do unlock/discover them
No permadeath! You only restart a room on death.
Because there is no permadeath, the physics can go seriously crazy, but you don't have to lose the entire run to RNG physics!
Abuse the power of gravity without having to obey it yourself!
Story
You were vast once, a planetary consciousness. But a cataclysm happened and all that you were was shattered and scattered and now your corpse is full of holes and strange creatures born from them. A spark of your awareness remains, first numb and hollow, but growing hungry, and it will devour its own knowledge and connection to its old body back... but it will never be the same.
You hunger for integrity within yourself
ELEMENTS
There are 4 elements, you get each by clearing a corresponding biome bubble, or by having met the right conditions to receive it. 2 different elements in a spell grant you a beneficial rune (like Matter+Void=Invisibility), 2 same elements in a spell grant you a highly risky slightly beneficial rune (like Matter+Matter=Stasis, which has negative effects)
Aether
The lifeblood nourishes chaos, borne by it
Aether focuses on managing Health as a source of Damage, blood-bonds and Chaos
Global instant zap-like attacks that
cost your own Health
and apply Bond
Bond curse that causes
enemies to share in your Pain
and the Pain of other Bonded enemies
Ardor meter that fills up with Aether attacks and gives you Health Regen and Speed
Mania at 100% Ardor that applies Bond curse to all enemies, makes you waaay too fast and blocks your regen
Chaotic
effects and
multiplication
of attacks
Flux
The endless growth expels all suffering
Flux focuses on charging up instant attacks, Push and using Walls/Rocks for extra damage
Wide but small charged-up attacks that
Push
and apply Echo
Echo curse that causes
enemies to bounce
from Walls/Rocks or simply after a second, with extra Damage
Has the lowest range, and can backfire due to enemies pinballing back into your face, but very dynamic
Matter
The gravity binds, bounds, structures
Matter focuses on delayed attacks that
consume nearby Rocks
and interrupt enemies
Shard-like attacks from Rocks that shrink Rocks and home onto enemies, with a final explosion
Matter damage interrupts/stops/slows enemies and
stops them from flying
for a second, making them plummet
Extremely safe to use... or is it? On its own, you have to rely on Rocks regrowing... which takes time
Void
The fade distorts, all-consuming
Void focuses on draining area attacks that Pull enemies and apply a dangerous but powerful meter to you that you have to manage to prevent it from overflowing
Global decaying
Rift attacks
that apply Distortion to you when you touch them
Void Damage that has
high damage, Pulls and applies Distortion
to you
Distortion meter
that increases your
Damage
and gives you some
Health regen
Ruin
at 100% Distortion that
cuts your Health down to 1
for several seconds, very risky
Aether and Void might be inherently dangerous to use... but they also contain the only ways to heal in this game... playing with purely Flux and Matter requires precision, as you can't heal
Runes and Synergies
Each element has vast and mysterious interactions with others based on how it is combined and no element is easy to predict in what mechanics it will unlock and what kind of gameplay it will allow (ex. Flux + Matter have an Energize rune, Matter + Void have an Invisibility rune, Void + Aether have a Xenogeny rune, the rune combinations unlock all sorts of crazy synergies, like a
synergy that corrupts nearby obstacles to drain and enrage enemies when you are invisible
and so on)
