[The Archive]

[The Archive] is a turn-based roguelike deckbuilder drawn entirely in text characters. You fight, dodge and search with a hand of cards, and the same cards are your health.

Your deck is your health

Every card in your deck is a hit you can take. When an enemy lands a blow, cards are destroyed: first from your draw pile, then your discard pile, then your hand. When the last one goes, so does the run.

• Fight up close with daggers, spears and swords, or from range with slings and arrows of fire, water, earth and air.

• Survive with shields and armor, step out of reach with boots and dodge steps, or slip past unseen with Sneak and Invisibility.

• Eat. Each time your deck reshuffles, a Hunger card is added to it. Rations get rid of Hunger. Play Hunger and it costs you a card.

Build, descend, return

• Build a deck from the cards you have unlocked before every run.

• Descend floor by floor. The floors behind you are erased as you go, and a cleared floor stays quiet only so long before a cleaner squad comes down the stairs to find you.

• Return to keep what you found: reach a Point of Return and survive five turns while it counts down. Fall before then and everything you were carrying is lost.

• Unlock sealed cards you take from the Archive's access points. Return with them and they are yours for every deck after.

What the floors hold

• Sealed sections behind locked doors, with richer caches the deeper the seal.

• Green archives: rooms with one way in and the best caches, where the air erases you for as long as you stay. Stay too long and it starts taking cards.

• Terminals that sell information at odds they show you: survey the floor, ping everything that moves, trace hidden connections, copy a log. Every failed command brings the terminal closer to locking, and a locked terminal sends a squad after you.

• and more entities to discover

Read as much or as little as you like

Terminals across the Archive hold logs, letters and notes. Retrieve one, return with it, and it is filed in the Codex beside every card and creature you have met. Read them and a history comes together. Skip them and the game plays the same.