Pylorus - Footsteps of Greed

Everyone knows that the underground caves are full of gold coins, jewels and gems just scattered around for anyone to collect. But they're also home to horrible monsters, hideous and evil creatures that murder each other and anyone that dares to enter. For every ten people who get in, only one comes back: always traumatized, often wounded... sometimes filthy rich. With such low odds only a madman would willingly descend into the abyss... or perhaps someone with no other options left.

Pylorus is a 2d roguelite with fantasy medieval setting and a few peculiar twists.

• Living ecosystem
  From the first few tunnels to the deepest reaches of the Abyss a great and bloody war is taking place. Monsters aren't just mindless entities solely focused on killing the player, their behaviour forms a deadly subterranean ecosystem with alliances and rivalries. You'll need to learn how to exploit these rules to your advantage if you want to survive.
• Each life is valuable...
  You can't "save and reload" your way out of a difficult situation: choices have consequences, accept them and learn from your mistakes. Think twice before sacrificing your characters: "at least I got a new highscore" means nothing to a newly deceased explorer.
• ... and each life is worthless
  This is not your war and you're not a hero. You're just a passerby trying to scavenge some gold and run away without being killed. Your presence underground is mostly inconsequential, and your demise isn't a great accomplishment to the monsters. It's a ruthless world, finding a way to make your life worth something is up to you.
• Risks and rewards
  At the end of each level you may decide to leave the underground: your character will return home with the gold he has found, hoping it'll be enough to secure a future for his family. You may decide instead to dive into deeper tunnels to find more gold, perhaps uncover forgotten secrets to help future explorers... But remember: all your efforts are meaningless if you die underground.
• Discovery and mystery
  Be mindful of your surroundings, there's more than meets the eye. The story is not directly or linearly told, you may find pieces of lore scattered all around the game. This also applies to game mechanics: the tutorial covers only the basics, it's up to you to figure out what to do. Try not to read guides, it's best if you succeed with your strength alone, learning at your own pace. Observe, make a hypothesis, test your hypothesis, improve, survive.
• Find your own path
  Your choices will influence the game, each option has pros and cons and sometimes you'll be making decisions without knowing it. The tools at your disposal will change: you'll need to adapt your strategies. Each level is procedurally generated to make every run unique. There are "better strategies" but there's no entirely "right" or "wrong" way to play, find your own path.

Great peril and great rewards await you, as you follow the Footsteps of Greed. My best wishes to you, Explorer. Good luck!

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FAQ

• What the heck am I supposed to do?
  Short answer: discovery is part of the experience, set your own goal and figure out how to achieve it. More exaustive (but still spoiler-free) answer: progress is linked to an internal achievement system, if you feel stuck you may want to scroll through the missing objectives. Unlocking new items is often helpful to make progress. A "true victory" exists, but finding it may not be easy...
  (Note: it's not strictly necessary to complete all objectives or unlock all items to achieve the "true victory", with enough skills, luck and knowledge it's also possible to achieve it on the very first run.)
• The game is too hard / The game is too easy / The mechanic X is super annoying, can you change it?
  I am fully aware that each player has fun in different ways and the default experience may not suit everyone. I can't please everyone (and trying to do so would likely make the game more shallow and generic), but I feel everyone should have a chance to enjoy this game. I encourage you to try the game in the original mode first, if you feel it's not your thing you can use the Advanced Settings to make it easier, harder, or to fine-tune everything in detail (a wide range of game-altering options are present).
• Is the game really "free"?
  Yes, free means free. No content locked behind a paywall, no ingame purchases, no ads, no weird ingame currencies that you get with real-world money, no lootboxes (well, there are chests and crates with loot in the levels, but you probably get what I mean), no malicious software attached. I appreciate donations if you feel that this game is worth it, but I'm strongly against locking anyone out of the game if they don't feel like paying.
• Can I make videos of this game? Can I stream it? Can I do X, Y or Z?
  Most likely yes, the game is released under a fairly permissive license and I welcome derivative works in pretty much any form, as long as you provide proper attribution (i.e. I would appreciate you placing a link to the official game page since it's free to play for anyone, but just writing the name of the original game in full can be enough). Other less common uses for this game are acceptable, please refer to the license in the ingame Credits screen if in doubt.
  Sidenote about music tracks, if you record/stream: all of them were released under the CC-BY license as specified in the Credits. You may want to add the following lines to the video description:

  "Ancient Rite", "Burnt Spirit", "Crypto", "Exotic Battle", "Infados", "Interloper", "Myst on the Moor", "Shamanistic", "Spring Thaw", "The Escalation", "Thinking Music", "To the Ends"
  Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
  Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0
  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

  You may give credits to the author of the music tracks in other ways, as described in his website. The list above includes all tracks present in the game.
• Why the name "Pylorus - Footsteps of Greed"?
  I wanted to make this game since 2012-ish, and I began coding (and gave up) three different times over the years, using three different languages, before this final fourth attempt with the Godot Game Engine. During my first attempt using Python I noticed that many libraries used the "Py-" or "-py" prefix/suffix, this pushed me to half-jokingly name the project "Pylorus" (which is also the digestive tract before the small intestine, in a way an "antichamber" for a long and winding dark and dump tunnel). I later got used and grew attached to this temporary name. The second part of the name finds an explanation in the game lore.
• Can I change the list of explorer names?
  Yes. Open the game at least once, then close it. Go to your game save folder (on windows it's AppData\Roaming\Godot\app_userdata\Pylorus ) and edit or replace the file explorer_names.txt (you can use the existing file as a template). There's no minimum or maximum to the number of names in the list, but you should avoid using short lists as there would be too many repetitions (300-400 or more names is ideal, less than 100 is not recommended). You can always input a custom explorer name when starting a new run, regardless of the current name list. Note: the list of names used by the game always includes the names of the explorers from previous runs.
• How accessible is this game?
  Alas, not as much as I wanted: various accessibility features were planned but cut due to lack of time. You can play with a controller and remap keybindings, but a mouse is still required to tweak game options and customize your character. Audio clues are not strictly necessary but very helpful to be aware of surrounding dangers, therefore deaf players will find the game more challenging. This is also true for colorblind players, as many enemies blend in with the environment (it is an intended challenge, but may be unfair as they could be completely invisible to some colorblind players). The advanced settings can ease the difficulty allowing more lenient times to react, but it's still a game that requires fast thinking and reflexes. As with pretty much any other videogame there may be sudden changes of colors or flashes onscreen, nothing too extreme but those suffering from epilepsy should be mindful (always better to be safe than sorry). I may add the missing features over time if requested.
  Present Features: controller support; keybinding customization; text-only alternatives to the otherwise color-based lifebars; options to reduce audio/visual clutter by removing cosmetic effects; option to reduce the number of clicks necessary to make attacks.
  Missing Features: full controller support; options to colorize game elements with high-contrast palettes, options to enable a text-based "sonar" (textual hints on nearby sound sources).
• Can you add the language X to the game?
  Maybe? I don't know language X at all / enough to make a translation, and I can't hire translators. I'm more than willing to add community-made translations however.