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This is an excellent little roguelike that I just discovered a few days ago and got my first win on last night.Infra Arcana is a Roguelike set in the early 20th century. The goal is to explore the lair of a dreaded cult called The Church of Starry Wisdom. Buried deep beneath their hallowed grounds lies an artifact called The Shining Trapezohedron - a window to all secrets of the universe. Your ultimate goal is to unearth this artifact.
The theme and inspiration for this game comes mainly from the horror fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft. There is a Lore section on this site that describes some of his mythology. The game also draws flavor from various B-horror movies, as well as the first-person shooter PC game Blood.
Infra Arcana adheres to the virtues of the Roguelike genre - high replay value and challenging tactical gameplay.
The central mechanic is the duo of Shock and Insanity. As time passes and as your character experiences ~spooky~ events, your Shock value increases. If it hits 100% or higher and stays there for several turns, it resets to 0%, you gain a semi-random amount of Insanity, and you have a chance of acquiring a permanent mental defect. 100% Insanity is game over. Shock resets to 0% every time you descend to a new floor and can be temporarily lowered by sources of light. In short, Insanity is the hunger clock of Infra Arcana.
Another deviation from the typical roguelike is that XP is only acquired by discovering new ~spooky~ things such as potions, manuscripts, enemies, hidden traps and doors, obelisks, and so on. Combined with scarcity of resources, this means that you want to avoid combat if possible. Of course, it's frequently unavoidable, and there are sometimes cases where you want to kill something you could have avoided just for the goodies it carries.
There are five classes in the game: Exorcist, Ghoul, Occultist, Rogue, and War Veteran. In brief:
- Exorcist: destroys ~spooky~ objects for xp, unique spellcasting, powerful against undead
- Ghoul: tough, frenzy at will, no natural regeneration but eats corpses for HP
- Occultist: biggest spirit pool, starts with spells, gets better at them
- Rogue: sneaky, rechargeable rod that makes enemies forget about you, good at detecting things
- War Veteran: tough, skilled with weapons, maintains armor well
One last point I'll add because the manual completely neglects to mention it: kicks cause knockback and paralysis, but the latter only if there was space to move backwards. As for the rest, I recommend you just play the game, read the in-game manual, and use the view function liberally. It's more fun going in blind.
Below are my personal notes for the amusement/interest of fellow veterans: