The game is inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft, as it is set on the Innsmouth island, which has already been cut off from the rest of the known world due to the flood caused by the cult worshipping the Deep Ones, whose rituals have driven the island's population insane. However, three loose factions known as the League of Miners, the Hunter's Guild and the Alchemy Academy have arisen in the outside world, and now send their fighters to explore the island, regularly clashing over the arcane treasures from the Voids that may only be found there.
Egress provides examples of the following tropes:
- Cast from Hit Points: The special abilities of the Bloodkeeper class are to create an swift arrow or a slow, powerful orb out of your own blood.
- Charged Attack: There's both a "simple" charged attack, and an enraged one, which takes longer to build up, but is devastatingly powerful, and has your character flash red while performing it.
- Do Not Go Gentle: One of the character creation questions asks "What kind of death would you choose?", and you can opt for this, making you more affiliated with the Hunter's Guild.
- Dual Wielding: Rapiers can be dual-wieldged.
- Epigraph: The description for the Cursed Island map quotes the first stanza of the most famous poem by the late 19th century's Alexander Blok: "A night, a street, a lamp, a drugstore / A meaningless and dismal light / A quarter century outpours / It's all the same. No chance to flight."
- The Greatest Story Never Told: Alternatively, you might say in the character creator that you would rather die after doing something good, even if no-one will find out, which makes you more affiliated with the League of Miners.
- Master Poisoner: Alchemist Amanda Littleton can both throw vials that shatter to release a poisonous cloud, and coat the edge of her blade in poison.
- Mobile Shrubbery: You can hide inside overturned wooden barrels, and even move very slowly.
- Passed in Their Sleep: The third option to a question about how you would prefer to die, and the choice of the power and comfort-oriented Alchemists.
- Powerful Pick: One of the main melee weapons is a huge two-handed pick.
- Rise to the Challenge: The levels get flooded at set intervals, thus pushing your characters together.
- Rule of Cool: You can invoke this when answering the second question of the character creator, "Should there be a color differentiation of pants in society?" with "Yes! The coolest ones need the coolest pants!", which is a response affiliated with the Hunter's Guild. (Academy-leaning characters also agree, but because they want good pants for the ruling class like themselves, while the Miners would rather just let everyone have nice pants.)
- Shockwave Stomp: One of the characters can send flaming shockwaves along the ground after stabbing her sword downwards.
- Schrödinger's Question: Your character's affiliation with either of the three factions is determined based on your answers to a series of abstract questions. They range from more traditional ones, like asking whether your favorite metal is mercury, gold or iron, or asking you to choose a favorite mythical animal, to much weirder ones, like "If you were a soup, what kind of soup would you be?" or letting you pick a favorite ending to Little Red Riding Hood.
- Shout-Out: The question in the character creator about differently colored pants in a society is an oblique reference to a Soviet Sci-Fi comedy Kin-Dza-Dza!, which was set on a planet where people's social status was in fact determined by the color of their pants.
- The question about standing at a crossroads and choosing to go left to fight, forward to betray friends or right to work to the bone is inspired by Russian fables, where heroes often encountered a stone at the crossroads with directions to go right to get rich, go forward to get married, or go left to get killed, as a metaphor for the greater choices they can make in life. (Invariably, they go left and triumph against the odds.)
- Sprint Meter: Present, and used for both movement and attacks.
- Sword Lines: These are left whenever a player swings their weapon.
- Universal Poison: Amanda
- Unnecessary Combat Roll: A key way of dodging your opponents' attacks.
