Cleanse a haunted house by fighting ghostly spirits and closing all the rifts on each floor.

Spirits start out only partially manifested (denoted by lowercase letters). In this form they are rather harmless and you can even switch places with them by moving into them, but every turn they remain within line of sight they will get closer to fully manifesting. Once fully manifested (denoted by uppercase letters) they will gain troublesome abilities specific to their spirit type. You can stun and damage spirits with your spells, and If you do enough harm to a spirit then you'll temporarily banish it, but it will eventually respawn at an open rift. You can close a rift (denoted by ~) by moving into it.

You power your spells by drawing upon the house's echos of otherworldly energy, but doing so is not without risks. The echos are tainted by the house's corruption and contain unknown curses which will hurt or hinder you when using them. Specifically, each collected echo has two random curses. The first curse scales with the cost of the spell, but will only trigger if you hit at least one spirit. The second curse has chance of triggering each time it hits a spirit, so effectively scales with the number of spirits hit. The chance of triggering varies between echos and the game tracks how often the on hit effect triggered for a particular echo, but the exact chance of triggering is hidden (the chance is always 25%, 50%, or 75% (except for Flaw which triggers half as often), so an echo with "Harm 1/4" has hit a spirit 4 times and had its Harm curse trigger once, so the trigger chance is likely 25%). Once used, echos will fade and disappear over time, and using them to cast spells will make this happen faster, so you'll have to periodically rest to collect new unidentified echos to replace the old ones. You'll generally want to identify what curses an echo has before risking using it with more powerful spells.

Along the way you'll also find some single use magic scrolls (denoted by ?) which might help you out in an emergency. Good luck, ghost hunter!

Status Conditions

There's two status conditions which can be inflicted by curses or spirits. They can't directly kill you, but they can place you closer to death.

  • Bleed - Causes harm equal to bleed amount when moving. Bleed is reduced by half when resting.
  • Pain - Temporarily reduces current health. Pain is fully removed at the end of the turn if no fully manifested Flayed Ghosts are visible. Cannot by itself reduce health below 1, but can still kill you if you also take damage from spirits that same turn.

Controls

  • Arrow keys or vi keys (hjkl) or wasd (numpad only works if num lock is off) - Movement and directional targeting
  • z or . - Rest, which collects echos, recovers health, and reduces bleeding
  • x - Enter examine mode, which lets you view the abilities different spirit types have. Once in examine mode, movement controls move examine target and Tab or Shift+Tab rotate between visible spirits
  • 1-3 - Select a spell to cast. Once a spell is selected directional controls will aim it (if applicable) and 1-5 will select an echo to power it
  • i - View spell descriptions
  • e - View descriptions of collected echos and any known curses on them
  • r - View scroll inventory. You can then use 1-4 to read a scroll
  • p - Show message log history
  • ? - Show a help menu
  • Esc - Exit mode/menu or open escape menu
  • Enter - Once you clear a floor (by closing all rifts), recover health, pick up all remaining scrolls, and proceed to the next floor

Potentially Helpful Lists

Characters

Cleric

  • Recovers from harm and bleeding every turn (not just when resting)
  • Spells
    • Aura (costs 1 echo duration, inflicts 2 harm): Hits adjacent and diagonally adjacent spirits
    • Beam (costs 3 echo duration, inflicts 3 harm): Hits all spirits in a straight line
    • Nova (costs 5 echo duration, inflicts 2 harm): Hits all spirits within line of sight

Mage

  • Spirits damaged by their spells are stunned for 2 turns (instead of 1)
  • Spells
    • Touch (costs 2 echo duration, inflicts 5 harm): Hits one adjacent spirit
    • Burst (costs 3 echo duration, inflicts 4 harm): Hits the closest target in a direction and all spirits within 2 tiles of that target
    • Barrage (costs 5 echo duration, inflicts 3 harm): Hits all spirits in a 90 degree arc

Witch

  • Discovers the location of all rifts when entering a floor
  • Spells
    • Bolt (costs 1 echo duration, inflicts 3 harm): Hits the closest target in a direction
    • Blast (costs 3 echo duration, inflicts 4 harm): Hits all spirits within 3 tiles of the caster
    • Cascade (costs 4 echo duration, inflicts 3 harm): Hits all spirits within 3 tiles of the caster or within 3 tiles of an affected spirit (can chain an unlimited number of times, but only hits each spirit at most once)
Scrolls
  • Recovery: Fully recovers your health, cures bleeding, and removes pain
  • Escape: Teleports you to a relatively safe already explored location
  • Attunement: Grants one uncursed echo which has no negative side effects when used
  • Dismissal: Banishes any spirits within line of sight which are not yet fully manifested
Curses

First curse (scales with spell cost, only triggers if the spell hit at least one spirit)

  • Deadly: Take harm equal to the spell cost
  • Painful: Take pain equal to the spell cost
  • Bloody: Take bleed equal to the spell cost
  • Hungry: Also drains the spell cost from other echos
  • Unstable: Triples the duration cost of the spell
  • Resonant: For every spirit hit by the spell, reduces the number of turns before the spirit fully manifests by the cost of the spell

