Video Game / Bonfire

Hildie's world has collapsed.

"YOU WILL JOIN THE MOURNING."
"Maybe, but not today."

Bonfire is a turn-based Roguelike about journey and failure by MoaCube. After an Unspecified Apocalypse referred to only as "the Collapse", the knight Hildie and her friends travel the world on a journey to defeat the Faceless Overlord, a mysterious figure supposedly responsible for the Collapse.

Gameplay consists of missions comprised of semirandom gauntlets of battles, interspersed with downtime around the titular bonfire where the player can examine and re-equip heroes. Battles take place with a party of three heroes, with a strong focus on synergies between different characters. Though you start with only three heroes, more can be found over the course of the adventure to expand your tactical options.

The game is currently in Early Access on Steam, and can be found here.

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Bonfire has examples of:

• 10-Minute Retirement: If you can't feed your heroes, they will eventually lose hope and leave the party... but don't worry, they'll come back before long.
  Zivko: Yeah, so how about we forget I even left?
• Action Bomb:
  • The "booby trap" Status Effect makes the target explode on death, dealing severe damage to the enemy party. Underground Monkeys with the "Explosive" modifier start with this effect, but it can expire or be dispelled. Zhu's Booby Trap ability lets you apply the effect to heroes, turning your allies into action bombs.
  • Bloatscorch enemies are direct references to the Bomb enemies from Final Fantasy. They can self-apply the explosive effect at low health, and will do so continuously to prevent you from waiting it out. The only way to avoid detonating them is to kill them in one powerful strike from high health.
• Action Prologue: The game starts with a Cold Open of Hildie fighting her way through waves of enemies to regroup with her allies.
• After-Combat Recovery: Your heroes get healed back to full at the end of every run, letting you start the next quest at full power. This does not apply to injuries sustained from falling in battle, though, which last until the hero can eat an extra ration. To a lesser extent, heroes also recover 20 health after each battle.
• After the End: As the tagline says, Hildie's world has collapsed. The world is a wasteland stalked by The Undead, monsters, and Mournfolk, people who have given up on the world. Hildie and the other heroes will even admit there isn't much left to save; they fight purely for Revenge.
• Alliterative Name:
  • The Brutal Bonus Levels: Snowstorm Summit, Twisted Thicket, and Darkest Dungeon.
  • Runes: Hildie's Brave Blade and Erzsi's Skull Seed.
  • For enemies, there's the Unassuming Undead.
• Ambiguous Gender: The Faceless Overlord is referred to with different pronouns depending on who is speaking. Zivko considers it a "he", Hildie calls it "her", and Ephrem only uses "it".
• Ambiguously Evil: Erzsie, despite her claims to the contrary. In one support conversation, Zhu is unamused by her antics and interrogates her on what she did before she met them, and if she was really going to kill them when they fought. Erzsie's answers to the former are vague and evasive, and she claims she would not actually have killed the heroes. Zhu concludes that while she talks a big game, she's never actually done anything evil.
• Ambiguous Situation: The "trader" is only a wooden log with a carved face, but the heroes address it as if it were a person. It's unclear if they're correct or going insane from their stress and isolation.
• An Adventurer Is You: Each of the heroes usually falls into a specific role — to the point that in the alpha build, their classes were their names!
  • Hildie: Mighty Glacier and Stone Wall. She has the highest starting Armor of any hero and a strong attack to match, but she's tied with Zhu for worst Speed. Fortunately, her job is to stand in place and take hits for other people, so this doesn't hinder her too much.
  • Ephrem: The Medic and Glass Cannon. In addition to his healing, his Armor-Piercing Attack is reliably strong, and his high Special (especially when buffed by Sanctuary) makes items very powerful in his hands. However, Armor is his Dump Stat, and he can't heal himself, forcing him to rely on the protection of others to stay in the game.
  • Zivko: Squishy Wizard and Mighty Glacier. When fully charged his abilities are unmatched in power, but he has to spend his turns generating charges first. His actual stats are pretty average, so he's dependent on the boost from his charges to be effective.
  • Hexa: Squishy Wizard and Support Party Member. Her attack is very weak, but inflicts a heavy stat debuff that makes the enemy easier to take down. She can also produce unusual effects like cloning herself and boosting the team's Special.
  • Nadia: Fragile Speedster and Squishy Wizard. She has the best starting Speed of any hero, balanced out by the worst Armor. Her regular attack is very weak in terms of direct damage, but generates a Damage Over Time effect. She can also serve as a dodge tank, but this requires much more careful timing than with Hildie, as she cannot protect both other characters and herself with the same action.
  • Zhu: Mighty Glacier. She poured points from Speed straight into Attack, and her other stats are average. Her abilities are very powerful when used correctly, but you have to make each turn count.
