The Ashes of the Grave Fire

GRAVEFIRE is a dark deck-building roguelike about surviving the Realm of Ekothis after a catastrophe that everyone calls the grave fire.

It mixes isometric dungeon crawling with card-based battles. You play as one of four survivors, build a deck over the course of the game, move through what remains of the realm, and uncover another part of the truth after each event.

• Isometric dungeon crawling through a ruined world.
• Card-based battles against regular monsters and major elite encounters.
• Four protagonists, each with their own story, starting point, cards, and special strengths.
• Non-linear event progression across a world map.
• Story revelations after events, memories, situations, and cutscenes.

Several years ago, in the Realm of Ekothis, a huge fire broke out. The populations of the two resident kingdoms were burned alive, chewed away by flames that behaved like no ordinary fire. It pierced through buildings, shrivelled the lakes, vaporized icy glaciers, made mountains bleed lava, and widened the land as the sea level fell. It burned for years, until only ashes remained.

It has been a long time since the grave fire ended. It seemed to have swallowed everything, but a handful of survivors remained. There were so few that you could count them on one hand, if you had one.

Something else emerged from the ashes too. The unburnt remnants of the dead began to gather, move, and shriek with the energy of the lives consumed by the fire. They are reanimations, bodies and fragments animated by the combined unrest of countless souls.

For the survivors, the grave fire left no normal life to return to. Fear no longer matters in a world where everything familiar has already ended. They continue forward because survival gives them a reason to find out what happened, why they lived, and what the burned world wants from them.

The four playable survivors are:

• Crow, the Necromancer, who begins at the Carnival of Doom and the Clown's Circus.
• Skull, the Knight, who begins at the Garden of Thorns.
• Morana, the Alchemist, who begins at the Grand Palace and Queen's Gallery.
• Blade, the Rogue, who begins at the Eerie Chasm.

Each survivor starts where they were when the grave fire happened. Their starting region connects directly to their life before the fire, their first threats after it, and the first truth they have to face.

The game begins with the Messenger introducing herself, the world, the spirits, and the monsters left in the grave fire's wake. She asks you to pick a character, then guides you through regions on the map. In return, she wants key items from those regions.

On the map, regions become available over time. A region contains events, and events can take several forms:

• Explore a dungeon and survive its floors.
• Liberate trapped souls.
• Escort an undead body to its missing soul.
• Capture souls from powerful monsters.
• Find an item for progression or reward.
• Make choices in situation events.
• Heal before a major confrontation.
• Solve memory puzzles to reveal the past.
• Watch cutscenes drawn and narrated by the Messenger.

Most events lead into isometric dungeon crawling. Each floor is made of procedurally generated chambers connected by narrow hallways. When you reach the staircase or exit, you move deeper. Monsters appear as spirit totems hovering above the earth. Get too close, and the game enters a card battle. If several monster totems are nearby, you fight all of them together.

Regular monsters are cards. Attacks are cards. Skills, powers, and consumable items are cards. Winning fights, completing events, shopping with Mr. Keeper, and surviving situations all change the deck that carries you into the next threat.

The people of Ekothis believe Mt. Bleed caused the catastrophe. Flames erupted from the bowels of the earth, the lighthouse near the volcano was swallowed by lava, and the realm burned. That explanation is only the surface.

The grave fire is also tied to Ziena, the Eye of the Raven, the shadow called Necros, the ancient library beneath the watchtower, and the necrodragon Rhazhog sleeping near Mt. Bleed. The story is built to peel that truth back slowly through events, memories, elite battles, and the final convergence of all four survivors.

GRAVEFIRE is not just a game about a world after a fire. It is about the ash left behind, the dead that refuse to stay dead, and the survivors who have to decide whether the world can still be saved.