Ebony Spire: Heresy

I have a soft spot for the games that one person builds alone and quietly puts on Steam hoping someone notices. Ebony Spire: Heresy is exactly that kind of project, and spending time with it feels like reading a handwritten letter from someone who grew up with Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder and refused to let that feeling die. It is a first-person, turn-based, grid-movement dungeon crawler built by a single developer, and it wears that ambition and those limitations in equal measure. The mechanical heart of the game is genuinely clever: every item in the tower can be thrown, equipped, drunk, or used as a blunt weapon, and that rule applies to enemies just as much as it applies to you. Pick up a potion to drink it or hurl it at a cultist. Leave a piece of armor on the floor and watch a monster scoop it up and lob it back at your face. The symmetry here is the best thing in the game, and it gives combat an unpredictable, almost slapstick energy that straight stat-trading never would. There are no traditional XP tracks or stat grids driving character growth; instead, progression is built entirely around what you find, equip, and choose to keep versus sacrifice. Over 100 item types with stat variations means builds emerge organically rather than from menus. Three classes, fighter, thief, and mage, set your affinity and give early runs a slightly different feel, though all three converge on the same improvisational loot-and-throw rhythm by mid-tower. The game offers two distinct ways to play. Classic Mode works through hand-crafted levels with placed encounters, which gives the run a sense of intentional design and pacing. Infinite Heresy switches to procedurally generated floors for players who want replayability over curation. Each floor also contains a portal that pulls you sideways into an outside area, a city, harbor, dungeon, or arena, where harder enemies guard better loot. Stepping through is always a gamble, and that risk-reward texture is one of the moments where the design genuinely sings. The whole thing is scoped for short sessions, a run fits comfortably into a lunch break, and that brevity is a deliberate choice rather than a flaw. Where it stumbles is also honest. The soundtrack is thin, and the absence of memorable audio is noticeable in a game whose atmosphere leans on mood. The procedural generation in Infinite mode has attracted fair criticism for producing floors that feel more shuffled than designed, lacking the internal logic that makes a dungeon feel like a place. Controls and UI carry some old-school roughness, and the lack of hand-holding, while charming to genre veterans, will frustrate players expecting modern onboarding. Development also appears to have gone quiet after an active early period, so the roadmap aspirations have not fully materialized. What shipped is complete in its own small way, but it does carry the feeling of a game that had more rooms to build. For the right player, none of that is disqualifying. If you have fond memories of grid crawlers and want something that respects the genre without padding it out, Ebony Spire: Heresy delivers a tight, weird, occasionally hilarious loop at a price that matches its scope. The source code is MIT-licensed and open to modders, which is either a coda or an invitation depending on your disposition. Either way, it is the kind of game I am glad exists, built with care by someone who clearly needed to make it.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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