  • Erzsi: Squishy Wizard and The Minion Master. Her attacks are very weak in terms of direct damage, but they generate powerful Damage Over Time effects that constantly drain health to keep her alive. If she does score a kill (or uses the Skull Seed rune), she can create her own undead minion to assist in the fight.
• Anti-Armor:
  • The fire Damage Over Time effect will reduce Armor in addition to inflicting damage. One of Zhu's skills improves this effect.
  • The Hex ability does little damage, but severely reduces the Armor of the target.
  • Odilons' Crosshair Aware effect will sharply reduce Armor before triggering their beam attack.
• Anti-Debuff:
  • Ephrem's Healing will shorten debuff durations by 1, and Hildie's Purge will remove all debuffs completely.
  • The Immune buff protects against all debuffs, but it will eventually wear off like any other buff. "Immune" enemies start with 6 turns of the effect, and you can apply it yourself with a Shield Crystal (which also clears all existing debuffs as a bonus).
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • You are more likely to get food-gathering quests and errands if you're low on food.
  • Losing a hero in Endless mode will decrease the difficulty of the next section to account for the fact the new hero has no motivation levels.
  • While enemy fire attacks still inflict more Maximum HP Reduction than normal, they are much less effective than fire attacks used by the player, which inflict almost as much Maximum HP Reduction as their regular damage. This prevents fire attacks from being quite so devastating to the player, who has more need of healing than enemies.
  • If Anti-Armor effects reduce an enemy's Armor into the negatives, Armor Piercing Attacks will gain the bonus from negative Armor instead of ignoring it, allowing piercing attacks to take advantage of Anti-Armor as much as regular attacks.
• Anti-Hoarding: Used items will grant you a bonus of 10 gold and 10 XP to the journey's end reward, encouraging you to use as many as possible. There is even an early-game quest cheekily called "Hoarder's Nightmare" that forces you to use several items to complete.
• Anti-Regeneration: Certain abilities (mostly fire-based attacks) cause greater Maximum HP Reduction than normal.
• Area of Effect:
  • Zhu's specialty. Her regular attack is relatively weak, but hits all enemies. One of her runes, Focus Fire, lets her invert this, turning her regular attack into a powerful single-target attack.
  • Zivko's Blast Prism rune allows him to refract his Blast attack to hit all enemies, though for reduced power.
  • The Frozen Flame item causes high damage to all enemies, and can be used by anyone.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Ephrem's basic attack, the poison Damage Over Time effect, and some other abilities. A few enemies have this as well, most notably The Master.
• Artificial Brilliance: While most enemies have simple and predictable AIs, Failures have noticeably smarter tactics, largely due to them sharing heroes' more complex abilities. They perform several of the same tactics players like to use, making them markedly more dangerous. Mournfolk will also become more intelligent after a certain point, which is particularly noticeable in the Evil Counterparts — Mournfolk Mages will use uncharged Blasts when low on health instead of wasting a turn futilely charging, for instance.
• Badass Boast: The "alone" barks that aren't Oh, Crap! tend to be this, particularly Hildie's "As long as I'm here, you haven't won!" This can become unintentionally hilarious if the hero is defeated right after.
• Batman Cold Open: The Action Prologue is a Justified Tutorial that pits you against enemies designed to be countered by your starting heroes, allowing the game to show off their abilities while teaching you how to use them.
• Beige Prose: The description for all Failure enemies is simply, "A failure." This is a striking contrast to other enemy descriptions which, while not terribly lengthy, are much more jocular and tongue-in-cheek.
• Big Bad: The mysterious Faceless Overlord, supposedly responsible for the Collapse. Every one of the heroes wants a piece of them for their own reasons.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Erzsie the vampire is a Card-Carrying Villain who only opposes the Faceless Overlord for interfering with her ambitions to be an Evil Overlord. Despite claiming to be a master of The Undead, she's only as powerful as the other heroes, and her supposed minions don't listen to her. A support conversation with Zhu implies she might never have been evil at all, and that her threats to the party were all talk.
• Blood Knight:
  • All of the characters seem to be this to some extent; their barks show they're always excited to fight, mocking weak encounters as unchallenging and reacting with glee at the chance to fight challenging ones.
  • Nadia is probably the most blatant of these among the main characters, bordering on Psychopathic Manchild; almost nothing dims her enthusiasm for fighting, and she almost seems to view it like a game. It gets to the point that it disturbs Zhu in one of their support conversations.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Hildie's abilities aren't very flashy, but in a game where heroes can die in only a few hits, having a reliable tank to mitigate damage is extremely valuable. It's hard to go wrong with her in your party.
  • The Prayer Beads rune doesn't do anything but heal Ephrem and give him a minor stat boost — but given one of Ephrem's few weaknesses is that he can't heal himself, Prayer Beads give you a lot more room for error to keep him alive so he can keep the rest of your party alive in turn.
