Grave Ambition

Twenty years ago, five heroes cut down the Skeletal Overlord. The kingdoms moved into his dungeon, turned it into a hero academy, and kept his bones at the bottom as a training dummy.

Every morning a new squad of recruits comes down to smash him for an easy level. Today, something in those bones remembers who he is.

You are the Overlord. They made you a training dummy. Bad idea.

Is this game for you?

• Yes, if you love watching numbers climb, picking your next target, and coming back to the room that beat you.

• Yes, if you liked being the villain in games about heroes.

• Maybe not, if you want tight, skill-based combat or progress while the game is closed. There are no idle gains here; you earn every stat.

Grave Ambition is a casual voxel incremental action-RPG about taking it all back, one stat at a time: smash the academy's recruits, keep a piece of every one of them, grind, evolve, and climb your own dungeon until the heroes have to come down and deal with you themselves.

Every recruit leaves a stat in your bones

Sixteen kinds of trainee, and each one grants exactly one stat. Swordsmen give Physical Damage, Conscripts give Max HP, Archers give Attack Range, Pickpockets give Gold. The stat floats right above each enemy, so you pick your prey: need more health? Go and find the Conscripts.

• Kill. Keep the stat. Do it again. Your numbers start at "+1" and end in the quintillions.

• Breakable bone piles, straw dummies and arcane obelisks give stats too. The big ones are guarded by sentries that keep coming back.

• Capped a stat? Its trainees pay you in something that still grows. No kill is ever wasted.

• Not every recruit bends to the same blow. Squires shrug off steel but crumple to magic, Paladins shrug off magic but rot under poison, and Plague Doctors laugh at poison but break under a good swing. Mix your damage, or pick your prey.

Seven floors. Every room a step up.

The academy is seven floors of training dungeon, from the Bone Pit at the bottom to the Hall of Champions just below daylight. Every room hits 30% harder than the one before it, and a floor's first room is far beyond what one clear of the floor below prepared you for.

• Yes, it's a grind. That's the point. Farm a room until the next one turns from red to green, then push on.

• Readiness colours on every camp, on the map and at the boss gate tell you when you're ready, and where to farm when you're not.

• Training drills send a whole squad charging at you. Win, and the loot is worth it.

• Every floor has a boss, a mini-boss and three loot bosses: a Quartermaster, a Treasure Goblin that runs for it, and a Mimic that is definitely just a chest.

Evolve into 51 undead forms

Each floor boss you break unlocks an evolution. Your old body bursts into pieces, and something bigger pulls itself together from the bones.

• Choose a path: Physical (Bone Brute, Berserker, Knight…), Magic (Sorcerer, Necromancer, Lich…) or Poison (Rotting Bones, Plague Lord, Venom Stalker…). It branches again on the way up, to six tiers and twelve final forms.

• 14 skills, from Cleave and Whirlwind to Chain Lightning, Star Fall, Raise Dead and Plague Cloud, plus 8 always-on passives.

• Auto-attack and auto-cast any skill, if you'd rather watch the numbers than click them.

Loot, and a goblin who'll buy anything

• Six gear slots and six grades, from Common to Mythic. Mythic items teach a skill from any path.

• Every floor boss drops a trophy the first time it falls, and you wear it for everyone to see. The heroes notice.

• Grizzle the Peddler sells floor gear, buys your junk, reforges your affixes and hands out jobs. "The recruits say you're just a training dummy. I say you're good for business."

The heroes are not worried. Yet.

The five who killed you have moved on to deadlier dungeons. Each time you take a new floor, the academy's runner Pell catches up with them mid-adventure, a little more bandaged every time, to report what the training skeleton has done now.

• Cassius the Hero: their leader. Arrogant, and annoyingly good at this.

• Ozric the Wizard: worries professionally.

• Maren the Healer: the party's conscience.

• Vex the Rogue: loots first, asks never.

• Faelwen the Archer: notices things. Like you.

Six short scenes that go from "That is quite literally what recruits are for" to "…Enough."

Then they come down themselves

Break Aurelia the Dawnblade, the academy's Grand Champion, and the five heroes stop sending recruits. They fight you together, they bicker while they do it, and each one that falls makes the others hit harder. "It's stronger than last time! Why is it stronger than last time?!"

Heroes always have one more trick

Beat all five and they lie at your feet. "Well fought, Overlord. But heroes always have one thing villains don't." Cassius pulls out his Plot Armor, and time starts running backwards.

Then do it all again, in a New Game+ with much stronger enemies.

Die freely

Death is a short break. Your bones scatter, you keep everything, and you claw your way back out of your own grave. Again.

Features

• 7 floors of 14 to 22 rooms each, every room 30% tougher than the last

• 16 kinds of recruit, each granting one stat

• Three damage types (physical, magic, poison), and recruits that resist one and fear another

• 51 undead forms across 3 paths, 14 skills and 8 passives

• 7 bosses, 7 mini-bosses, 21 loot bosses and squad-sized training drills

• Gear from Common to Mythic, wearable boss trophies, reforging, quests

• Six comedic hero scenes, fully skippable and replayable

• A finale against all five heroes at once, and the Plot Armor they always keep for emergencies

• Auto-attack, per-skill auto-cast, compact or hidden damage numbers, high-contrast skeleton option

• About 10 hours for a first climb

• No microtransactions