Thumb & Tomb

The tomb keeps everyone

You will die in here. The only question is how far you get. Thumb & Tomb is a first-person dungeon crawler with real-time fights, played on the GALACTIC BOY, a translucent handheld console of its own. Step through a grid of stone corridors, fight what wanders them, and climb as high as you dare. There's no top: every tenth floor a dragon guards the way up, and when you beat it you choose whether to escape with your life or keep climbing.

Hard, and fair

Every blow winds up, then holds at full draw before it lands, and its shape tells you what to do. A ring closes in on the quick ones: parry as it lands for a PERFECT. The heavy swings lean in with arrows: dodge the way they point. Crack a raised shield, or shatter it with one fully charged heavy. No single blow takes more than half your health, so every death is one you could have read, and when one comes, the game shows you the blow that did it and what would have stopped it.

Every clean move builds your FLOW, and FLOW hits harder, with a fire that grows under the count. Take a hit and it's gone. Play well and the tomb pushes back harder, and pays you more Souls for it. String kills together untouched for RAMPAGE!, CARNAGE!, APOCALYPSE!...

Learn it by doing it

A short training run teaches each move by having you make it, one monster at a time. The first parry and the first dodge wait for you at the moment, so you learn what the moment looks like.

Build your hero

• Four classes: the Knight, the Brute, the Alchemist and the Rogue, each with its own kit, rules and strengths.

• 35 boons: passives, trade-offs and combat tricks like crits, double strikes, counters and damage over time. 21 of them rank up from I to V.

• 14 evolutions: take two lines to rank V and they fuse into something stronger.

• Gear that matters: weapons and shields with rarities, enchantments that only dragons drop, and durability you'll need to repair. It all goes in a shaped 6x5 bag where a two-hander takes up a lot more room than a dagger.

Up, and further up

• Ten kinds of monster, each moving its own way, from skittering rats to patrolling skeletons. They wander; you choose when to fight.

• Crowned elites appear from floor 13: tougher, but worth double XP and a sure drop.

• Some chests have teeth.

• Somewhere in every ten floors, a wall sounds hollow.

• Every few floors a camp lets you rest, sell your finds, stock up, repair and upgrade your gear at the forge, and take a boon.

Every run counts

Each floor you reach and each dragon you slay earns Souls, which you keep however the run ends. Spend them to unlock new classes, items and boons, along with new colors for the GALACTIC BOY's case and screen. A bestiary records every monster you've met and how many you've killed, across every run.

A handheld of its own

The whole game sits inside a see-through pocket console, with the circuit board showing through the plastic. Play it upright or sideways, with an LCD grid, scanlines or a clean screen, and pick your case and screen colors as you unlock them. The sound is chiptune, generated live.

Play it your way

• Full controller support, and made for the Steam Deck.

• Keyboard controls, all rebindable (OPTIONS > CONTROLS), with a SWAP A / B for either side's habit.

• Steam Achievements.

• Your run saves as you play: quit any time and CONTINUE where you left off.

• Short runs or long ones: stop after the first dragon, or see how deep the tomb goes.

• One price, the whole game: no ads, no microtransactions.

• Optional, anonymous play statistics, off unless you say yes: