Know the game.
Beat the house.

Your first descent

1. Hear the opening story and spin. Your first reel reward sets your starting equipment.
2. Explore Casino Floor 1. Move while equipment attacks automatically. Collect XP for temporary favors and search for the stairs.
3. Survive the escape pursuit. Interact at the stairs, hold out for 12 seconds, then leave to bank rewards.
4. Face ten Pit Bosses. Spin for equipment, choose your battle stance and time your attacks.
5. Descend into the next casino. Keep your earned equipment and continue the story. Casino favors reset.

Your first run starts with 30 coins. The first pull is a guaranteed triple unless the second House Marker is active. Keep some coins for healing and future spins.

Casino floors & house favors

From reels to the casino

The opening story leads to the reels, which provide your first equipment. Enter Casino Floor 1, find the stairs and escape. Then reel rewards and ten Pit Boss battles lead to the next casino floor. Bring the equipment you earned into the next exploration. Fifteen casino floors and 150 Pit Boss chambers complete the descent, with a new story beat at each casino entrance.

Choose your descent rules

Before starting, choose DIFFICULTY & HOUSE RULES in Options or DESCENT RULES during the prologue. Enemy vitality and damage adjustments apply to casino floors and Pit Bosses. Your choice stays fixed for that descent; changing the preference later affects your next run. Completing the vault unlocks optional House Rules for later descents.

Move, collect, survive

Move with WASD, the arrow keys or the controller's left stick. Your equipment attacks automatically. Gold coins fund the reels; bright XP gems earn temporary house favors. A gem can share a drop with a coin. Your vitality and rechargeable shield are at the upper right, goals and favors at the upper left, and equipped attacks across the top.

Find your way down

M or controller Back opens the explored map. E or controller A interacts with nearby caches and stairs. The Way Down favor reveals a pulsing purple route through walkable space. At the stairs, interact to start a 12-second pursuit, survive until they open, then interact again to escape. Escape or controller Start pauses. HOW TO PLAY is available from the casino pause menu.

Read the complete casino guide: attacks, favors, encounters and rewards →

Reels, paylines and stakes

A two-symbol match pays a common relic. A three-symbol match can pay uncommon or better, drawn from the chamber drum. A triple bomb does not award a relic. More coins per line enrich potential rewards and strengthen bombs; they do not improve the chance of matching.

Choose 1–5 coins per line. The spin price is the base cost above multiplied by that selection, less any spin discount, with a minimum of one coin. Luck, rigging, free lines, nudges and guaranteed spins can alter the result: the game’s displayed odds and price reflect your build.

Bombs and Fortune

Loose bombs arm smaller fuses; a triple arms a larger one. Fuse damage is spread over the opening enemy turns. Guard can absorb it and fuse wards reduce each tick. Bombs are initially dormant for the first three chambers unless a House Marker changes that rule.

Two-matches grant 10% Fortune and triples grant 25%, before relic amplification. Fortune strengthens your battle damage. The winning item family also gives a temporary match gift for the next fight, even if you sell the item.

• Weapon: opening damage.
• Armor: opening Guard.
• Charm: critical chance.
• Supply: a Recover charge; triples also improve healing.
• Relic: a Relic Art charge; triples also improve Fortune.

Combat, power and accuracy

CALL boosts the opening action but provokes foes for three rounds. READ reveals upcoming moves and reactive tells; relics can add opening Guard.

Two stops. One strike.

1. Power: click or press Space to stop the needle. Green gives 100% power; yellow 70%; red 40%.
2. Accuracy: press again to stop the reel. Green hits and adds 25 percentage points to critical chance; yellow hits at your power-based critical chance; red misses on Standard and High Stakes.

Relics can widen the Perfect zone or slow the power meter. Both meters speed up with depth within fixed limits. In Relaxed mode, red accuracy grazes for 40% damage instead of missing.

Ten perfect stops earn a bonus spin

Green stops on either meter count toward the same streak. Ten consecutive green stops award one free spin and reset the counter; any non-green stop breaks the streak. Bonus spins use your selected wager without charging its spin price, and still carry normal outcomes and bomb risk. Streak progress and earned spins are saved with the run.

Defense reduces ordinary hits before Guard absorbs the remainder. The house normally grows impatient from round six, gaining power each round. Guard-breaking and status effects follow their own rules.

The elemental wheel

Open the wheel between actions at the reels, in battle, and during available between-chamber choices. It pauses the game and costs coins, never an attack or move. Finish any active animation or dialogue choice first.

Seven pockets, three elements

• Fire, Water and Electricity: 24% each.
• Steam (Fire + Water), Storm (Water + Electricity), and Plasma (Electricity + Fire): 8% each.
• Trinity: 4%, equipping all three elements.