  • Zivko's Magnetic Force rune lets him Draw Aggro while shooting his Armor through the roof. Not as flashy as Blast Prism, but it can save you in a pinch if your dedicated tank is out of commission.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Unassuming Undead, which look identical to regular skeleton warriors except for their Red Eyes, Take Warning. They're actually of miniboss-level strength. They exceed even Nadia in speediness and possess the game's only Randomized Damage Attack, which is strong enough to destroy even Hildie if you're unlucky. Lampshaded by their name and description, which cheekily describes them as "Just another undead warrior."
• Brutal Bonus Level: The Snowstorm Summit, Twisted Thicket, and Darkest Dungeon quests, which only appear rarely once you've journeyed through many areas. They are by far the longest and hardest quests, featuring two Boss Battles instead of one and starting the difficulty where most quests end. Lampshaded by their descriptions, which outright say that attempting them is suicidally stupid. The Expand Update introduced an even harder and longer one, The Onset of Mourning.
  Quest Description: Why are we here again?
• Cannibalism Superpower: Most undead enemies possess the "Dark Feast" ability, which kills one of their allies and grants them a buff to Attack and Speed.
• Cast from Hit Points:
  • Erzsie's Bloodstone rune will reduce her to 10 HP and generate a damaging projectile for every 10 HP lost through this method.
  • Hexa's Shadowspawn ability takes half her current HP to form the shadowspawn. She can get it back if she reabsorbs the shadowspawn, which happens automatically at the end of battle.
• Character Level: Two kinds. Within journeys, characters gain "motivation points" by performing actions, and gain a level at certain thresholds. This fully heals them and boosts their stats by 10%. However, all motivation levels are reset at the end of a journey, so these boosts aren't permanent. Completing journeys awards more traditional Experience Points, which can be spent on permanent upgrades via a skill tree.
• Charged Attack:
  • Zivko's abilities are a collect-type. He can use his turn to generate a single charge (up to a maximum of 3), and all are consumed when he uses an ability, with a greater effect for every charge. Enemy mages operate the same way, though some enemies (such as Crystal Golems) can generate charges through other means.
  • Boosted attacks are both a hold-type and a collect-type. By holding down the mouse button when you attack, you can expend motivation points to make the attack stronger.
• Cold Open: The first time you open the game you'll be thrown straight into the tutorial quest, with the story starting In Medias Res. It's not until you complete the tutorial that the heroes make camp around the titular bonfire, which forms the title screen of the game from then on.
• Combatant Cooldown System: Uses a system very similar to Final Fantasy Tactics' CTB system: Characters gain "energy" points between turns based on their Speed stat, and get a turn once it hits 100. Stunning abilities delay turns by reducing energy, and "quick" abilities generate a little energy after use, making the next turn come faster.
• Combat Medic:
  • Though Ephrem possesses a healing spell as his ally ability, his Armor-Piercing Attack is very effective, and it's a wise strategy to keep him on the offensive as much as possible.
  • Hildie can become this with the Bandages rune, which allows her to significantly heal the most injured member of the party. You can push this even further with the skill literally called "Combat Medic", which improves the effectiveness of healing items when she's around.
• Continuing is Painful: Much less painful than in most Roguelikes, but heroes who are defeated in a journey have reduced maximum health until they consume an extra ration, and you gain the risk of encountering a difficult Mirror Boss against your defeated party later down the line.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Bosses are immune to Cursed Skulls, and Recurring Bosses (but not regular bosses) are immune to Nadia's One-Hit Kill Critical Hit. Averted in all other cases, however. There's no other general Anti-Debuff.
• Counter-Attack:
  • Nadia's Riposte ability lets her dodge the next attack (except for Area of Effect) and follow it with a powerful counter, making it an incredibly good skill for both offense and defense. Beware, though — Grim Slayers can use it too!
  • Mournfolk Guards' Earshot ability lets them counter any attack, even if not directed at them, and doesn't expire until their next turn comes around. While not terribly strong, it can wear you down if you use an Attack! Attack! Attack! strategy.^{In the alpha...} The Blind Archer hero had this ability in the alpha build, but he isn't present in the final release.
• Creepy Child: It's unclear exactly how old Nadia is, so she may more accurately be a Psychopathic Manchild depending on her age; but she is clearly the youngest of the heroes, having been born around the time of the Collapse or possibly even after. Growing up After the End has made her a little... unhinged. Though she initially appears to be a cheerful Genki Girl, she proves a little too enthusiastic about fighting the Mournfolk, seeing it almost like a game. The older Zhu is visibly disturbed by her behavior in one support conversation.
• Critical Hit: Several upgrades in the skill tree give characters a chance at this.
