Ashen Testament

A roguelite where your choices shape the world around you.

You are the Custodian of a living book. Your Bearer carries it down the road to the Black Gate, through three countries of servants who want what is written in it. Fast blade-and-gun combat, a branching road of fights and choices, and a world that remembers every death.

Every death is written down

• When a Bearer falls, the book answers with a Decree, a new law the world must obey on the next run. Then someone else picks it up: a stranger with a trade, or the kin of the one who fell, carrying something of theirs. The names of the dead go up on the Wall of the Fallen. The foe that killed you gets a name too, and it will be waiting.

Win, and the next Bearer comes for you

Reach the Black Gate and take the seat, and your Bearer becomes the Ruler. Your statue goes up. Your weapons become theirs to face. The next Bearer has to cut through the reign you built.

Blade in one hand, something worse in the other

• 25 weapons for two hands: sabres and scythes, pistols and slings, censer-flails, shears, zweihanders

• Testaments to write into the book, with resonances that wake when you build toward them, and 12 fusions

• Dash through a blow to slip it, and read each foe's wind-up before it lands

Three countries, and everything in them

• 39 kinds of foe: candle-headed monks, paper hounds, misprints that split in two, a Bell-Widow who will not stop ringing

• Five bosses, each with its own pattern to learn

• Rival factions that fight each other, and you

• 113 road events, a stall of strange goods, Oaths to swear for greater rewards

A book that explains itself

Hover over any of the book's words for a plain meaning. When you die, a page tells you what killed you and what to try next time. Plenty of comfort options, too: screen shake, head bob, flashes, field of view.

Features

• Hand-drawn pixel art in a first-person world

• Permadeath runs with a succession that carries on

• Choices that change the laws, the people and the road

• 28 achievements and leaderboards

• Steam Cloud saves