RuneCipher is a tactics RPG that evolves the turn-based strategy genre: a combination of strategic gameplay and active combat that is built on a stamina system that shapes every decision on the battlefield.
You play as Noni, a young member of an adventurer's guild that seeks an ancient relic to save one of their own. Explore the vestiges of an ancient civilization, and master time magic to bring back a long lost power.
RuneCipher replaces the dice roll with a battle system where you have the control. Every attack and every defense is resolved through active timing: parry an incoming strike in the right window and you negate the damage entirely, with the option to punish with a counter; miss it and you take the hit and spend Stamina Points doing so.
Gameplay Features:
Skill-based active combat - parry and evade enemy attacks with precise timing
Stamina management - every action, deflections, evades, counters, and attacks costs Stamina Points (SP); know when to push and when to hold.
Weapon triangle and Break mechanic - exploit type advantages to shatter enemy guards and turn the tide.
Time magic - wield the power of the Chronos Relic to try different strategies and correct mistakes on the battlefield
Grid-based tactical movement - position your units, control the flow, and outmaneuver your enemies.
Living Battlefields - dynamic weather and environmental systems that change how every map plays
Active tactical skills - unleash powerful unit abilities that shift the momentum of any encounter, but beware of losing stamina points for the enemy phase
Grow Your Clan - develop your crew, deepen bonds, and build a force that fights the way you want.
Calista is a kingdom built on the bones of something older and greater than itself, the old kingdom of Isul. Beneath its cities and farmlands lie the ruins of Isul, a civilization that mastered magic so completely it ultimately destroyed itself, leaving behind vast underground archives, crumbling towers, and labyrinthine vaults still guarded by the automatons their makers set to watch over them centuries ago.
For generations, scholars and ruin-runners have picked at the edges of this inheritance, recovering fragments of Isuldian knowledge and slowly, painstakingly reconstructing a magical tradition the kingdom is only beginning to understand. This is Calista's second magical renaissance, a cautious, gradual rediscovery conducted under the watchful eye of a crown that permits certain arts and forbids others.
Time magic is chief among the forbidden, its dangers considered too catastrophic to risk, its history too closely tied to Isul's fall to be spoken of without unease. Into this world comes a crisis: the kingdom's mana is failing, wildlife petrifying, harvests faltering, and the people given only half-answers about why. When rumors surface of the Chronos Relic's discovery, both the crown and a desperate young scholar named Noni go after it independently. Noni to save her petrifying friend Nymea, Prince Cleo to secure it for the crown. Their paths collide, and in a moment of panic, Noni does the one thing she was never supposed to do: she uses time magic openly, in front of exactly the wrong people, to save someone she cannot bear to lose.
The crown now knows what she can do, and what she can do is the only thing standing between the Crown and its ambitions.
Alongside featuring hand-pixeled sprites and tilemaps, RuneCipher is built on a custom multi-layered rendering system purpose-built for pushing the boundaries of 2D pixel art.
Real time wind interactions with foliage, realistic water reflections, and texture based lighting help create the immersive battle maps in the game. These stages are not just for show, they will constitute important elements in the game's strategy: wind can propagate burning embers in grass tiles, thunder spells conduct to multiple units in water, and rolling fog can impede the ability to parry attacks.