  • Nadia's critical doesn't increase base damage, but it turns the hit into an Armor-Piercing Attack. Later on, she can get access to a much rarer critical hit that's a One-Hit Kill.
  • Ephrem and Hildie gain a chance to inflict a status effect with their regular attack; stunning for Ephrem and burn for Hildie.
• Crosshair Aware: Odilons will generate an Anti-Armor effect that looks like a crosshair before targeting all afflicted heroes with their Eye Beams.
• Damage Over Time: Several kinds, and they're quite powerful, having the same base damage as regular attacks. The most common versions are poison, which ignores Armor, and fire, which reduces Armor.
• Damager, Healer, Tank: The starting party is Zivko (damager), Ephrem (healer), and Hildie (tank), and the most successful parties tend to be a balance of these three roles. Every hero is versatile enough to fill other roles if respecced with different runes and inspirations, however.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: The "Tough" modifier turns enemies into these. It provides only minor stat boosts, but increases their Hit Points by 100. For standard enemies, this doubles their health!
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Due to Maximum HP Reduction being built in to all attacks, tanks such as Hildie are likely to suffer this. They may only take Scratch Damage from most attacks, but taking more hits means their max HP gets worn down faster, eventually preventing them from recovering.
• Defeat Equals Friendship: Defeating the Bloody Countess will result in her joining your team, after your heroes finally get a word in edgewise.
• Determinator: While other heroes can lose hope and go into a 10-Minute Retirement, Hildie will never abandon the quest.
• Double-Edged Buff:
  • The Berserk status massively boosts Attack and Speed, but also heavily reduces Armor. The Tiger Blood item gives you access to a similar buff, Bloodlust, which provides the same bonuses but makes the character uncontrollable.
  • Each hero's unique stat booster rune provides twice the bonus of standard runes, but also penalizes another stat, giving them the same net total as standard stat booster runes.
• Draw Aggro:
  • Zivko's Magnetic Force rune, when used, makes enemies prioritize him as a target while also massively buffing his Armor, allowing him to protect other characters in the absence of a dedicated tank.
  • Inverted by the Sanctuary and Smoke Screen abilities, which prevents enemies from targeting the character. This is useful for protecting your Squishy Wizards.
• Dual Boss:
  • Many of the skull pin quests pit you against two Mini Bosses, which are still quite tough since you have to face them at motivation level 1.
  • The Double Dragon quests pit you against two dragons at once, making them one of the hardest challenges. In case that's not enough, there's a version that makes both of them elite.
• Dynamic Difficulty:
  • The Endless Quest becomes more difficult the further you go, but will temporarily let up on the difficulty curve if you lose a hero. Unlike in other quests, instead of the hero coming back injured in the next battle, they're replaced with another hero from your roster; the reduced difficulty is to account for the fact the new hero starts at level 1.
  • The Gauntlet increases in difficulty every time you complete it. At the start it's barely tougher than standard journeys, but after about 12 wins it becomes as hard as Snowstorm Summit, Twisted Thicket, and Darkest Dungeon. And it keeps getting harder even after that!
• Elite Mooks: Any enemy can potentially appear with an adjective modifier that grants them increased stats and, sometimes, a starting buff. These modifiers can apply to any enemy, including bosses for some really tough encounters.
• Enemy Mine: The heroes recruit Erzsie, a vampiric Card-Carrying Villain, onto their team purely because she also opposes the Overlord.
• Enemy Summoner: Several enemies are capable of summoning weaker minions. These can be used to replace fallen enemies or, sometimes, to summon additional enemies in excess of the normal 3. This can get overwhelming very quickly unless you brought some Area of Effect attacks.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • Mournfolk Knights, Priests, and Mages are this to Hildie, Ephrem, and Zivko, respectively. They have similar stat layouts and abilities, though they are each lacking one skill that their heroic counterparts possess.^note The alpha build had counterparts for every class, but these were removed in the Steam release (except for the Disenchanter, but Diverter was cut from the Steam build, making it no longer an Evil Counterpart). The Maladin Mini-Boss is a straighter evil counterpart to Hildie, as it possesses her Purge ability, which Mournfolk Knights lack.
  • Failures... might be this. It's unclear if they're actually evil, a manifestation of the heroes' psyche, or something else. Regardless, they have the exact same abilities as the heroes, and are much smarter than Mournfolk.
• Eye Beams: The chief weapon of Odilons.
• Flaming Sword: Hildie's Brave Blade ability, which burns the target for good measure. Her "Flamestrike" skill gives her a small chance to turn her regular attack into this as well.
• Fridge Logic:invoked Zhu brings this up in one of her support conversations with Zivko: Why doesn't he charge his magic before battles? This is Hand Waved as charges being exhausting to maintain for long periods of time, which also explains why they expire so quickly in battle.