A spin replaces your current elements immediately. They remain equipped until your next spin; closing the wheel does not undo a purchase. Elemental emblems on equipped weapons show your current wheel infusion, not a permanent property of that item. Spinning again changes that infusion.

Read the enemy before buying another spin

Water beats Fire; Fire beats Electricity; Electricity beats Water. Attack and Relic Art deal 20% more damage against a weakness or 20% less against a resistance, before enemy Guard. Matching elements and Neutral enemies take normal damage. Combination pockets use the best equipped element for each target, never stack bonuses, and Trinity gives +20% against every elemental foe. It gives no bonus against Neutral foes.

Affinities follow the character: Candle Knight, Matchgirl and furnace-powered Brass Jackal are Fire; Cold Deck, Ice Sculpture and Nightcap are Water; Marquee, Bad Beat and Eye in the Sky are Electricity. Many casino characters stay Neutral. Use Inspect in your action panel to see a foe’s affinity, weakness and current matchup without spending a move.

The price heats up—and cools down

A cool wheel starts at 3 coins in chambers 1–10, 4 in 11–20, and increases by 1 every ten chambers, reaching 17 in 141–150. Each spin adds one heat: the next price is the base cost multiplied by (1 + half the heat), rounded up. At depth 1, consecutive spins cost 3, 5, 6, then 8 coins.

A completed combat turn without a spin removes one heat. Clearing a chamber removes another and can also apply a no-spin turn reduction. Simply waiting does not cool the wheel. The displayed next price is always the amount you pay.

Choose your difficulty

Choose DIFFICULTY & HOUSE RULES in Options, or DESCENT RULES during the prologue, before starting. The choice stays fixed for that descent; later preference changes apply to your next one. Enemy vitality and damage adjustments affect casino floors and Pit Bosses.

Enemy intentions and status effects

Look at each foe’s intent before choosing an action. Some foes change plans in response to your Guard, healing, purse or their remaining vitality. Bosses and some elites change their hand at half vitality.

Attack / Charge

A direct hit, or preparation for a stronger move.

Guard / Heal

The enemy protects itself or restores vitality.

Burn

Damage to vitality over the remaining enemy turns.

Hex

Your damage is reduced by 25% for affected actions.

Drain

Steals coins; Guard can protect you.

Rig

Sabotages the odds on a coming spin.

Siphon

Removes action charges.

Summon

Adds an ally if the act’s enemy cap allows it; a full field can be rallied instead.

Shatter

Breaks Guard and threatens vitality. Ordinary Defense does not work the same way against it.

Relics, rarity and item level

Equip up to five relics. The current catalogue has 123 item families and 615 rarity variants: every family exists in all five rarities. Persistent player level unlocks additional item families as well as paylines. Available families can roll any rarity; rarity does not bypass a family unlock.

New loot rolls an item level from chamber − 10 to the current chamber, clamped to 1–150. Existing gear keeps its level. Flat combat bonuses use 1 + 0.055 × (item level − 1), with whole-point rounding. Rarity is applied before that scaling. Chance bonuses, action counts and economy effects are not all scaled by item level.

Higher rarity strengthens eligible effects and adds vitality, while fixed effects such as extra paylines and free rerolls stay bounded. Compare the actual rolled effect text before replacing a relic.

Base sale values: common 3, uncommon 7, rare 12, legendary 20, mythical 30 coins; other bonuses can modify the reward.

Twenty entries on the drum

The base drum has 8 common, 5 uncommon, 4 rare, 2 legendary and 1 mythical entry. Pool relics replace common entries with higher rarities while preserving twenty entries and at least one common. Higher stakes weight the prize toward rarer entries; they do not add entries or increase matching odds.

150 chambers. Three kinds of level.

Chambers 1–50 normally have one foe, 51–100 have two, and 101–149 have three. The Owner fights alone in chamber 150. Identities vary while strength scales with depth. Every tenth chamber is a boss encounter; The Owner always holds chamber 150. Use the DEPTH MAP to inspect your route.

Your base maximum vitality starts at 50 and grows by 2 per chamber descended, before relics and mastery. Attack, Relic Art, Guard and Recover also grow with depth. Descending restores 5 vitality plus 12% of maximum vitality, rounded to the nearest whole point and capped at your maximum.

Defeat the final chamber to earn a permanent Gold Coin: future descents start with 1,000 coins. It is never consumed. Cleared descents also unlock stacking House Markers.

House offers and between-fight choices

Between fights, you can spend coins to mend vitality or buy action charges. Prices increase with depth and purchases, so read the displayed cost. Mending heals only up to maximum vitality.

