Rejected Draft

Rejected Draft is a long-form incremental autobattler about a sketch thrown in the wastebasket by its creator. You climb out and fight your way through the Gallery, facing rough sketches, finished pieces, historical portraits and masterpieces on the way to the artist who rejected you. You begin with a few stats, upgrades and enemies, then gradually build a much more complex character and uncover what lies beyond the Gallery.

Progression and systems

You fight sketches, grow stronger, choose upgrades and push farther. New mechanics arrive over time: stats interact, currencies change what matters, upgrades reshape earlier systems and prestige layers alter the value of things you have already built. The game has hundreds of hours of content, with new mechanics, resources, systems and prestige layers continuing well beyond the early game.

There are more than 60 battle stats, large skill trees, multiple currencies, enemy abilities, multiplicative bonuses and automation. Progress depends on understanding how these systems interact: an upgrade can change the value of another part of your build, and an ability or stat that once seemed unimportant may become essential later. There is no single path to follow indefinitely; the sketches you encounter and the systems you invest in help shape your build.

Prestige and automation

When brute force no longer gets you farther, you can prestige, give up progress in exchange for new resources and permanent power, then climb again with more tools. Later layers introduce new problems and change how earlier systems work. Previous bottlenecks can disappear, neglected stats can become important, and systems that once needed your attention can become automated background machinery.

You can play actively to rethink your build, tackle a wall or explore a new system, or let idle progress and automation run while you do something else. The game can run in the background, with resources accumulating for your next visit, or serve as a deeper optimization challenge when you want to examine your build.

The Gallery

The Gallery contains community-created artwork, with contributions from many artists and a range of styles and interpretations. Its sketches can be polished, rough, cute or unsettling, and some ideas appear in multiple versions by different artists. Contributors are credited in the in-game Glossary, with links to their work when requested.

The enemies you fight have different stats, abilities, strengths and weaknesses. As you progress, their traits become part of the systems that shape your build, and your build in turn changes how you tackle the world.