Ensō: The Ink Spirit

Paint to fight

You are Sumi, a drop of ink with a brush for a tail. Wherever you move, you leave a stroke of wet ink – close it into a circle around the yokai and they are sealed. Every circle is judged: rough, fine or a perfect ensō. A perfect ensō rings the temple bell, triples your score and breaks even the toughest spirits.

But ink dries. Paper cranes, lantern fire, crows and lightning cut your stroke – dash through danger, nothing can touch you mid-flick.

A story told in picture scrolls

The old painter Bokusai sealed every spirit of the land in his great scroll – until one night his last circle stayed open. You are the last drop of his ink. Every great spirit speaks in haiku and gives back a memory of his life, painted live as an emaki. What you learn decides how it ends: close the last circle, or leave it open.

Walk the painted world

• Twelve worlds on a map you walk freely – a bamboo grove, a night festival, the palace of the moon, a spider castle, hot springs where Orochi sleeps and the underworld of Yomi.
  
• Every scroll its own trick – festival lanterns that burst into fireworks, a moon pond that mirrors your circles, bamboo that falls on the yokai, waves that wash your ink away.
  
• Twelve great spirits, from the Drumming Tanuki to Yamata no Orochi and its eight heads – and the Shadow of the Brush at the end of the journey.
  
• 31 kinds of yokai from Japanese folklore. Every one you seal goes into the bestiary with its story.
  
• The painter's temple opens hall by hall: the Shrine of Ink, new brush spirits, lasting techniques and a gallery of your runs.

More ways to play

• Pilgrimage – a roguelike run through all five scrolls: a technique card after every wave, roadside shrines, fortunes, master strokes and five dan ranks to climb on the leaderboard.
  
• Night Parade – the hundred demons march through your scroll. Survive until dawn while your techniques fire on their own, and close your stroke around the parade to seal them all at once.
  
• Zen garden – no harm, no hurry, only the brush.

• Four difficulties, from Gentle to Ichigo Ichie – one drop of ink, one chance
  
• Your run as a time-lapse painting, saved to your gallery
  
• 8 inks to unlock, from sumi black to shu red
  
• Accessibility: gentle closing, reduced motion, high contrast
  
• Mouse, keyboard or controller