Sclera
Sclera is a no-save, session-based game of random encounters for fans of older RPGs and interactive horror fiction. While there are scripted events and stories that can occur, much of the game’s content is the result of traditional procedural generation techniques; no two runs will ever be the same.
But above all, this is a passion project bringing together my love of turn-based combat, atmospheric music, and dark fantasy tales. Thank you for checking it out!
The Story:
An unseen cosmic entity has been changing the planet’s inhabitants over time. While some have gained immunity to its hunt, or joined one of the many cults dedicated to its cause, most are repeatedly marked, stalked and preyed upon until their eventual thralldom – often first driven to madness by the knowledge of their impending doom. You are the latest Followed One seeking release from this cycle as the cursed population continues to decline and fragment into factions. What will happen upon your inevitable meeting with the Shadow?
Features:
- High replayability with session gameplay in mind: expect one character’s run to take between 30 and 60 minutes.
- Multiple endings and achievements for various branching paths and conditional states.
- Gameplay and aesthetics influenced by D&D, interactive fiction, turn-based survival horror classics (Laplace no Ma, Sweet Home), modern roguelikes (NEO Scavenger, Darkest Dungeon, FTL), and 90’s RPGs (Fallout, Darklands, Final Fantasy, Earthbound).
- Challenging and strategic turn-based combat.
- A progression system incorporating unlockable abilities and obtainable gear.
- Text-based exploration: both procedurally generated and custom-written interactive fiction (choice-based, non-parser, puzzle-free text adventures/narratives).
- Procedurally generated enemies and towns.
- No meta-progression, as in the vein of traditional roguelikes where only a player’s skill and decision making will determine the outcome.
- A world setting that uses themes of Lovecraftian/cosmic horror, weird fiction, sci-fi, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic urban fantasy.
- An original soundtrack inspired by The Thing and Silent Hill 2, along with ~80 different SFX.
Game Discussion
Steam User 6
A fun game for me to pick up for a short, less-involved game session, and I'd agree with the reviewer who said it felt like one of those game books from back in the whensies.
You pick an archetype, which is essentially window-dressing for which skill suffers no sanity loss from failed skillchecks during exploration type situations. I just pick the same one so I don't forget which I picked for the current run and end up endangering my sanity level when I don't mean to. This probably my only real gameplay complaint at this point - the choice itself doesn't feel relevant, as the benefit is the same, just in different non-gameplay situations. Those situations don't stand enough apart from a gameplay standpoint to notice the difference, though, so to me it's like choosing the color of your car in a racing game. Yes, the skills can affect different situations, but it's difficult/impossible to really angle yourself towards them to try to maximize your usage. The game will present you with two skill options whenever you're exploring in town, and typically just one if you're exploring out in the wild, so it's basically down to RNG on the skillcheck front - there is no "stealthy" play style, for instance, though stealth and mobility and related skills are in the game. A caveat: It's possible the game is designed to offer up skillchecks in amounts and frequencies that make these choices meaningful, but I'm unable to notice it, which is its own problem even if that should be the case.
Leveling up through the acquisition of Essence (through combat or exploration) gets you stat points, which unlock abilities and perks. There are four stats to put points into (up to four in any stat, eight points seems max per game) and spending them in different combinations unlocks different perks as well:
Dexterity - Mr Pewpew man. Focuses on gun use and bonuses to that end.
Resolve - Mr Gadget guy. Focuses on use of reusable "Tools" (separate from consumable "Items").
Fortitude - Mr Tough guy. Focuses on hp regen and a bit of return damage.
Wits - Mr Random Upgrades guy. Focused mainly on a lot of interesting varied effects, mostly passive and/or with different percentage trigger chances - this one increases grenade strength, but that one has a chance of burning all the enemies at the start of a turn, etc. Each of them uncaps the number of carryable consumables of a single type, and there's a minor standard shield benefit at some point as well.
The perks are neat, and tend to help you out if you're pushing hard down a certain stat road. At least 2 in a stat will be necessary to see the QoL perks that help you out with the gameplay aspect that stat covers. No action cost for changing gun/shield, for instance, can be a major thing in a game where you default to 2 action points and can have one randomly taken away if you're not at 100% sanity.
A side note: Sanity loss and its related combat penalty, random AP loss, felt REALLY punishing on my early runs, including while I was trying to be very careful with my sanity loss. Later runs, where I was more cavalier about the whole business, seemed to go just fine, though, so if you pick it up and find yourself getting repeatedly kicked in your AP, know that it's not as bad as it seems.
Each combat consists of 1-5 thralls and possibly a cultist (non-damage dealing disabler) and you take your turns dealing gun damage, using items or tools and changing shield/gun/stances.
After each combat, you'll go through another portal and either randomly end up in a new wilderness location or in a town. If you land in a town (you can also find coordinates to choose to go directly), you'll have some extra options:
Explore - track down and attain some Essence within the safer confines of the town via skillcheck
Shop - Spend Merchant Coins (catchall term for valuables you can trade for things you want) for a new random gun type upgrade (no dupes, always an upgrade), tool or pair of a random consumable.
Overhear - Eavesdrop on people talking if you'd like to learn more about the lore of the game. To the best of my knowledge, it does not have an in-game effect. You're not penalized for not knowing that the Shadow descended on the world in the year 2032 or so on, so you can safely ignore it once you've started to see a lot of repeats, or if you simply never had an interest.
Craft - Break down two of a consumable to craft one of another type
I would probably have liked to see more ability to explore the town - either through navigation to the Essence, or simply as a general navigation between essence/shop/craft locations, but it's not a big deal, and the current setup helps streamline things so as not to be tedious.
At some point, even if you manage to become an unstoppable force, the run will end (my guess is when a max amount of essence has been made available for potential acquisition through combat, the dice start to roll whenever you use a portal and you might have a game over) and you'll see how well you did - did you get enough essence to qualify for "Did not fail"?
There are multiple outcomes on that point, with some lore to go with what you've been reading while eavesdropping on conversations in town or exploring random locations here and there.
The world-building is neat - the cosmic horror setting is a big part of what attracted me to this game, in addition to the straightforward gameplay. I like the lore-generating exploration portions a lot and only wish there could be a lot more. There may yet be, designed to be run into less frequently, given I've yet to unlock about half of the achievements.
It's simple to pick up, though the thrall types and name tags may occasionally confuse you into thinking one is a certain type of enemy when it is actually a different one - keep an eye out for that when changing guns/shields.
Though there is no method of continuing a run between game loads, it's typically easy to put down, as you won't usually have so much built up that you can't afford to let it go. I've not had any crashes/freezes/softlocks that I can recall, so that's not been a serious concern either.
Beyond that, the dev is responsive and eager to fix bugs, should problems arise.
Though some may miss the meta progression, it is absent as a design choice rather than oversight (that fact is listed in the description).
Overall, I'd recommend it if you like what you see on the store page and want something to kill 30+ minutes or so here and there and won't feel sore about having nothing to unlock for later runs except a bit more knowledge each time.