Special offers appear every ten chambers, starting at chamber 4. Fourteen encounter types can trade relics, offer healing, wager your purse, suppress bombs or change your next battle. Read every price before accepting: some ask for vitality, future danger or a temporary restriction instead of coins.

A stronger rarity is not always a better fit. A relic that protects against fuses or supports your other four items may be worth more to your run than an isolated damage upgrade.

Lucky allies and unlucky enemies

Not every meeting on the stairs is a battle. The traveller cast includes 189 lucky allies and 78 unlucky enemies, separate from the combat roster. Each has a story and brings either a temporary blessing or a setback.

When do travellers appear?

Meetings can begin at chamber 2. Boss chambers and pending House offers block them, and meetings are spaced at least three chambers apart. Before relic modifiers, each eligible chamber has a 32% meeting chance; a meeting has a 70% chance to be an ally. A character does not repeat within the same descent.

Relics can change meeting chance (capped from 10% to 65%) and the ally share of meetings (20% to 95%). These are separate from the reel’s match odds. Inspect their effects in STATS.

Blessings and setbacks

Effects last for two battle victories. You can have one blessing and one setback at a time; another meeting of the same kind replaces that effect and refreshes its duration. Temporary effects do not stack without limit.

Bring a friend

Up to two recruitable allies can accompany you for the run. When the party is full, choose whom to replace. You may accept an ally’s help without recruiting them; unlucky enemies cannot join.

Companions act automatically once per fight: the first slot helps after your second action, and the second after your fourth, if a foe is still standing. Depending on the ally, support strikes one foe, hits the group, breaks Guard, adds your own Guard or restores vitality. Support strength grows with chamber depth. Hover over the party entry to inspect the skill.

Achievements and lifetime progress

The House Ledger contains 100 achievements. Open ACHIEVEMENTS from the title screen or pause menu, then search by name or filter by category and earned status. Locked icons are sealed and dimmed; earned icons show their full color.

A character counts once across your descents, after its encounter choice completes successfully. Merely seeing a preview does not count, and meeting the same character again does not increase the total. Recruitment is optional. Both counters save with the completed encounter.

Other goals reward bosses, Perfect timing, relic combinations, coin totals, House offers and full descents. Combat counters bank when you win; replaying part of an interrupted fight does not repeatedly bank its actions. Earned achievements remain earned across runs.

Older saves retain earned achievements and can recover progress from facts already recorded, but cannot reconstruct earlier meetings or unrecorded combat counters. The website catalog is a reference, not a connection to your personal save. Steam achievement support is being prepared for release.

House Markers

Clears unlock additional House Markers. Choose them before starting in Options → DIFFICULTY & HOUSE RULES or the prologue’s DESCENT RULES. Their challenges stack as you increase the selected marker level and stay fixed for that descent.

1. Bombs are armed from the first chamber.
2. The first pull is no longer a guaranteed win.
3. The house grows impatient from round four.
4. Companion enemies arrive at full strength.
5. All foes begin with extra power; mending and purchased charges cost 50% more.

Controls, stats and saving

Your lifetime records

Open OPTIONS → STATS for best depth, finished runs, wins, win rate, lifetime XP, combat records, unique encounters and achievements. These records carry across descents. Combat totals bank when you win a battle; older saves may not contain every historical total. The in-run STATS button still shows your current character build.

Inspect an enemy

Select a living foe, then choose INSPECT in the battle action panel. It pauses the fight and spotlights that enemy beside its details. Check vitality, Guard, elemental affinity and your current matchup without spending an action. Choosing READ before the fight also reveals upcoming moves and reactive tells. Close the panel with CLOSE or Esc to return to battle.

Audio and accessibility

OPTIONS offers independent Master, Music, Ambience and SFX volume. Accessibility settings let you disable screen shake, reduce flashes and switch off the low-health heartbeat. Changes save between sessions. Use Tab / Shift+Tab to move focus, Enter to select, arrow keys to adjust volume and Esc to close settings.

Use the on-screen buttons to spin, inspect relics, select a target and choose actions. In battle, 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 select Attack / Relic Art / Guard / Recover. Esc closes an inspection or opens the pause menu; required choices still need an answer.

STATS opens your complete build breakdown. Hover or focus entries for explanations. DEPTH MAP shows campaign progress. Inspecting either pauses play.

Choose CONTINUE on the title screen to resume a saved run. Quitting during battle resumes from the chamber checkpoint, not midway through an action. If RETRY SAVE appears, use it before closing the game.

Your XP, records, unlocked progression and earned Gold Coin persist across descents. Starting a new run resets that run’s chamber, coins and inventory. Need help? Contact support.

Stat and relic-effect glossary

Open STATS during a run; hover or focus a row for its explanation. The values shown include your current gear. Power is displayed before timing, Fortune and conditional effects.