NEO-CHICAGO 2088
THE DESCENT
An action-roguelike, thirty-three depths beneath a city that sold its own voice. Five tyrants, a torch that goes out the moment thou stop swinging, and a body that changes shape as thou go down.
GENRE
Action-roguelike, side-on, in the AKIRA tradition
A RUN
33 depths · 5 acts · 5 tyrants
PLAYS ON
Browser, on a computer. Keyboard.
THE DOOR
3333 Covenants, ever. Opens 19.08 · 08:08 EDT.
HOW IT PLAYS
Four beats, repeated until the city runs out of floors.
DESCEND
Each depth is a room of the drowned city. Clear it and a door offers three boons: take the strike, the blast, the shield, or gamble on a radiant one.
FIGHT WITH THY HANDS
Three-hit chains, a charged blast, a repel, a dash. A perfect dodge bends time. A strike shatters the bolt flying at thee. Nothing is auto-aimed, nothing is a cooldown you wait out.
CHANGE SHAPE
Enough souls and the body itself changes: the Awakened becomes the Architect, the Architect becomes YEKIRA. The painting on screen changes with thee.
FALL, AND COME BACK HARDER
Death turns thy ash into embers, and embers buy permanence at the Ember Altar: conviction, damage, focus, a second breath. The thirty-third depth is a distance, not a wall.
THE HANDS
Nine keys. There is no tutorial to sit through, and nothing is auto-aimed.
- ←→
- MOVE
- SPACE
- STRIKE — a three-hit chain, and it shatters bolts
- C
- BLAST — charged, spends focus
- V
- REPEL — push the room off thee
- ↑
- JUMP
- SHIFT
- DASH — a perfect dodge bends time and refunds focus
- O
- LEDGER — thy earned omens and their codes
- 1–5
- SPEND at the Ember Altar · E or ESC to leave
- R
- DESCEND AGAIN, after the fall
Press O at any depth to open the ledger: every omen thou hast fulfilled is listed there with the code that seals it at the shrine.
WHAT THE ASH IS FOR
Thou wilt see a count of ASH at the top left from the first depth. This is where it goes.
- ASH · earned in the run, gone at its end
- The coin of one descent, the count at the top left. Every soul that falls drops it, a depth cleared clean pays fifty of it, a tithe at the door pays sixty. Thou canst not buy with it; two pages of the Book will take a little, nothing else does. When the run ends, the ash is counted once and becomes embers.
- EMBERS · kept forever, the only thing thou spendest
- Ash divided by ten, weighed by thy path (Pilgrim half, Martyr one and a half), by thy form, and by every rule of the ladder thou hast lit. A fall keeps half of that. The other way out: clear a depth, walk into the lit gate at its far end, and the door of three boons opens. At the fifth, tenth, fifteenth, twenty-fifth and thirtieth depth that door has one more button, WALK OUT (arrow down, then enter). It ends the run on purpose and keeps half of the ash at the fifth, nearly all of it at the thirtieth: bank it, or carry the ash deeper and risk the fall.
- THE ALTAR · where the embers are spent
- On the title screen only, never mid-run: after a fall press R, pass the intro, and in the menu on the left choose THE ALTAR (or press E). Five rows, each priced in embers, each explained under its price. What the ash paid for is kept, and every descent after begins stronger.
THE FIVE ROWS OF THE ALTAR · press the number to buy
- 1.
- VESSEL
- +8 max conviction · 120 embers, rising
- Conviction is the bar at the top left, thy life. More of it, every run.
- 2.
- IRON HAND
- +3 strike damage · 150 embers, rising
- Strike is SPACE, the three-hit chain. Every level lands harder.
- 3.
- SIPHON
- +4 blast damage · 150 embers, rising
- Blast is C, the charged shot. It spends focus; every level hits harder.
- 4.
- CLARITY
- +1 focus, +1 focus max · 400 embers, rising
- Focus is the pips under conviction: strike earns it, blast spends it. Begin each run with one more, and room to hold one more.
- 5.
