Mythscroll

Mythscroll is a text-based sandbox RPG in which your choices shape your story. Create a character by choosing a race, class, age, body type and traits; these determine your starting stats, signature weapon and known languages. Then explore a world of towns, forests, ruins and other regions, taking on turn-based battles, moral choices, jobs and quests.

Character and skills

As you level up, you earn attribute points to improve core stats such as Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence, and skill points to develop abilities such as Stealth, Nature and Music. Your choices shape your physical and magical abilities and how you handle situations in and out of combat. You can talk your way out of danger, climb cliffs, cast spells or sneak past enemies.

Explore and discover

The open world has more than 40 locations across forests, plains, oceans, mountains, frozen tundra and volcanic rock, with cities and landmarks throughout. As you explore, your map fills in and your compendium records discovered places and creatures, with information about regions and advice on finding, understanding and fighting the creatures you encounter. More than 100 fantastical and mythological creatures inhabit the world. Some can be spoken with, bargained with or studied; others must be fought.

Encounters and quests

More than 150 location-based encounters feature branching outcomes, including mysterious travelers, ancient puzzles, hidden dangers and other opportunities. Your decisions can change your path, morality, reputation and how the world responds to you. The game also includes more than 40 jobs and quests, from small favors for villagers to world-changing adventures. You can solve mysteries, help or hinder characters, and follow storylines that branch according to your choices; some quests offer unique rewards and new ways to shape your character and the world.

Combat and equipment

In turn-based combat, you choose whether and how to attack based on your equipped weapons and known spells. You can change equipped gear and learn or forget spells during a fight. More than 200 weapons, spell scrolls, shields, armor pieces and enchanted accessories can be collected. You can find gear in the world, buy it from merchants, earn it through quests, request it from people or creatures if your Charisma is high enough, rob them, or take it after defeating them in combat.

Magic and morality

Certain classes can learn spells from five schools of magic: Musical for Bards, Holy for Clerics, Nature for Druids, and Dark and Elemental magic for Mages. Elemental magic includes fire, water, ice and lightning, and the game has more than 50 spells.

Choices in many encounters affect your morality. Helping travelers, completing certain quests and defeating corrupt creatures raise it; robbery and harming innocents lower it. Your morality affects how others treat you: knights, guards and angels turn hostile if your reputation falls too low, and some quests are available only at certain morality levels.

Difficulty modes

Mythscroll has three difficulty modes. In the default mode, defeat costs you some gold and one item before you awaken in the last safe zone. Permadeath Mode deletes your save file if your character dies. Kind Mode takes only gold on death, at half the usual amount, and gives you a 30% XP boost, increases the legendary creature encounter rate from 3% to 5%, and restores HP and mana by 2% per turn while traveling or waiting.

Kind Mode and Permadeath Mode can be selected during character creation, but only one can be active for a character at a time. You can toggle Kind Mode at any time using the smiley face icon; Permadeath cannot be reversed once chosen.

Backgrounds

The game uses dozens of hand-pixeled backgrounds to represent its locations. An Immersive Backgrounds setting lets you switch between full-size pixel art and a plain black background.