Blackmere

Blackmere takes place in a fortress built and sealed nine hundred years ago, reportedly in a single day. An expedition of fourteen people opened it, and the player enters afterwards, following their trail through the notes they left behind. The fortress is not laid out in a fixed way: the Black Sun, an instrument carried by the expedition, reveals ledges, floors and whole routes for a few seconds at a time, and these exist only while it is in use. The game is divided into three acts of seven chapters each, with an encounter at the end of every one, and includes locations such as a flooded archive, a sluice, a kiln, a ropewalk and a submerged choir. There is no map and no waypoint system.

Combat uses four weapons: the Regent’s Cleaver, the Warding Bolt, the Splinter Lance and the Black Sun. Only the sword is available at the start, and the other three are recovered where the expedition dropped them. No further weapons are given after the fifth chapter, and prolonged use of a weapon causes it to ascend into a stronger form. Kills contribute towards a choice of three rites from a pool of eight, and any rite taken is permanent for the current run. Movement is built around high acceleration with a modest top speed, a pivoting turn, a float near the peak of a jump that must be triggered deliberately, and a weak second jump intended for recovery. The dash attack is a flat lunge that damages everything it passes through and recovers faster for each target hit.

There are eight enemy types, including the Hollow, the armoured Bulwark, the Lurker disguised as rubble, the Quarreller, the ceiling-walking Scuttler, the fixed Sentinel, the diving Wisp and the Chorister, along with three bosses that do not share attacks between them. The story is delivered through thirty-seven optional notes scratched onto doorframes, ration tins and other surfaces, which form a continuous account of the expedition when read in order. Blackmere has been released and supports keyboard and mouse as well as gamepad, with a waystone checkpoint system.