A maze that generates itself as you go deeper, separated out into fixed "regions" based on a range of depths. Each region gives you what you need to get through the next, as well as harder enemies, traps, better items, etc. Because of the branching mechanism the maze ends up massive if you try to fully explore a region.
RPG-like.
Lots of systems.
A hard death mechanic. Die and you just lose all progress, and your next exploration will be into a different maze.
You have a hunger gauge that ticks up as you move around or backtrack. Fixable with Food and modifiable in various temporary or permanent ways.
Health goes down in combat, in Traps that you don't solve, in the environment if you lack whatever thing blocks the damage, and also ticks down if you're starving.
In any room that doesn't currently have an enemy in it, you can Make Camp. Camping allows you to do various things and increases health and magic power slowly in real time. You can also Sleep, which will recover things there instantly, but makes your Hunger gauge tick up. Some environments are worse than others here. Both of the actions here are upgradeable based on your equipped Tent and Sleeping Bag.
You have a Backpack that is personal storage with some capacity. You can upgrade it in various ways to make items of some type take up less space, or upgrade the Backpack itself. You can also Burden yourself if you want, but that'll add a cumulative multiplier to your hunger gauge.
The entrance has extra upgradeable storage space -- you have to permanently destroy items to do so. Also no bonuses here.
If you make camp *at* the entrance, you have access to any of the Camp Utensils you have stored there. And can pick whichever local Tent and Sleeping Bag you want. Elsewhere, they contribute to your Backpack storage.
Each room has at least 2 exits, other than those that are Locked (those have 0). 3 is more common.
The distance you are from the the entrance is your Depth, which dictates difficulty and which region of the maze you're in.
Rooms generate as you explore, via the 1:2:5, etc thing. Certain things are "promised" to specific branches (and then further down), with less likelihood of appearing at a closer depth. Promises / aggregate promises are viewable with specific magic or Cartography items.
What's saved here is the places you've explored.
You do have a Map. This allows you to move around the maze without losing hunger and see what's in it, outside of enemies that have yet to spawn. You can't interact with anything obviously. You *can* write notes and set Waypoints that you can easily jump to (or just jump to your current position or the Entrance). Notes for the current room are displayed within the room itself. And you can only move around rooms you've already been to.
There are two consumable items that influence the map:
Mattock -- connects the room to another random room on the same depth, or doesn't work (and doesn't consume) if you haven't explored one yet.
Portal Node -- allows you to move from one named Portal Node to any other. Once placed in a room, it's there permanently, unless you dispel it (but you don't get the Node back).
Both of these are rare items that have to be found (or bought).
Plants generate in the maze (and particularly often in the second region of the maze). Each region has them pallettized.
They're a bit different here -- they have multiple Crops and you can only choose one at a time, and then Crops in general will regrow over time. You can see the growth status and the plant stats in general when you interact with one. Sleeping does not make Flora grow, only moving around. This is visible on the Map too.
You can mess around with a Plant's Soil -- better yields, faster (or slower) grow time, possibly unlocking Crops that didn't exist before. Choose poorly and the Plant can die altogether. More on this in the Soil section. You can't plant anything yourself; you have to Farm what already exists.
Crops
Different plant parts, basically. A couple worth mentioning:
Sap -- has to be collected with Bottles.
Wood -- necessary for anything that uses Fire (unless you're using other Fuel sources of course). Ubiquitous in all Plants.
Crops can be used in making various things, in making Teas and Potions, fruit into Alcohol, into Food, or can be eaten outright.
If eaten directly, there's a good chance that they're Poison. Maybe not. Depending on the effects, this might be worth it. You don't know what a Crop does until you try it, identify it with magic or a Book item, or it appears in a Shop. Only stuff later into the maze will kill you outright -- and those plants are named in a very specific way so you don't make that mistake again.
Some Crops are valuable. This ties into the Shops mechanic.
Animals come in three types, and other than that work exactly the same:
Neutral -- you *can* attack it, but don't have to. They can also be tamed. You can Camp in a room with only Neutral animals.
Hostile -- You can't interact with the room or its passages until the enemy is defeated. You don't have to attack it, though, you can just leave the room.
Aggressive -- works the same as the above, except that it'll attack *you*.
You can flee from enemies that you've engaged. This will move you to the previous room, and hostile enemies will become aggressive, with neutral animals turning hostile instead (they wont become aggressive if you attack them again).
Animals of all types repopulate over time according to the stats of their Nest. Once repopulated as a ghost, there's a chance they'll respawn in a room you enter. They won't if there's already an animal there. You can see ghosts in your Map but won't know where they actually spawn until you get there.
Animals are similarly Pallettized as Plants, and starting out in a region they're all ghosts. So you're likely to encounter a bunch as you enter a region for the first time.
Once their position is fixed, though, they stay there.
Nests
Each animal type in a region has a Nest which is promised somewhere.
The spawn likelihood in a Nest room is 100% for the animal in question and 0% for everything else. So, more than likely, there will be an animal of that type there. Additionally, they're always hostile if neutral and aggressive if hostile.
Interacting with the Nest (obviously you'd have to defeat the animal if there is one first) allows you to set the respawn rate to whatever you want, between nonexistent and instant.
You can also Destroy the nest. This sets it to nonexistent but it's permanent. However, it turns into a Nest Egg item. This can be used on a different Nest to permanently increase the population size by +1. Can be useful.
Animal Products
Animals have products that work the same way as plants once killed. You can only pick one of them again and don't know what they actually do unless identified in some way or you've used it. Corpses will stick around in the room until you do something with them -- they can stack up no problem.
