About This Game

A brutal modern roguelike deckbuilder inspired by classic rps and text-based masocore.

You move forward, carrying everything you’ve become.

In What We Carry, the world ahead is hidden from view. You walk a single path through darkness with only a mirror to guide you—reflecting yourself and what lies behind you, but never what waits ahead.

Survival is not about reflexes.
It’s about decisions.

As you travel, random event cards interrupt your journey, each presenting a choice with no clear answer. Help or ignore. Risk or retreat. Preserve yourself—or sacrifice something you may need later. Every decision plays out immediately, reshaping your run through stat changes, new conditions, lingering burdens, or sudden death.

Some choices make you stronger.
Others simply make you heavier.

Overview

A World You Can’t See
Exploration through limitation. The mirror reveals only fragments of truth, forcing you to interpret danger through reflection and consequence.

Event-Driven Strategy Gameplay
Randomized event cards challenge your judgment, resource management, and willingness to take risks.

Meaningful Choices With Permanent Consequences
There are no correct answers—only outcomes you must live with, or die from. 

Guided Learning

Using a unique premonition system, previous outcomes may be glimpsed at on new adventures allowing you to learn from your prior mistakes and craft a hero worthy of slaying the great balrog.

Your Inventory IS Your Deck
Every item you carry makes up your deck. That random stick you picked up, those spare nails, and yes even that juicy hunk o' meat. You have your life, limbs, and backpack full of loot to walk this world. Better make 'em count..

High Replayability
Each run offers new events, outcomes, and endings shaped by what you choose.

There is no map.
No warning.
No relief from consequence.

Only the mirror.
Only the path.
Only what you carry.

Roadmap

March 2025
Second Act Implemented.

Total Event Cards: ~ 80-90.

3 Bosses for each act.

20-30 Enemies. 

April 2025
Third Act Implemented.

Total Event Cards: ~ 140-150.

1 Final Boss for act 3. (There will be more but I want to ensure quality first)

30-50 Enemies. 

May 2025

Total Event Cards: ~ 200.

3 Final Bosses for act 3

50-70 Enemies. 

Design Philosophy

• Goal & Content Based Updates
  Each update will aim to add more content to the game pushing it to have deeper story and gameplay elements such as build designs and branching story paths. (Event Cards, Items, Skills, Characters, Enemies, etc.)

• Community Input
  Submit your own ideas for Event Cards, Items, and even Characters.

• An Ever Branching Story
  With the design style of the Event and Result Cards, What We Carry has the potential to deliver stories all unique to one another. With different passives, debuffs, items, attributes, and more influencing your options and outcomes, the possibilities are endless.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

I am a solo indie developer with limited time and funds. I use AI art to help in places where my personal pixel art skills are lacking. Many/most all of these pieces get hand cleaned up by me to ensure overall aesthetics, feel, and theme are maintained.

Specific usages of AI Art:

Character/Armor Art - (The characters are the focal pieces of the game. I wanted them clean with the gritty overtones and proper shading. My art is not there yet)

Location Backgrounds - (The floor the character is seen walking on is largely created by AI with touch ups to ensure proper parallax looping)

The pixel art hands in the game's logo/title images - (I'm terrible with pixel art hands... something about the shading)

Mature Content Description

The developers describe the content like this:

Mature content includes: The main character's death represented in a single still image intended for game-over usage. Alcohol consumption by the main character. Insinuated/Text based violence.