A FAMILIAR EXPLORER. A NEW LIVING MAZE.

Choose your own path.

Your armed explorer returns with his existing graphics and animation identity intact. A royal expedition has disappeared beyond the living jungle. Ten wardens bar the citadel; five artifacts and five personal masteries unlock the keeper’s seals; the Hollow King guards the final passage to the lost Princess Aveline.

There is no waypoint trail, required map-visitation percentage or prescribed artifact order. Explore, get lost, return to familiar clearings, and choose your own routes to the ten required wardens.

Launch and controls

Open index.html, select New Game and click Begin expedition. Leave the seed blank for a fresh world or enter one to reproduce a jungle. No server, installation, account or Internet connection is required.

The small gold aiming cue follows your last facing direction. The gun and sword are separate actions. Touch controls provide movement, sword, gun and element cycling. Opening the map or element selector pauses temporarily and restores prior play on closing. Equipment remains paused until you resume.

Admin settings and cheat mode

Use Admin in the header or Settings. Speed levels 1–10 multiply by 1.25 per step. Difficulty Easy/Medium/Hard/Impossible adds two neutral starting-weapon hits and 25% compounded monster damage per tier. Density 1–10 adds one monster per step to jungle screens, preserving the safe start and finale. Respawn 0 is off; 1–10 is the delay in active gameplay seconds for ordinary creatures only. Wardens remain defeated for the current cycle. Changes apply immediately and are saved with each expedition.

Cheats default off. When enabled: Shift+1…9,0 guides to bosses 1…10; Shift+− guides to the Hollow King; Shift+= guides to the door. Shift+Q/W/E/R/T guides to remaining Fire/Water/Air/Earth/Lightning artifacts; Shift+Y selects the nearest remaining artifact. A flashing arrow outside the game follows corridors; these shortcuts do not teleport. Shift+G toggles god mode; Shift+Enter reaches only the final approach, never bypassing ending requirements. Disable cheats to clear god mode and guidance.

The jungle

A new seeded world has 256 jungle rooms plus two finale chambers. A looped central exploration network reaches five separate artifact regions and a separate final-door region. Dedicated branches never merge outside that network. Artifacts sit on loops; ten boss lairs are the only terminal dead ends. Additional paths and discoveries create choices, not a linear campaign.

The same source room scale, clearings, footbox, sliding and instant flip-screen navigation are retained. New room sections use suitable independently created scenery artwork, not the previous map or copied commercial room layouts. The catalogue contains 720 family/variant/exit designs, with 540 distinct collision layouts, plus purpose-built start, boss and finale rooms.

The minimap reveals visited rooms and adjacent unknown cells only. The expanded map marks discovered artifact groves ◆, boss lairs B, final door D, Hollow King S and princess P. It does not disclose undiscovered objectives or highlight a correct route. Map completion is unique rooms entered divided by all 258 playable rooms.

Artifacts and equipment

Collect five artifacts to unlock Fire, Water, Air, Earth and Lightning. Open I → Artifact powers to equip a discovered artifact, or choose Neutral. Collected pieces remain marked with their element initial and ◆ on both maps, with a named tooltip. The selected element imbues both sword and gun. No complex elemental-combination system is active.

• Fire adds burning damage.
• Water slows movement and attack timing.
• Air accelerates swings and firing.
• Earth adds damage and stagger.
• Lightning adds impact damage and a brief shock.

Each world contains exactly eight accessories: one of each element and three random extras, with duplicates allowed. Every accessory is one physical item shared between weapons. Each weapon has five slots. Eight items cannot fill both weapons. Move them in Equipment and Stats while paused; installing into an occupied slot returns the previous item to your pack.

Accessories act independently of the selected artifact. Duplicate accessory contribution follows 0.65 × (1 − 0.55ⁿ) / 0.45. A selected artifact adds 1.0 to its element; intensity caps at 3. Slows cap at 50%, stagger at 0.5 seconds and shock at 0.35 seconds, with a 0.75-second stagger recovery window and 0.65-second shock-immunity window. Sword haste caps at 1.8× and gun haste at 1.6×. The equipment screen shows resulting strengths and cooldowns. Boss weaknesses multiply elemental contributions by 1.5; resistances by 0.45. Neutral physical damage remains viable.

