RUNEBLADE

RUNEBLADE is a top-down action roguelike about holding a line that cannot be held. Ten minutes a run: the horde grows, the ground changes, and at the tenth minute the King walks out.

Your weapons strike on their own. Aiming is not the skill here — position is. Every run you choose what to stand next to, what to walk away from, and which of the offered boons turns tonight's crowd into tomorrow's field of corpses.

Three oaths:

• TEMPLAR — Oathbound Bulwark. Plate, faith, and a ring of hallowed fire. Walks through what others flee.

• SHADOWBLADE — Hooded Cutthroat. Two daggers, no armour, and the good sense to never be where the blow lands.

• RUNECASTER — Storm-Sworn Scholar. Slow to strike, but each rune lands heavy, carries far, and passes clean through.

Three lands, three Kings:

• The Crypt — cold stone under torchlight. Where the oath begins. The Bone Sovereign waits at the end.

• The Thicket — it grows back. Cut the healers first. The Antlered Huntsman hunts here.

• The Permafrost — fewer bodies, and every one of them armoured. The Glacier Warden is the ice itself.

Build the run. Six runic weapons — Spirit Blades, Consecration, Frost Nova, Storm Rune, Meteor Shower, Void Rune — each evolving into a stronger form. A hotbar of abilities: dash, repulse, fury, seal of life, chains of time, and the meteor you aim yourself.

The Sanctum keeps what you bring back. Shards earned in a run are spent between runs on the Sanctum tree: armour, power, experience and more. Die on the third minute and you still leave stronger than you arrived.

Go deeper. Five levels of Ascension for those who have beaten the King. Three difficulties — Easy casts your abilities for you, Hard makes every cast count and pays double.

• Ten-minute runs: three stages, then the King

• Three oaths, each with its own weapon and stats — Templar, Shadowblade, Runecaster

• Three lands with their own enemies, bosses and Kings — the Crypt, the Thicket, the Permafrost

• Automatic attacks: the skill is position, not aiming

• Six runic weapons with evolutions, six abilities on the hotbar

• The Sanctum: permanent upgrades that survive death

• Five levels of Ascension and three difficulties (Hard pays double)

• 33 feats