  • Amusingly, as of the Mastery update, Zivko can actually start battle with a charge through one of his level-up skills.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: The endless nature of the road to Overlord's keep is apparently diegetic, given the conversations the heroes have during the Endless Quest. The heroes say that Overlord's keep can never be reached, only approached.
• Gathering Steam:
  • Zivko (and enemy mages) needs to generate charges to use his abilities with maximum effectiveness. Uncharged, his abilities are weak, but they can become some of the strongest in the game with multiple charges.
  • Werekoshaks generate a "Rage" effect each time they attack, which increases their Speed and Attack. These stack, so they can quickly create a feedback loop by allowing the werekoshak to attack more often, generating even more Rage effects.
  • "Chained" enemies gain enormous stat boosts compared to their regular counterparts, but start the battle with three turns of an immobilization effect. Once the effect expires they'll be a lot of trouble, but if you're quick you can take them out early.
• Genki Girl: Nadia the Assassin is the most upbeat and cheerful of the heroes, and her barks frequently indicate how happy she is to be with the rest of the group. She's actually a bit too cheerful, edging into Creepy Child or Psychopathic Manchild territory (depending on her actual age), as you might expect from anyone who can stay that cheerful in an apocalypse. Her enthusiasm extends even to battling, which she views as a game to seek the most challenging foes.
• Glass Cannon:
  • The "Berserk" effect turns enemies into these, boosting their Attack and Speed while sharply reducing their Armor. This may even result in them gaining negative Armor points, which increases all damage against them.
  • Werekoshaks are Lightning Bruisers that get stronger every time they attack, but their Armor is remarkably low for an enemy of their tier, allowing you to beat them before they become overwhelming if you focus your fire.
• Gradual Regeneration:
  • This is the signature ability of trolls, who can grant this to themselves as one of their actions; Troll Heart items can be used to grant it to your whole party. The effect can also be seen in "Undying" enemies, who start with 6 turns of it.
  • Zivko's charges and Nadia's smokescreen effect can be upgraded to provide this through their skill trees.
• Healer Signs On Early: Ephrem, who can freely heal other heroes, joins as part of your starting party.
• Healing Potion: Restoration Potions heal the user by a large amount. They notably restore maximum health too, allowing characters to come back from aggravated damage.
• Health/Damage Asymmetry: Downplayed. Every hero has the exact same HP (100), which never changes over the course of the game. Standard enemies have the exact same amount. Stronger enemies do outpace heroes, but not to the absurd degree seen in most RPGs: minibosses have 200 HP and bosses have 400. Damage scales in the same way, with standard enemies having comparable Attack to heroes and bosses often having more. So while it's possible to beat enemies with only a few hits, they can do the same to you — as many a player has discovered after receiving a max-charge Blast from a Mournfolk Mage, which, just like yours, almost always does over 100 damage.
• Heavily Armored Mook: The "Armored" modifier turns enemies into these by giving a massive boost to their Armor stat. However, this is an Informed Attribute, as their character art doesn't change.
• Highly Specific Counterplay: The enemies introduced in the 0.9.35 update were explicitly stated as designed to counter Zhu, who had grown to dominate the meta due to gaining a significant power boost from the previous update. Bloatscorches penalize her style of wearing down the enemy party with weak Area of Effect attacks by blowing up if left at low health, and the Resonance effect penalizes Area of Effect attacks even more directly by damaging the party every time the enemy is hit — unavoidable with Area of Effect attacks. Heroes with strong focus fire capabilities can deal with them without too much trouble, but they throw a serious wrench into Zhu's playstyle specifically.
• In Medias Res: The game begins with Hildie in the middle of an expedition after having failed a previous attempt on the Overlord's keep. We're told that she's been at this for a while, and her team used to be bigger before it dwindled to only Ephrem and Zivko, but these details are only alluded to in party chats.
• Justified Tutorial: The party banter throughout the tutorial quest serves as a primer on their basic abilities and strategies: Hildie will remind the Squishy Wizards to let her protect them from hits, Ephrem will inform the player of Maximum HP Reduction, and Zivko will explain how his charges work. This is used continually throughout the game, with many of the tactics quests (tutorials on advanced strategies) being introduced by the heroes discussing them in-universe, and misplays like letting Zivko's charges expire or healing characters who don't need it get pointed out via party banter as well.
• Kill It with Fire: Zhu's go-to solution for everything. In gameplay, fire damage causes greater max HP damage than normal, preventing characters from healing.
• King Mook: Minibosses are reskins or Palette Swaps of regular enemies with beefed-up stats and different abilities. Some, such as the Resonant Golem, change substantially from their regular counterparts, while others remain similar in tactics.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Hildie. She understands there's not much of the world left to save, but she still does her best, even if she knows it's a lost cause.
