§ 01
Ten Measures
Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Perception, Charisma, Patience, Will, Knowledge, Psyche, and Destiny define the hero. Extreme scores awaken traits: a 5 grants a gift, while a 1 gives the dungeon a weakness to press.
Turn-Based · Roguelike · Card-Crawler · Windows & macOS
A dying Old World, a living dungeon, and a character shaped by every risk you choose to endure.
“The dungeon is not your enemy, it is your mirror. You will find your limits there.”
— High Healer Avra Somphe
I.The Descent
Every Card Turned Is a Decision Made Permanent
Ethernalis is a turn-based roguelike card-crawler set in the Old World on a verge of destruction. Locations, enemies, relics, traps, containers, events, merchants, exits, and strange events all share one language: the card. At any moment you stand at the center of a five-card cross, reading the chamber you occupy and the four uncertain directions around it.
The game draws from classic roguelikes, MUD-era event prose, tabletop character sheets, and survival simulation. Dungeons are generated at runtime, then filled with authored threats, materials, locks, keys, flooded rooms, roaming enemies, NPCs, and quest events. What waits ahead is procedural. What happens to you is a chronicle.
You do not merely gain numbers. You become legible to the world. Hunger, thirst, temperature, comfort, carried weight, materials, injuries, habits, companions, and recent choices all matter. The Guild records the simple lesson first: assume nothing, respect everything.
5
Cards in View
9
Playable Races
10
Measures
14
Material Domains
II.The Five-Card Cross
A Dungeon Read One Face at a Time
The center card is where you stand. North, east, south, and west are promises. Step into one and the dungeon advances: hidden traps test your senses, containers may bite before they open, and enemies can close distance before steel is drawn.
The underlying dungeon is a grid of rooms, but the player reads it through cards. Each room has a location in the center and four side slots for whatever the dungeon has dealt there: creatures, events, exits, keys, tools, food, scrolls, armour, or something best left untouched.
Click any card to turn it
III.The Laws Beneath
A Character Sheet with Teeth
Ethernalis treats survival, personality, gear, and motion as one connected problem. A strong arm matters. So does a clean pair of boots, a lit campfire, a companion with food in their pack, and enough patience not to rush a trap.
§ 02
Action Points
Movement, attacks, crafting, interaction, and inventory actions spend AP. Your cap comes from Dexterity, Perception, and Psyche; overburdened characters begin the turn with only one point to spend.
§ 03
Distance Combat
Enemies track range by card slot. A melee attack from distance closes the gap before it wounds. Ranged weapons need space, ammunition, and discipline; close enemies can make a bow feel like a bad idea.
§ 04
Runes and Sockets
Rooms and non-consumable gear can become socketed. A rune in a weapon changes violence; a rune in a chamber changes the place itself, heating, chilling, blessing, darkening, or warping what happens there.
§ 05
Materials and Quality
Quality scales power from Dismal to Masterful. Materials shape description, small equipment bonuses, durability decay, crafting inheritance, and vulnerability checks against creatures marked by old fears.
§ 06
Comfort and Need
Hunger, thirst, temperature, comfort, dirt, gear mismatch, and afflictions alter performance. The body is not flavour text; it is a second dungeon wrapped around the first.
IV.Altarmn, The Old World
Empires, Halls, Forests, Wastes, and the Dark Below
Altarmn is old enough to remember every people who believed they would be the last. The human Empire of Laungenburgh stands beside older powers: Ethos, Rotha, Roggos, Oxhe, Leurhe, Assianna, hidden gnome sanctuaries, and the distant archipelago of Athesia.
Human
Laungenburgh
Restless, ambitious, adaptive. Humans built cities and systems upon discovery and dominion, then learned that stone remembers conquest longer than kings do.
Elf
Ethos
Stewards of life and forest memory. Elves are bound to nature and shadow, hearing the Whispers that bridge worlds and disturb easy certainty.
Dwarf
Rotha
Carvers of the northern cliffs of Borduarhe. In Rotha, craft is devotion, endurance is civic law, and the wall itself may sound like a hymn.
Orc
Roggos
Children of the southern wastes, forged into unity by adversity. Their fortress city answers weakness with drums, hunger with discipline, and poison with refusal.
Drow
Oxhe
Immortal dark elves beneath the world, resistant to divine harm and bound by pride. Oxhe is an abyssal citadel where mystery has learned to rule.
Heffith
Assianna
Cursed offshoots of the elves, half-beast and half-grace, dwelling in wetlands and bearing divine punishment as inheritance rather than mere wound.
V.Those Who Wander
The Dungeon Moves When You Are Not Looking
NPCs, companions, enemies, and merchants are cards with memory and appetite. They carry gear, eat and drink, move through rooms, trip traps, attack doors, offer work, level through trade, and react to the conduct you bring into their world.
§
Companions
Cards That Follow
Recruited NPCs become companion cards. You can send them to explore, ask them to stay, exchange equipment, request healing, and rely on them in combat if they have the strength to stand.
†
Merchants
Trade Has a Memory
Merchants are stocked from templates, carry gold, gain experience from transactions, and judge the scene through personality traits. Buy, sell, or steal; each method has a consequence.
*
Timelines
Delayed Fate
Quest and event logic can wait for turns, kills, locations, spells, crafted items, opened containers, seen cards, or acquired objects before the next authored event arrives.
VI.From the Current Build
Screens from the Descent
The interface is built as a dark play table: character state, card field, chronicle, inventory, crafting shelves, and region-scale choices all stay close to the act of play.
The Chronicle
Every Action Leaves a Line
leaving towards north
You have reached the Underground Swamp.
A hidden trap reveals itself before your foot finds it.
The merchant catches your hand. The deal is over.
Dancing flames whisper of safety.
You feel safe here for now...
Alpha Access
Enter While the Ink Is Still Wet
Ethernalis is in active development. The current public alpha is for players who enjoy unfinished edges, deep systems, strange deaths, and the pleasure of watching a world become more precise over time.