LODESTONE: A Cave Descent Platformer, Free Demo
A game from Core Systems Asset Factory. Genre: Platformer. Paid; free browser demo on the page.
LODESTONE: A Cave Descent Platformer, Free Demo is a game, paid, with a free browser demo on the store page.
LODESTONE is a cave descent platformer with 12 shafts and 12 marks, where the dungeon does what the stones you carry add up to. The first 4 shafts are free in your browser. You go down wearing a carved harness with four sockets.
Twelve engraved marks exist, and each one does something to how your body moves: how hard you can push, how much the dark air drags on you, which way you drift when you stop steering, how much of a hit the rock gives back. You are never told what any of them do. You are never even shown one on its own. What you feel is the sum of the four you are carrying.
So the only way to learn what a mark means is to build a carry set that isolates it, hold a direction, and pay attention. Three of the twelve are the exact opposite of three others. Carry both halves of a pair and that part of your handling cancels out completely, which is the cleanest question you can ask the dark. The lamp is the clock It burns while you descend, so dawdling costs you.
It burns much harder when you meet rock at speed: a graze is nearly free, a collision is most of your light. Too fast and you smash, too slow and you go dark. Where a carry set sits between those two is the whole game.
AI disclosure, as the store page states it: AI Assisted, Code, Graphics, Text
Paid · free browser demo on the page · Get it on itch.io. Files, screenshots and the full description are on the store page.