Single player · iPhone & iPad · plays offline
Colour is life. Bring it back.
A hungry king drank the colour out of the world. You are the one who told him what he was becoming, and you have been in a cell ever since. Now the door is open. Eight lands, eight bosses, and a grey map that turns back to colour as you take it apart.
Get it on the App Store $0.99 · one purchase · no ads · no in-app purchases · plays offline
450 by 450 of them, zoomable down to a single cave mouth.
Seven Gnawers, seven gates, ten Facets, and a Hunt on every board.
Every land in the game has two states, and the Crown's grey is not a filter laid over the world — it is the world, until the thing holding it down stops standing. This is Greenhaven, in the Dense Forest, with its boss still alive; drag across and it is the same street after he falls.
Both halves are one frozen frame of the running game on identical pixels, with only the land's state changed: the whole palette lifts, banners and awnings and window flowers go up, hearths light, the wreckage goes, a memorial stone is cut for the knight who was freed, the husks in the street are gone, and eight villagers are back at their doors. They are standing rather than walking home, because the clock has to be stopped for two frames to line up this exactly.
This is the part of the story the game tells you in its first ten minutes. What happens at the end of the road is yours to find.
Nobody could answer him, so he found out for himself. The hunger he made of himself pulled the colour out of Chromara in one night — out of the fields, out of the roofs, out of the people — and left a shape standing where each of them had been. He calls himself the Null Crown now: a circle drawn around nothing.
You stood in his hall and told him what he was becoming. He built you a room for it: stone walls, one window. There was a hat on a hook in that cell when they shut the door — nobody issues a prisoner a hat — and it has been waiting there through every grey year since.
The cells hang open. The great hall is empty except for the captain of a guard that does not exist any more, still watching an empty chair. Seven who served these walls went home to fight the thing that took the colour. None of them sent word. Something is standing in each of their lands now, wearing a shape you might recognise.
This is the part the game is named for. What walks the roads now is not a monster that moved in — it is what the drain left standing where somebody was. They wear their own shape as a hood, they have two dim lights where a face should be, and their sleeves are empty. Break one and what it took seeps back out. A villager in a ruined town will tell you not to feel bad about it; she is right, and it does not help much.
Each land has people held in its caves. Free every one of them and they walk to the boss's ground themselves and break the ward across it together — it was keyed to them, not to any crown. Beat what is waiting inside and that land gets its colour back: the sky, the town, the people who lived there, the music. Then there is one more of you, and one more land, and one more piece of a circle you are carrying.
“It will be the last colour here. Do not be frightened — it is only like colour leaving a blade. Quick, and quiet.” The Null Crown, the first time he notices you
One seed, hand-placed and identical for everybody: the same towns, the same caves, the same castle in the middle. Each land has its own palette, weather, music, roster of shapes and boss — and its own level band, so the map itself is the difficulty curve. Pick one.
This is not an illustration of the map — it is the map, 450 by 450 tiles of it, rendered straight out of the world the game generates from seed 7331. Zoom out to see all eight lands at once; zoom all the way in and you are looking at individual walls, roads and cave mouths.
One survivor hides in one house in every land — listen for the shout. Find the blaster they dropped out in the wilds, hand it back, and they fight beside you for the rest of that land. Each of them changes how your side of a fight works, and a boss hits twice as hard if you walk in without theirs.
Seven people who served the castle went home to fight what took the colour. Each land's boss stands on ground ringed by a ward you cannot shoot through, and it lifts for exactly one thing: everybody that land was hiding, out of its caves and standing at the gate together.
Every boss paints its heavy attack on the floor before it lands. A dodge roll makes you untouchable for a heartbeat, and that heartbeat is what the ring is asking for.
Walk out of a fight you were winning and it is still wounded when you come back. Arenas become your respawn point the moment you step in.
The Dark Ruins have no road — just a breach in the volcano wall with a pair of Wardens in it. Put them down and they never come back.
A fallen boss gives you two levels, a piece of the circle, fire rate you keep forever, and a land that goes quiet and colourful behind you.
The night a knight falls, the seal under his land's last cave opens, and something that has been gnawing at it for years is waiting on the floor below.
After the ending, walk onto any beaten boss's ground to fight it again. Your best times go to a Highscores page, and to Game Center if you are signed in.
Your shots aim themselves at the nearest form, so both thumbs are free for the part that matters: where you are standing. Two of these four are not yours at the start — they come off a hook in a prison cell. A game controller works too, and the touch controls step aside while it is in use.
Drag anywhere on the left half of the screen. The stick appears under your thumb.
Tap or hold. Shots find the nearest form on their own — keep moving and keep firing.
3.75 s of sprint at 1.65× your walk, 15 s to refill. The hat's gift.
