Coilbound

Preface

The small village of Providence was conquered by a foreign power and turned into a salvaging colony for extraction of the artifacts located below, in an ancient dungeon called the Coil. The ruling masters control the forces of reincarnation within their domain, and thus have a never-ending supply of new workers (you). Your quest is to find a way to end this perpetual cycle. Your only lead so far is a tale of a glowing orb seen on floor 100 that supposedly could grant any wish.

Gameplay

Coilbound is inspired by the classic roguelike style of gridbased movement where each action from the player moves the game world one tick. So you can take all the time you need to strategise your next move, or just play in a tempo that feels comfortable. Movement is restricted to 4 directions.

Every time you start a new game or are reincarnated, you take the form of a randomly selected new hero with its own strengths and weaknesses. It will be up to you to utilise these to the best of your efforts to progress.

The default game loop is to venture down, collect as many persistent items as possible to use on the next run and escape using Recall. If death occurs you will lose all progression (unless you hold the Retain item).

The further down you go, the better the chance of finding rare loot is, so the risk/reward mentality is often prevalent. Will you gamble with getting a little further even though the greed might make you lose everything?

Items

Some of the items you will find on your quest are:

• Potion: Heals 20 HP.
• Raise flask: Raises a corpse to fight for you.
• Charm flask: Spawn charm dust. Changes faction to same as user of item if touched
• Bomb: Can damage mobs and destroy walls.
• Barrier: Prevents movement on tile to keep mobs away. Has high physical defence but will eventually break.
• Firebomb: Spawn flames that spread on the ground causing burn status.
• Poison flask: Spawn poison puddles on the ground.
• Poison resistance: Increase resistance to poison. Effects stack and if >100% then HP will be gained instead.

Utilising the appropriate items in relation to mob placements, terrain and current character status can often make the difference between life and death. Learning about various mob behaviours and weaknesses will continually make more situations readable.

Many of the items also have magic equivalents. Can be utilised if tomes are found, and the player has enough MP to cast them (based on intelligence or wisdom).

Fragmented story and Questlines

A lot of the world of Coilbound is learned through item descriptions, which provides a non-intrusive way of telling the story. You will also meet a number of custom NPCs appearing in various parts of the Coil, some are friendly and some are not. Many can provide valuable insights and items to help you on your quest.

The Coil

A procedurally generated, interconnected dungeon with stairs, warps, sections and cracks where you might fall through the floor. Stairs might break, thus making backtracking more challenging.
For every new run you get a new 100 floor dungeon with random room, biome, item, mob and NPC placements.

Once you enter the Coil, you cannot easily go back home. Life is harsh and can easily grind you down. Hunger, plague or fierce mobs might prove too much. The most optimal way of getting out with honor intact is to use a special item called Recall placed somewhere below.

When using Recall, you return to Providence with character level reset to 1, though any permanent stat modifier increase gained will remain. On your journey down you will find various items like food to ease hunger, armour, weapons, potions and spellbooks. Some items are blue in color which indicate that they are persistent and can be salvaged using Recall.

After taking persistent items home they will turn forever persistent (purple) which means that they will not be automatically lost upon death if user holds a Retain item and has enough Retention.

However the more forever persistent items the player holds, the Devil's weight increases and the further down Recall is pushed.

Despite the name, all forever persistent items are not forever since some of them have durability, and some cannot even be repaired.

Replayability

Due to the procedural style of the game world, runs can look very different and even though you might not get very far every time, you might get some new insight that lets you get further the next.

Audio

All music and sound effects in Coilbound are generated in real time in an 8-bit chiptune style.