• Last Chance Hit Point: Hildie's Dedication will let heroes survive one fatal attack, but it will leave them at 5 hit points.^* This is functionally the same as 1 HP, because the minimum damage for an attack is 5.
• Level-Up Fill-Up: Gaining a motivation level fully heals the hero, including max HP damage. This is pretty important for keeping heroes alive, as healing is otherwise very limited.
• Life Drain:
  • Erzsie's specialty. Her Enthrall attack not only does this on the original hit, but inflicts a Damage Over Time effect that continues draining the victim every time they act.
  • Necro enemies combine this with Area of Effect, allowing them to heal a lot even if they only do minor damage individually.
  • The Dark Feast ability heals the user based on how much health the victim had remaining.
• Lightning Bruiser:
  • The Runesmith has 100 Speed, Attack, and Armor, making him a juggernaut who's likely to get twice as many turns as your heroes.
  • Night Stalkers, the miniboss variant of Grim Slayers. Grim Slayers' regular attack (which isn't terribly dangerous unless you're already at low health) is replaced with a powerful Armor-Piercing Attack while they're still just as fast, allowing them to chew through your heroes frighteningly quickly.
  • The "Rapid" modifier turns enemies into these, providing a huge boost to their Speed as well as a boost to their health.
• Luck-Based Mission: The results of errands are completely random. You can stack the deck by matching heroes to specific errands they're well-suited for, but there is always a chance of failure.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Hildie's massive tower shield is even more prominent in her design than her Cool Sword, reflecting her role as your Stone Wall.
• Master of Illusion: Zivko used to be one of these, but the Collapse took those powers from him. He can now only use destructive "blastmancy".
• Maximum HP Reduction:
  • All damage reduces maximum HP by an amount equal to one-fifth of the total damage (or a larger proportion if it was fire damage), which will wear your heroes down over time. Your health will return to normal at the start of each quest, but within quests, the only way to recover permanent wounds is through items or Level-Up Fill-Up.
  • Heroes who are defeated in a quest have their max health reduced by 20% for the rest of the run. Unlike regular HP reduction, this does persist across quests, and can only be healed if the character consumes an extra ration during the night.
• Mighty Glacier:
  • The "Hulking" modifier turns enemies into these, as it decreases their Speed while greatly boosting their health and Attack.
  • On the player's side, Hildie has the lowest starting Speed of all heroes, but gets the highest Attack and Armor in exchange. This can be exaggerated further with her unique "Juggernaut" rune, which further boosts her Attack and Armor while reducing her Speed.
• Mirror Boss: Failures, which are shadowy duplicates of your parties that failed a previous run. They have the exact same abilities and slightly worse stats (but more health), and use much smarter tactics than regular enemies. It's unclear what exactly they are; the characters seem to be familiar with them, but see no need to elaborate.
• Money for Nothing: Not regular money, but glimmers of hope. They are only used to attempt the Endless and Gauntlet modes... which also give out glimmers in their boss fights, so you're unlikely to ever run out. You can very rarely encounter chests that require a single glimmer to unlock, but this isn't nearly enough of a Money Sink.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot:
  • Grim Slayers are zombie ninjas.
  • The alpha build had werewolf paladins ("A walking moral contradiction," according to their description) as enemies.
• No Cure for Evil: Averted. Mournfolk Priests (Ephrem's Evil Counterpart) and Oakhearts can heal their allies, and Failures, as Mirror Bosses, copy your healing abilities as well. Some monsters are also capable of healing themselves, and regeneration is a possible starting buff for all enemies.
• Obvious Rule Patch: Every hero can use a Charged Attack to make their attack stronger at the cost of motivation points. Attacks also grant motivation points equal to the damage dealt. This meant that, at certain power levels, charged attacks generated enough motivation points to instantly refund the cost, making them essentially free. The 0.9.35 update changed this so that charged attacks no longer grant motivation points.
• Oculothorax: Odilon enemies are gigantic eyes attached to blimp-like contractions.
• Oh, Crap!: Most heroes have some variant as one of their "both allies defeated" barks. Zivko's is literally, "Well, shit!"
• One-Hit Kill:
  • Nadia's "Insta-Kill" skill gives a very small chance to turn her Critical Hit into this.
  • Cursed Skulls instantly kill the weakest enemy in the current battle, though they don't work on bosses.
  • A 3-charge Blast from an enemy is designed to be this; unless you have extremely high Armor, it will deal more damage than your maximum HP. Fortunately, it takes the enemy 3 turns to set up, so you have ample time to kill them first.
• Only Sane Man:
  • Ephrem is the most stoic and grounded of the starting three heroes, and is quick to remind them to be more careful and practical when they start drifting.