Taming
You can attempt to Tame neutral animals.
This requires giving them a plant or animal product, which is deleted permanently. It might make them friendlier or might make them angry. They all have different preferences, though you do at least retain this knowledge on subsequent attempts, or you can Identify it in various ways. The "emotion meter" is visible whenever you interact with the animal, and it lingers.
If they get too angry, they become Hostile.
If you instead do well, they become Friendly.
Friendly mammals can be Milked. Friendly animals in general can also be killed outright without going into Combat.
If you continue the emotion meter game, some animals can eventually achieve Domesticated. Some just can't.
Domesticated animals can be moved or told to stay somewhere. Because of how Spawning works, this can be useful to keep an enemy from spawning at key intersections. It can also allow you to move useful animals back to the entrance or somewhere else useful.
If they have the capacity for it (some don't), Domesticated animals can become Pets, Scouts or Mounts (sometimes more than one, too -- Scouting Pets, Mounted Pets, or Scouting Mounts. Never all three.)
Pets -- these will attack enemies when you and them are in a room with one and you tell them to. You see their health and can tell them to stop. Unless Trained, they'll attack randomly. If Trained, you instead tell them what to do. They can lose health, and this also makes animal hunger go up for sure.
Mounts -- when mounted, the animal hunger goes down instead of yours, and their health in combat. Simply Dismount if they get too low.
Scouts -- scouts can be sent into rooms which improves your Map. They can also trigger Spawning. They do have a fixed depth (from you) that they can travel. They're subject to environmental issues but can't trigger Traps. You'd know there was a Trap there in advance. Unless they have Stealth, they can't move past Hostile or Aggressive enemies. Scouting raises animal hunger, and depending on the environment, they might lose health.
Animal hunger can go up or down with similar mechanics to the emotion game. If they reach starvation, they'll start taking damage as they move. They can just be told to stay, though. Obviously you'd have to also Dismount from a Mount.
Animals that are following you regain health as you do while Resting or Sleeping. These stats are shown alongside your own. They can also be given health potions and whatnot.
Training
Animals level up the same way you do. Use them more often and their stats will improve. In the case of Pets, there's a threshold there where you can eventually give them commands.
Equipment
Domesticated animals can also be equipped with various things, improving their stats, allowing them to carry things, having some kind of clothing in hostile environments, etc.
Milking
Works the same way as Crops. The difference here is that you need a bottle to collect it. Milk also spoils -- different from animal to animal.
Milk (and milk products) are always edible. It's wise to know where some milkable animals are when you're experimenting with plants and other food sources. Provided you don't make them hostile.
Milk and milk products are always edible, as mentioned.
Plant products are often Poisoned.
The animal product Meat is *usually* not Poisoned, but sometimes it is. The other products are sketchy.
You can also find food laying around, and you do start with some. It doesn't spoil.
There are various ways of creating food. More on that in that section. Some of it can spoil.
Spoiled food just becomes a homogenous Fermented item. Dumping a bottle of Spoiled Milk drops +1 of that. It does have a use in fermentation -- cheese, bread, alcohol.
Bottles are needed to collect Milk, Sap from Plants, Fat and Blood from animals, Water, and various other resources. They're also how you store Teas, Potions and Alcohol, as well as Drinks, Butter, etc.
You can Dump a bottle -- you lose whatever is in there permanently. There are also buyable Barrels back at the Entrance that allow you to hold a lot of liquid of some type.
You start with one Bottle that has infinite durability. You can find more, buy them, or make them.
To make them, you need to fill a Bottle with Sand. Then you'd do Glassmaking at Camp -- this uses Fire and is a Skill which dictates the Bottle's durability. Each using of a bottle degrades durability by -1 and when it reaches zero it turns back into Sand. So, yes, you can just remake bottles over and over, getting better at it over time -- eventually they're indestructible.
Bought/found bottles have varying durability. Indestructible ones are rare.
You always use whichever bottle has the least durability. If there's more than one, it picks one randomly. One downside of this is that health potions with 1 durability that are used in combat will disappear from it until you defeat the enemy, because the sand is inaccessible. Makes the game a little harder. You should get a message, at least. And all instances of the item appearing shows that it's going to break if you use it.
As mentioned, various Camp processes require Fuel.
When Camped, you first start a Campfire, which consumes 1 wood. The fire doesn't die, though. When you quit camping, the fire and all its fuel is gone. So use it wisely!
You can add additional fuel items to a campfire at any time. Wood is +1 fuel. More fuel can give Rest/Sleep benefits, particularly in colder environments.
Fuel can be found, though most of the time it's made instead. Works similar to my other games -- you can turn Wood into Charcoal, which consumes fuel -- you have to experiment or identify those that put out more than they consume. There will always be one in the starting region that does, though it's not particularly great. Then fuel sources scale upwards -- ethanol from alcohol or potions, fish oil from fish, gasoline from petroleum, uranium from rocks, something from magical items, etc. I don't know all the types yet; it depends on what the rest of the game looks like.
Taking campfire actions then consumes fuel. Some of them are pretty light on the fuel use -- Cooking for example. Fusing Spells together while keeping the Runes intact would be way up there.
Campfire Utensils
In order to actually *do* something productive at a Campfire, you need the Utensils on you (or in storage if you're camped at the Entrance).
They can be found, bought, or made if you spend an Ability Point on that ability. They use materials in the environment or bought/found to make, and have different properties depending on *what* you use to make them. Some require resources that are expensive to buy + can only be found in later regions. You could still just luck upon finding one, though.