Shield and sword-arm stamina

Hold C (or the touch SHIELD button) to guard. You can fire the gun but cannot swing the sword while guarding. Shield hits per screen deal 0%, 25%, then 50% of incoming damage. After the third, the shield drops for 5 active seconds. Lowering and raising cannot reset charges; changing screens cannot bypass recovery.

Tap Space / X by releasing within 200ms. Swings at least 1 second apart deal 100% damage; faster taps deal 50%. Twenty consecutive rapid swings exhaust your arm. Hold longer than 200ms for automatic 20%-damage swings; fifteen held swings exhaust it. Both modes share a 5-second recovery during which sword attacks are blocked. Keyboard/touch share counters, including simultaneous keys. Misses count; pause freezes recovery. Gun and shield remain independent.

Movement, collision and damage feedback

Hero steps and leg motion track actual movement in all four source directions; creatures use articulated walking/crawling, hopping or flight. Grounded monsters collide with plants, walls and each other, and cannot pass through the hero. Only declared flyers cross scenery. Entrances are now five tiles wide; existing saves are widened without regenerating their world.

Sword and gun impacts knock monsters back without passing through walls or other bodies. After the first hit, a floating red health bar follows the enemy. It resets when that enemy respawns. Recovered artifacts, accessories ◇ and power-up flowers ♣ stay on the minimap and expanded map, with named tooltips; health/ammo/ordinary treasure are not recorded.

Footsteps accompany actual hero movement. Each of the thirty creature identities has a distinct synthesized attack sound, plus calls and impact/death sounds. Effects volume controls these separately from your background recording.

Weapons and health

You start with zero rounds. Rare ammo caches add exactly three, and each shot consumes one. Bullets collide with walls and enemies. Ordinary rhinos and the roaming Thornback die to one ordinary bullet; bosses use health bars and take multiple hits. Sword combat can defeat every enemy, including the final encounter.

Initial Strength, Speed and Health are all 1. Health 1 provides 100 HP. Ordinary attacks generally deal 20 HP, with 1.25 seconds of damage protection after a hit. Vials clearly show +25 or +50, cap at maximum HP and stay uncollected when health is full.

• Maximum HP = 100 + 20 × (Health − 1).
• Physical weapon damage = 10 × [1 + 0.15 × (Strength − 1)].
• Movement multiplier = min(1.5, 1 + 0.05 × (Speed − 1)).
• Base movement remains 68 source pixels/second. Temporary boosts combine only up to 1.8× total movement.
• Speed also adds 0.025 haste per level. Weapon and elemental caps still apply.

The Ten and permanent progression

Every 100 ordinary kills grants a stat point; excess carries over. Each unique warden grants one boss-associated point. The Ten are Cindermaw, Pyrax, Miremother, Vorruk, Thunderhorn, Veyra, Gravebark, Ironback, Whisperfang and Hallowing. Their graphic silhouettes match the lore. Defeated wardens remain defeated even with an ordinary-monster respawn timer enabled. Only a completed curse reset or a new game restores them.

Points are spent oldest-first. Source associations and historical boss stat scaling are preserved in saves. Ordinary-kill points do not scale a warden. No statistic level or visitation percentage gates the citadel or mastery trials.

Temporary plants

Plants are separate from artifacts, accessories and permanent stats. Each shows a visual ring and timer:

• Full Protection: 7 seconds of invincibility.
• Confusion: 5 seconds of reversed movement.
• Quickstep: 8 seconds of faster movement.
• Heavy Feet: 5 seconds of reduced movement.
• Renewal: 7 seconds of regeneration at 6 HP/second, capped at maximum.

Some jungle plants pulse dangerously; their pink ground warning marks contact danger. Temporary effects expire without changing permanent stats.

The Five Seals: introduction, Lore and journal

New Game plays an eight-scene animated opening lasting about 3m17s. Continue never replays it. Use Replay Intro to watch without changing a run. Skip Intro is visible from the first frame; click/touch, Enter/Space or controller A skips. Escape/P or controller Menu pauses with Resume and Skip. Named subtitles default on and can be toggled. Skipping shows a dismissible essential briefing. Natural completion puts the same warning in your Journal.

Open Lore · read / listen for eleven recorded chapters. Major spoilers are hidden until you explicitly reveal them. Each chapter has play, pause and seeking controls; you can read without playing audio. Stock neural voices are saved in local MP3 files. Narration uses sound-effects volume; the music is ducked beneath speech. No speech service is needed at playback.