  • Zhu, while less of a conversationalist than Ephrem, has a very pragmatic outlook. She is most often the one to pick at the stranger parts of characters' personalities that everyone else takes in stride. Notably, she is the least happy about letting Erzsie join the team, and interrogates her on how many people she's actually killed.
• Our Dragons Are Different: As of 0.9.6, there are two of them, both somewhat unusual. Carrion Dragons are scavengers that consume both the dead and the living, and attack with poisonous vomit. Tar Dragons spit sticky tar to immobilize their prey before igniting them with fire breath.
• The Quiet One: Zhu is the least talkative of the heroes, and outright says she doesn't work well with others. This is reflected in most of her barks consisting only of grunts or short phrases. Even in support conversations, she tends to disengage quickly, preferring to privately mull on what she's learned rather than continue the conversation.
• Randomized Damage Attack: Unassuming Undead's Multislash attack inflicts a random amount of damage across a large range.
• Rodents of Unusual Size: Koshak enemies are man-sized rodents that are extremely fast. They don't do a lot of damage, but they'll hit you often with their Maximum HP Reduction bites.
• Recurring Boss: There is a special class of bosses that have a whopping 1000 HP, but retreat after a few turns and retain damage across fights, forcing you to wear them down over multiple encounters. Currently, only two exist: the Hunter and the Bloody Countess.
• Redemption Demotion: The Bloody Countess loses her boss-level HP once she joins your party. She also loses her summoning ability, though she can get that one back.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: This is the only way to distinguish Unassuming Undead from regular skeleton warriors.
• Religion of Evil: The Mournfolk appear to be this, crossed with a dash of Straw Nihilist. Various comments from Hildie and others imply that they used to be normal people who "joined the Mourning".
• Required Party Member: Quests related to a specific hero's story require you to include them in your party.
• Revenge: Hildie and Ephrem state this as their motivation, understanding that there's not much of the world left to save.
• Savage Wolf: Wolves appear as regular enemies. Their signature ability is a howl that acts as a Status-Buff Dispel for your whole party.
• Scratch Damage: Unlike most RPGs, it's 5, rather than 1. (This is to provide Scratch Damage for Maximum HP Reduction, which is one-fifth of regular damage.) As heroes have only 100 Hit Points, this is still significant, and makes multi-hit attacks dangerous even against heavily-armored characters like Hildie.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Downplayed due to the fact the language never rises above a PG-13 rating, but Ephrem is very fond of "Damn!" and curses the most out of all the heroes. This provides an interesting contrast with his priestly background.
• Situational Damage Attack:
  • Disenchanters' Shatter attack, a Status-Buff Dispel, does more damage for every effect it removes.
  • Grim Slayers' Assassinate attack (and Nadia's own counterpart, the Assassin's Blade rune) inflict more damage the less health the target has, dealing only minor damage at high health but finishing them off very quickly when their health drops.
  • Several skills introduced in the Mastery update turn characters into a Weapon of X-Slaying; see that trope for details.
  • Zhu's "Aye Oh Eee" skill makes her do more damage when more than 3 enemies are present.
  • Ephrem's "Discharge Strike" skill gives him bonus damage against enemies with Status Buffs. Conversely, his "Martyr" skill boosts his damage when he's afflicted by statuses.
• Shout-Out:
  • The game's very name is an obvious reference to Dark Souls, another Dark Fantasy game with a bonfire motif.
  • The game's Action Bomb enemy, Bloatscorches, have the same design as Final Fantasy's Bomb enemies.
  • The Brutal Bonus Level for ruin biomes shares a name with another dungeon-crawler roguelike with a heavy party focus.
  • One of Erzsi's idle quotes is "What a horrible night to have a curse."
• Status-Buff Dispel:
  • Disenchanters' attack, Shatter, will remove all statuses (positive and negative) from the target plus do bonus damage for every effect removed. Zivko can get a variant of this himself with his Disenchant skill, which shortens the duration of enemy buffs if he attacks with an uncharged Blast.^{In the alpha...} In the alpha build, the Diverter hero had access to his own Shatter attack, but he's not present in the final build.
  • Wolves have an "unnerving howl" that does no damage, but shortens the duration of all buffs on your party.
  • Ephrem's Pure Force rune removes buffs from all enemies and, as a bonus, converts them into an Attack buff for himself.
  • The Prism item will remove all statuses from the entire field, positive and negative, to power a laser that gains strength for every effect removed.
  • Crystal Golems' Nexus ability has the same effect as a Prism, but converts the effects into charges instead. Each charge will allow the Crystal Golem to make an additional attack on its next turn.
• Status Effects: The game largely revolves around these. Status effects can do everything from stat boosts to damage to redirecting targeting, in all sorts of permutations, and every playable character can generate at least one with their basic actions.
