You are no hero - only a sinner crawling out of the Land of the Damned.
Guided by a Saint who is trapped in a lantern, you push forward by bleeding borrowed Light.
Interact with soul remnants in Hell and unearth memories of your past.
Borrowed Light is a hack & slash roguelite where story and meta progression are delivered via interactables: enter a map to explore, put the other sinners to rest, and commune with the damned entities of Hell.
Each interactable type triggers a unique dialogue of choices depending on how much of your memory of your earthly deeds you have already unraveled.
The fate of those petrified souls is in your hands, and it is up to you to grant them hope or despair. Ruthlessly harvest their energies, restoring your Light, regaining Memory to become more powerful, and invoking a wide variety of other effects and consequences - or sacrifice a bit of yourself to discover more of their story.
Every interactable features a separate progression path that tells you more about the lost soul behind it, improves the rewards they grant across future playthroughs, and sometimes unravels some of your own deeds back on Earth.
Your Light is your Life: Your borrowed light will be drained by enemy attacks. Squander it all, and you will have to start anew - yet naught is lost, for Hell remembers you: any interactable progression will be retained.
Your Sins are your Skills: Gather memory of your past sins and use it to upgrade each attack in the combo separately for a variety of effects that conditionally buff your damage or deliver other effects - or pick a Memento that will unlock more interaction options.
Your Curses grant Power: Casting burdens you with corruption and forces you to pick Curses that change your appearance - upgrading your future Casts, but accumulating a Light cost on them.
You're trapped in eternal limbo with many others.
There is no authority to judge you.
Is Hell... broken?
Start with the Renegade and reveal his story to unlock the Witch and the Oathbreaker.
Discover Story interactables to learn more about how their past binds them, and unravel their intertwined fates.
Use the knowledge to challenge your "holier-than-thou" guide in the lantern, and reveal the true nature of their plight.
Explore the initial three biomes - the Wither, the Haunt and the Slough - and contact lost souls to open the way to the deeper circles of Hell.
Reach the three hidden Circles and vanquish the Fallen to let them invade your future runs.
Challenge them and restore their full power, for you will need their Boons to reach the final showdown at the seventh Circle.
No AI was used in the making of this game.