ESCAPEMENT

a cultivation RPG — created in the Blue Mountains, NSW

I'm Jake, a solo developer in the Blue Mountains, NSW, building Escapement — a cultivation RPG (the genre derived from Chinese fantasy: martial artists refining body and spirit to transcend death) set in a world of water clocks, immortals, and cockatoos. Fate has long since shackled you with its decree: you are going to die young. What will you do with the little time you have left?

The game

Fate is not a metaphor here: the heavens have measured out every day of your life, including your last. You are the cog that won't keep time; each death winds the world back to day one. Jam the works.

Escapement is a time-loop RPG crossed with a cultivation life-sim. You are a mortal disciple mastering the same scheduled life, and the death that ends it, one repetition at a time. Where other loops give you minutes or a day, this one gives you a lifetime: room to learn a craft, turn a stranger into a sworn friend, and still die on schedule.

• The world runs on a fixed calendar, and so does everyone in it. Every lecture, festival, feud, and disaster falls on schedule until you intervene; every character keeps a real daily routine, life after life. Learning the calendar and its people is the progression.
• Knowledge is the progression that survives death. Routes, people, recipes, techniques: your real save file is what you've learned.
• Each "Fated Death" is a boss fight you are fated to lose. Beat it anyway: uncover one of the many hidden advantages that tilt it, or come back strong enough to win it head-on.
• The world is a water-driven machine inside a living Blue Mountains biosphere: gum forest and sandstone country, lyrebirds, funnel-webs, and kangaroos. Qi flows through the land's veins, and Australia's famously deadly wildlife cultivates right alongside you.

Explore the mountains. Dig up their secrets. Befriend disciples, rivals, and elders. Temper your body. Spar your allies. Meditate and gather qi. Brew pills in a borrowed cauldron. Fight the local wildlife. Meet your fated death on the day it was written, and wake on day one with a better plan. Again. And again. Until the works jam.

Feedback

For feedback or suggestions about the game, email hello@escapementgame.com.