Captured by 'The Rune-less', a dark and powerful being, you must take Orillia on her journey to escape imprisonment while struggling to keep her grasp on reality due to a broken and faded memory caused by years of torment and failed escape attempts. To escape this nightmare, you must vanquish rooms of minions, who are only alive to serve the bidding of their master whilst he experiments with different ways to increase his power. Along her journey, Orillia will encounter many obstacles that you, the player, must help her overcome, including mysterious powers and curve balls from The Rune-less that could completely change your approach. In the universe of OutRune, every person is born with a powerful rune encased into an item/artefact that becomes that person's 'AfterFact'. During Orillia's escape, she will find these AfterFacts along the way. She can upgrade her AfterFact and the ones she finds by utilising the machines created by the Rune-less and his following of Greheem tinkerers.
AfterFacts are magical items that the Rune-less is trying to deconstruct and use for his evil deeds. When a person is born, the afterbirth contains a calcified magical rune that is infused into an item. These items can be anything, but they are often personal to that person. In Orillia's case, her AfterFact is a bracelet. You will find them on your escape attempts, and they bestow powerful effects onto Orillia that can be upgraded at the AfterFactum machines.
(Only a few of the planned AfterFacts)
This upgrading system will empower you without breaking focus. You will randomly encounter these 'AfterFactum' machines, which take any combination of two runes you collect on your playthrough. Each rune has a core value represented by its colour:
- Health (Green)
- Agility (Blue)
- Luck (Yellow)
- Damage (Red)
Your possible upgrades will reflect the core values of the runes you have deposited. So combining two blue runes will produce an upgrade based on speed/agility and movement, whereas combining a yellow and a red rune will provide an upgrade based on luck and power. Lucky power!
The game's core takes inspiration from classic rogue-like games, with a fun and addictive game loop leaving you with that itch to try and get further than you ever did before.
Created by a solo developer, the game is a labour of love. It will be released to early access once enough content has been implemented to justify an early access release. Upon early access release, the game will have four floors to traverse. Each floor consists of a randomly selected progression of rooms (from a pool of rooms created specifically for that floor), with a boss to fight at the end of each floor!
During development, all player feedback is taken on board to help grow OutRune into the best possible version of itself, so please don't hesitate to get in touch with suggestions and comments. You can join the discord server and subreddit here:
