About This Game

You start as an ordinary person on a mountain road, with a few coins and no master. How the next few decades (or few centuries) go depends on where you decide to walk.

The whole game happens on one big map. Cities, markets, sects, beast dens and secret realms are all drawn on it. You walk your character over to a place and click to go in. Shopping, joining a sect and fighting all happen on that same map. There are no scene changes and no loading screens in between.

Time keeps moving, at about one in-game day every two and a half seconds. Seclusion takes years, travel takes time, and even a fight costs you a few days. Each major breakthrough adds a fixed number of years to your lifespan. It won't give back time you wasted earlier. So a lot of the game ends up being arithmetic: is this secret realm worth the years it takes to get there and back? Do you brew pills now, or hand in the mission first?

When your lifespan runs out, that life is over. On rebirth you pick one thing to carry over: a relic, pills, or Dao Echo that turns into talent in your next life. What's on offer depends on the highest realm you reached.

Losing a fight doesn't kill you. You lose cultivation, pick up a lingering injury, are out cold for a few days and get robbed of some spirit stones. Then you carry on. The only way to actually die in combat is to lose while already at the very bottom: first level of Qi Refining with nothing left to drop.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do"

That's what the guardian spirits are for. On your first day, three spirits in your ring offer to guide you and you pick one. There are nine in total, from white-bearded elders to small artifact spirits like Yaomiao and Xiaohu, and you can switch between them any time for free.

Your guardian sits in a corner of the screen. Hover over them and you get a list of questions like "How do I earn spirit stones?", "Where do I learn spells?" or "How do I get promoted?". Each one has a "Take me there" button that walks your character to the right place and opens it. They'll nudge you if you've been idle too long, cheer when you win, and get annoyed when you run.

What's in it

• Sects: start as an odd-jobs disciple and work up seven ranks to sect master. Take jobs from the Mission Hall, brew pills, forge gear on Heaven's Craft Peak, trade merit for techniques at the Scripture Pavilion and collect a monthly stipend. Your fellow disciples have names and faces, and each has their own opinion of you.
  
• Combat: turn-based, fought right where you stand on the map. Techniques, spells, talismans and five-element counters all matter. You can always run.
  
• Secret realms: they only open at certain times of year. The deeper you go, the better the loot and the nastier the guardians. Nothing counts until you walk back out, and if you're still inside when the realm closes, you leave with half.
  
• Inner demon and karma: the game keeps track of who you've killed, whose fortune you've stolen and which blood debts you've actually gone and repaid, and both values are worked out from that record. Demonic arts get stronger off your inner demon, which means the debt keeps growing.
  
• Record of the Past: ten chapters, each following a cultivator who didn't finish their path. You play under their restrictions and try to finish it for them. There's a star for speed, an optional extra objective, and two ways through each chapter. The Dao Echo you earn counts toward all your future lives.
  
• Maps: four built-in maps plus random maps in small, standard and large sizes. The Map Workshop lets you paint terrain, rivers and ley roads and place sects and secret realms yourself. You can play your map straight away or share it on the Steam Workshop.

Worth knowing before you buy

• It's turn-based and heavy on planning and numbers, so the pace is slow. If you want real-time action combat, this probably isn't it.
  
• The art is a 2D isometric map with character portraits. It's not a big-budget game.
  
• Single-player only.
  
• It's made by one person. If something breaks or isn't fun, say so in a review or on the discussion board. I read all of it.

Languages and Steam

Available in English, 简体中文 and 繁體中文.

The game itself doesn't connect to the internet. There's no account and it doesn't collect any data. Saves stay on your own PC, and if Steam Cloud is on, Steam syncs them for you.

It has to be launched through Steam, and works fine in Steam's offline mode. Achievements, cloud saves and Workshop map sharing are all handled by the Steam client.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

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

This game uses generative AI to pre-generate visual assets (character portraits, capsule/marketing art) and voice narration (TTS). All AI-generated content is created during development and reviewed/curated
by the developer before shipping. No generative AI runs live during gameplay. We have the necessary rights to use the AI tools and their outputs, and the content does not infringe third-party IP.