• Stone Wall: The "Armored" modifier turns enemies into these. It gives them a massive Armor boost without affecting other stats much, making them nigh-invulnerable without an Armor-Piercing Attack.
• Straw Nihilist: The Mournfolk. They are depicted with slack, expressionless faces, and unnerve the party with messages of futility and fatalism. Their leader, the Faceless Overlord, is described as "an absence of all faith and hope".
• Superboss: After upgrading your runes 20 times, the Runesmith will challenge you to a duel. He is extremely powerful, with 100 in all stats and abilities featuring some of the nastiest enemy effects: turn delay, buff shortening, self healing, and Area of Effect. Upgrade them even further and you get to fight him again, this time accompanied by two Crystal Golems, which is one of the hardest fights in the game.
• Support Party Member:
  • Ephrem appears to be this at first, as he's a priest with a healing spell. However, he's actually a well-rounded Combat Medic, and his Armor-Piercing Attack is often more useful than his healing.
  • Hexa is a straighter example. Her offensive potential is poor, but her attacks simultaneously weaken enemies' offense and defense, setting them up for stronger attacks by her allies. She can also use Hex Ward to greatly reduce the damage your other heroes take.
  • Zivko can be this if you choose to use his charges for Boosts instead of Blasts. His unique "Support Pack" rune encourages this, dropping his Attack but boosting his Speed and Special.
• Tiered by Name: Stronger variants of enemies gain a descriptor before their name that gives them a specfic stat boost or Status Buff.
• Token Evil Teammate: Erzsie remains an unabashed Evil Overlord even after joining the heroes, cooperating only due to a mutual enemy. (Though a support conversation with Zhu reveals she may have only been playacting at being evil.)
• Unblockable Attack: Area of Effect attacks ignore Riposte, Protect, and untargetable statuses.
• The Undead: A class of enemy, coming in the typical suite of zombies, skeletons, and Necromancers. Wights also make an appearance as powerful armored warriors. According to the heroes the undead were created by the Collapse, but we have no further details.
• Underground Monkey: Every enemy can appear as a stronger variant possessing a descriptive adjective that grants them stat boosts and sometimes a Status Buff.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Hildie has the lowest starting Special of all heroes, but the highest Attack. She hits hard, but don't expect her to get much use out of items. This can be downplayed with her "Hidden Potential" skill, which gives her additional Special points on motivation ups.
• Unspecified Apocalypse: Referred to only as "the Collapse". It destroyed society as we know it, turned many people into The Undead, and is somehow connected to the Faceless Overlord, but other than that, we don't know any details.
• Vampiric Draining: Life Drain abilities look like this. No physical contact is made, but motes of Life Energy get sucked out of the victim.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: The battle against two Undying to gain Zhu's first rune is widely cited as a brick wall for new players. Undying, in addition to having a much stronger version of zombies' regular attack, can summon two zombies on their turn. Even one Undying can get overwhelming if you're not careful, but two means you'll be up to your eyeballs in zombies before you can blink. To make matters worse, zombies apply poison, which is an Armor-Piercing Attack — this means it chews through your primary tank Hildie much faster than you're used to. New players' strategies will typically meet defeat in this battle; it's designed to teach you to act fast instead of turtling.
• Weak, but Skilled:
  • Zivko has only average Attack, but his Blast attack gains an extremely high damage multiplier if he accumulates charges. This makes it weak if you just use it as a standard attack, but if you have the time to build up charges it can be very powerful, often killing weaker enemies outright. However, he does still have trouble against heavily-armored enemies, as the damage multiplier occurs after armor reduction.
  • Nadia has below-average Attack and her basic attack has a low damage multiplier on top of that, making her unlikely to deal much direct damage. Her real potential comes from the poison she applies with that weak attack, which ignores Armor and often deals more damage than her attack did for 3 turns in a row. Her Riposte also has a high damage multiplier that allows it to do strong damage even with her low Attack, but it requires a turn to set up. This can be inverted with her unique "Slasher" rune, which greatly boosts her Attack at the cost of her Special.
• Weapon of X-Slaying:
  • The Bottled Hope, Dawn Lantern, and Extinction Event items all do extremely high damage, but only to enemies of a specific family (Mournfolk, undead, and animals respectively).
  • Several level-up skills turn characters into these.
    • Hildie and Zhu do more damage to Mournfolk and undead, respectively, after their "Slayer" skills are unlocked.
    • Hildie's "Heroism" skill makes her do more damage to bosses and elite enemies.
    • Hexa's "Unsummon" skill makes her do up to twice as much damage to summoned enemies.
• Wolf Pack Boss: The "Four Infantrymen of the Apocalypse" quest pits you against four Mini Bosses at once. It's one of the hardest fights in the game, but it becomes significantly easier as you thin their numbers.