Second curse (random chance of triggering each time the spell hits a spirit)

  • Harm: Chance per spirit hit for you to take 1 harm
  • Pain: Chance per spirit hit for you to take 2 pain
  • Bleed: Chance per spirit hit for you to take 2 bleed
  • Decay: Chance per spirit hit to reduce the duration of the echo used by 2
  • Flaw: Chance per spirit hit to fail to deal harm to that spirit or stun it
Spirits

Note: spirits' abilities (aside from glowing) are only active after they fully manifest

  • Deathly Shade: Can attack you when adjacent to inflict 6 harm.
  • Ectoplasm Blob: Glows brightly, illuminating nearby tiles. Does not block your movement. Explodes upon colliding with you, inflicting 4 harm. Upon exploding or being banished, spawns 2 partially manifested ectoplasm blobs in adjacent tiles.
  • Flayed Ghost: Glows, making it visible at any distance. Inflicts 1 pain every turn while within your line of sight. Prevents pain from being removed at the end of the turn.
  • Infernal Shade: Inflicts 1 harm every turn while within 3 tiles. Can attack you when adjacent to inflict 2 harm.
  • Specter: Glows, making it visible at any distance. Upon fully manifesting inflicts 4 harm. Can attack you when adjacent to inflict 2 harm.
  • Tainted Blood: Only found on walls. Cannot move. Can inflict 2 bleed if you are adjacent. When hit by your spells, inflicts 1 bleed and spawns a partially manifested tainted blood on a wall somewhere in the same room.
  • Vampire Spirit: Can attack you when adjacent to inflict 2 harm. Recovers from up to 2 harm when attacking you.
Hints
  • Don't forget to rest to collect echos before exploring
  • Small rooms and rooms on the edge of the map are safer than larger rooms and more centrally located rooms, and long corridors can be especially dangerous, try to minimize the amount of time you spend in more exposed areas since if you linger they can fill up with spirits
  • Spirits respawn, so fighting spirits you can safely walk away from is often a waste of time
  • Breaking light of sight by moving into a different room is often advantageous, most spirits will follow you into the next room but you can avoid fighting the whole room at the same time that way (and is especially helpful for Flayed Ghosts since you can get rid of pain by breaking line of sight with them)
  • Whenever possible, try to have at least one collected echo which you've identified as relatively safe so that you can avoid having to use unknown echos in risky situations
  • Spells will reveal any map tiles they hit or travel though, which can be used to explore faster, but firing blindly into a room can be dangerous since not all spirits are visible outside of your 3 tile light radius
  • Working out what spirits a spell affected can be finicky since spirits which move into a spell's effect area the turn it's cast aren't affected by the spell but are still illuminated by the spell, and there's no visual indicator for where spirits were banished or the exact set of squares the spell actually affected
  • Spells stun spirits, immobilizing them that turn (and also the following turn if you're the Mage), which prevents them from moving or making attacks but does not prevent manifesting, proximity damage from Infernal Shades, or pain from Flayed Ghosts
  • The order in which harm and pain are applied is:
    1. All harm from curses
    2. All pain from curses
    3. All harm from spirits
    4. Pain from Flayed Ghosts (or pain is removed if no fully manifested Flayed Ghosts are present)
  • Large amounts of pain from a curse followed by a small amount of damage from a spirit can very easily kill you if you're not careful (since pain isn't removed until after spirits act), in particular watch out for Specters fully manifesting and nearby Infernal Shades
  • The Beam spell isn't blocked by walls, it just terminates at the edge of your line of sight, so when standing in a doorway or by a corridor intersection you can shoot down the length of a wall
  • Bolt and Burst are blocked by walls, and you can target a wall with Burst to also hit spirits within 2 tiles of that wall
  • Don't forget to use your scrolls, or forget to use your scrolls until it's too late for some of them to help
  • Echos fade once their duration hits zero, but there’s no limitation on what you can cast with them before that point, so you're free to cast spells which cost more than the remaining duration
  • Sealing the last rift on a floor banishes all remaining spirits, so prioritize getting to that rift to seal it over banishing the spirits around it (and keep in mind that you can freely switch places with partially manifested spirits by bumping into them)

Download

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loose_spirits_v1.0.1.zip 1 MB
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loose_spirits_v1.1.0.zip 1,017 kB

Development log

Comments

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(+2)

One of my favorites from 7DRL 2023--excellent job putting together this experience! The mechanics are fairly complex for a 7drl and it can take a while to learn how to play well (or figure out what's going on at all :P), but thanks for providing all the info that made it easier to get into it, because once everything clicks it does start to get interesting indeed. I like how different mixes of enemies in each room or corridor can create more dangerous situations to be on the lookout for, and the fact that most can pass through walls makes that even more interesting. Although naturally the process of clearing a floor might get a little repetitive strategically speaking since you have to keep fighting all the same enemies again and again until the rifts are closed, I'm sure more content (and maybe some more mechanical tweaks?) will help solve that should you continue to work on it. (Timestamp for the beginning of when I was streaming this for the first time.)

(+2)

Gameplay video of your games.