Five personal shrine masteries

Artifact ownership and mastery are different. Find the Ember Heart (Fire), Tideborn Tear (Water), Storm Fang (Lightning), Rootstone (Earth) and Skyfeather (Air). A recovered artifact immediately enables selectable weapon power. To earn its personal mastery, stay in or return to that artifact sanctuary and open Journal → Enter trial. The journal button announces an available shrine. These compact interactive shrine challenges do not require a minimum level or prior mastery.

• Fire: carry a flame through a grid, clear three blights without scorching healthy roots, then steady it at the shrine.
• Water: balance three sluices at 3 / 2 / 4 and hold the restored flow for five seconds.
• Lightning: ground conductors 3 → 1 → 4 → 2 → 5 on successive open pulses; unstable discharges reset.
• Earth: brace for stones aimed at the sapling and move for those aimed at you, through six timed warnings.
• Air: cross five spans with the breeze, then release five spirits without striking their vessels.

◆ identifies artifact ownership; a separate ○/◉ ring records mastery on the journal and artifact map marker. Matching glyphs identify each element without relying only on colour. Ordinary combat never awards mastery.

The citadel and Aveline’s release

All ten unique warden defeats open the Heartroot Citadel gate, even if artifacts or masteries are missing. Defeat the Hollow King’s current physical body, then approach Aveline. Physical defeat alone never wins the game.

The ritual lists missing artifacts and masteries. Return to the jungle leaves all defeated wardens and the Hollow King defeated, allowing you to finish the missing tasks. Deliberately choosing Attempt release anyway with missing requirements triggers the curse ending, not a victory. The hero’s transformation is a stylized shadow; Aveline remains fully clothed. Retry restores the pre-ritual checkpoint; Fresh cycle offers a new run.

With five artifacts, five masteries, all ten wardens and the physical final defeat recorded, the five seals release the binding, heal Veyrwood and permanently end Vaelor’s anchor. Aveline speaks her acceptance. Accept marriage or remain an honoured free adventurer; either choice retains the successful rescue. Ordinary combat death never triggers the narrative curse.

Saves, Continue and scores

Three manual slots and a separate autosave preserve the generated map, hero, stats, point provenance, accessories/slots, selected power, plants, ammo, pickups, explored rooms, live/dead bosses, scaling, rewards, score, active time, run ID and door state. Loading returns a living run paused and never regenerates the jungle. New Game, replacement loads and occupied manual saves ask for confirmation.

IndexedDB provides atomic browser saves; a checksummed localStorage fallback is available if needed. Corrupt or incompatible slots are isolated. Continue uses the latest valid unfinished snapshot, excluding finished run IDs. Saves belong to this browser/profile/device. Export/import JSON backups to transfer or protect them. Private browsing, clearing browser data or storage restrictions may remove saves. Export before leaving if storage reports a failure.

The local top-20 scoreboard records name, score, outcome, artifacts, map completion, active time, date and seed. Stable IDs prevent duplicate final results. Scoring: new rooms +20, artifact +1,200, accessory +300, treasure +200, normal monsters +100–500, bosses +1,000 plus rank×100, Hollow King +5,000, rescue +6,000. Wardens give one defeat reward per cycle; loading never adds rewards, room points or collected-item points.

Sound, credits and limitations

Your supplied Jungle Loop.mp3 plays continuously with a 3-second crossfade between repeats. In Settings, independent Music volume and Sound effects volume sliders both default to 80%. Zero mutes only that channel; effects volume also controls jungle ambience and pickup/victory sounds. Click Apply settings to save your levels. N remains a master mute. Playback is fully offline. Sound defaults on unless you saved a mute preference; browser autoplay may require the first tap/click/key. Pause and page hiding silence play.

The existing explorer's 48 walking/weapon/damage frames are pixel-identical to the preserved source. The new lore-matched atlas contains ten warden images, the Hollow King and Princess Aveline, with procedural attack animation. Eight illustrated scene groups use animated camera pans, leaves, birds, particles, elemental light and composited source sprites; this is not a fully modelled film. Their source-pixel leg and wing rigs provide movement, but they are not newly hand-drawn four-view sprite sheets. Extended human difficulty balancing and non-Chromium browser testing remain useful next steps.

Asset provenance · Retained code licence · Validation and playtest report. No legal or trademark clearance is asserted for the working title or artwork.

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