Untouchable for a heartbeat, ignores the off-road slowdown, and it hurts anything you roll through. 3 s cooldown. Also the hat's.
Nine of them, dropped by chests and bosses. Hold up to five at once, and the same one twice is twice as good.
Each land hides one element. Loaded against the forms of the land that fears it, every shot does double damage — and the Bullets button cycles whatever you have found, or pure Aether blue.
One fragment of seven, for every boss that falls. Bring them together and the circle closes over you.
Two knights walk the ring road, and once they trust you they hand over the thing they have been keeping. Every volley of yours that lands is one charge, however many bullets it fired.
Since 1.1 there is a second kind of thing to find: the Sealwright's Facets, fused into the Point in your hand for good. Always on, never in the bar, and none of them changes the damage you deal.
Seven in the deep vaults, one in a strongbox, one for a Hunt, one under the plains.
Every land now keeps three places off its roads. A fortress, where the hollow forms gather and the blaster your survivor dropped has been carried. A sanctuary, the land's own wonder, quiet ground with a circle at its heart. And a watchtower you can climb, ladder and all. None of them is on the way to anything. All of them are on your map once you have stood there.
From a tower's roof the whole land stands up around you: its town, its boss's ground, its fortress and its sanctuary, all named. Drag to look around.
A restored town puts a board up by its plaza. Three errands: gather three of the land's own things, find what was lost, carry a letter to the next free town. A shield, a revive and a level for the three. Then a fourth line appears, and it is not an errand.
A champion of the forms, and the town wants it gone.
Isabela the Sealwright sealed her finest work under the last cave of every land but the plains, on floors below the room you free a captive from. Her mark is over the mouth, a violet arrow pointing down, in the world, and on the map once the seal has let go; and the seal inside reads the Point in your hand. While the Crown still holds the land, it finds the land still held. The night its knight falls, it lets go.
“Under the dunes, a seal lets go.” After the Amber Wurm, once the ceremony is over
The Crown only subtracts. It cannot open her seals, so it set something on each one to gnaw. Every Gnawer is its land's own shape at twice the size with a wedge missing, and its moves are that land's signature move, enlarged. It paints every heavy attack on the floor first. You walk out of most of them and roll through the rest. Years of gnawing, and not one mark on the seal.
Sand Dunes
Dives under the sand as a mound you can still hit, marks your spot with a ring, and bursts up.
Dense Forest
Root lanes, three then five, each with a warning. A hit snares you for a heartbeat, then it gives chase.
Rocky Highlands
Swells, then slams: a shockwave that shoves you off your feet. Later, a slow rolling stone you can step over.
Frozen Tundra
Lays frost that slows you both, then charges down a line with a warning on it.
Poison Swamp
A tongue pulls you two tiles in, then it bites. Later, puddles that chase.
Volcanic Wastes
A five-shot fan, and embers left burning along its path.
Dark Ruins
Circles you, mirrors your volleys back in your own colour, then dives straight through you.
Each boss land's fortress yard has a stair choked by one land's matter: thorn, a dead lodestone, murk, a torrent, a mirage, an ember vent, a drift. Carry the element that answers it, shoot it, and it gives way. Below is a garrison strongroom: a small nest of forms, a strongbox, and a note tallying what was taken. Five of the seven send you a land or two back the way you came. The last two answer elements from your own past.
A Facet is something of the Sealwright's folded into the Point in your hand: fused for good, always on, never in your ability bar, and it cannot be lost or spent. None of them changes the damage you deal. They change how the world treats you. Seven wait in the deep vaults; one is in the first strongbox you open; one is what a town keeps for whoever brings its Hunt back; and one is under the plains, where the game first shows you what a Facet is.
Healing starts 3 s after a hit, not 6.
Off the road, while nothing hunts you, 85% of your pace, not 75%.
A heart heals 15%, not 12%, and waits 18 s on the ground, not 12.
A shockwave throws you half as far. A tongue drags you half the way.
A companion knocked down outside a fight is back in 45 s, not 90.
Lava and mire cost half. They still slow you.
After a Vow that took its time to fill, 1.8 s untouchable, not 1.2.
Below a quarter of your health, blows that get past your shields land 15% lighter.
Your sprint comes back in 10 s, not 15.
From any rooftop, TRAVEL reaches every fortress you have found in a land you have won.
Finish a restored town's three errands and its board grows a fourth line, harder than the others: a champion of the forms has come back to the land, and the town wants it gone. It wears a gold crest ring, walks with three escorts, and is set at least two levels over you the moment it appears, never more than four, so it is never a walk. The first Hunt handed in anywhere is WAYMARK; every one after is a shield. If it is too much for now, let it go: the board takes it back, and the champion stands whole again next time.