- COMMUNION
- begin with one breath · 900 embers, once
- A second breath: fall once and rise at a third of thy conviction. MARTYR and the ladder rule NO SECOND BREATH refuse it.
Ash and embers live inside the game and nowhere else. They are not written on Solana, they buy no relic and no Covenant, and they are kept on the device thou playest from. The relics are earned by deeds, never bought with either.
FIVE ACTS BENEATH THE CITY
Every frame below is the game itself, lit in real time.
ACT I
THE HIGHWAY
The road out of the Extraction, under a sky that never clears.
ACT II
THE DROWNED WARD
The city under black water, and everything above it reflected in it.
ACT III
CHOIRSTONE CATHEDRAL
Where the choir was sold. The verse inverts: blasts earn, strikes forget.
ACT IV
THE VAULT
Neon kanji over a furnace that eats tomorrow.
ACT V
THE EXTRACTION
The siphon itself, and the thing wearing a bear's hide at the bottom.
CHOOSE THY PATH
What is easily done is not proof of anything. The gentle path teaches; the cruel path seals.
PILGRIM
Gentler foes. The descent teaches thee its language, and a cursed chest may hand thee a second breath.
Seals one relic, and only by finishing.
AWAKENED
The true descent. No mercy asked, none refused.
Seals twelve of the sixteen.
MARTYR
Crueller foes, tighter telegraphs, three that commit at once, and no second breath at any price.
Seals all sixteen, the gold among them, and opens the Genesis.
WHAT MAY BE WON
Sixteen relics, one per deed, from the canon. Four of them, here.
No relic has a quota. It does not need one: a card cannot exist without a human to earn it, and there will only ever be 3333 of us. The supply of every card is therefore the count of hands that did the deed, and nothing else. Whoever arrives last is never told they are too late.
The thirty-three canon works are given to whoever holds all sixteen deeds, and the omen says which one. Not a lottery, and not a race: do the sixteen and one is thine. The original artwork behind the cards, and many hands may bear the same one.
BEFORE THOU BUY
Do I need to know anything about crypto?
No. Sign in with an email and a wallet is made for thee. Thou canst play the whole game and never think about it again; the relics simply wait in thy account.
Is this pay-to-win?
No. The only purchase is the game itself; nothing inside it is for sale. Cards are earned by doing the deed they name, and the hardest ones only on the hardest path.
What happens if I never finish it?
Thou keep everything thou earned, forever, and the Ember Altar makes each attempt stronger than the last. The relics thou hast sealed are thine whether or not thou ever see the thirty-third depth.
Can I play on my phone?
Not yet. The descent needs a keyboard: strike, dash, blast, repel. Buying, sealing and trading work on any device.
Can I trade the cards?
Yes, but never for money. Thou canst barter one work for another thou wantest more, wallet to wallet, for a small flat fee and nothing else. There is no marketplace and no cut of any sale. Thou keepest what thou hast whether or not thou keep playing.
WHERE THE 0.33 GOES
The same three named flows as everything else here. No shadow treasury.
// THE ARTIST · THE SEAL · THE FORGE
THE FORGE
Ops at cost. Every relic is a real asset written on Solana and every one costs the house a fee to write; thy Covenant pays for the ones thou wilt earn, for the thirty-three canon works when they are given, and for the servers that keep the descent standing. Surplus does not stay here.
THE SEAL
A share of every Covenant buys 4NBT on the open market and seals it. Not burned, not pooled: bought and held. The buying is the point, not the theatre around it.
THE ARTIST
The artist behind the sixteen relics and the thirty-three canon works is paid from the same flow, named and visible, rather than out of a bucket nobody may inspect.
Of the price of a Covenant, a declared share is spent buying 4NBT on the open market and sealing it. The house does not keep a quiet treasury: the buyback wallet is public and every purchase it makes is on chain, where anyone may count it.
THE COVENANT
The only thing the house will ever sell.
// THE DOOR OPENS
19 AUGUST 2026 · 8:08 AM NEW YORK
3333 Covenants, and not one before the hour.