Tomes and Tactics

Some games hand you a world. Tomes & Tactics hands you a place that was here before your character drew breath, and will go on after they fall.
This is a turn-based, single-player RPG that remembers what the great old role-playing games
felt like: classes with real identity, a map you earn one tile at a time, and death that
means something. Just you, one character, and sixty levels of a world that never quite lets
its guard down.
Choose who you are — and live with it
Eleven races and thirteen classes, drawn straight from the golden age of the genre. Tank as a
Warrior, twist songs as a Bard, raise the dead as a Necromancer, drink deep as a
Vampire, or walk the dark road of a Shadow Knight. Every class earns its
power differently — a Wizard buys spells from guarded trainers, a Warrior grows stronger by
fighting, a Shaman seeks out rare elders scattered across the world. Roughly 100 abilities
per class across 60 levels means the character you build is genuinely yours.
A world lit by hand
Tomes & Tactics renders in unicode — but forget the terminal. A custom Rust engine paints
every tile with a cone of vision, colored light that falls off with distance, and
reflections that ripple off water and ice to reveal what lurks just out of sight.
Explored ground you've left behind dims to memory. Torchlight, lava, and spellfire all throw
real light. It's ASCII the way you always imagined it — alive.
Death the old way
Fall in the deep places and you don't just respawn. You drop your corpse and everything on
it where you died, and wake as a ghost at your bind point. Getting your gear back means the
long, tense walk to reclaim it — the kind of risk the genre's classics were built on.
Prefer no safety net? Flip on permadeath and make every step count.
A living, authored world
Explore Hollowbrook and the Eastern Steppes, climb to the capital at Kingsholm, march
the war-front of the Reach, and delve the catacombs beneath it all. Towns hold shops,
trainers, and rumors; factions — cultists, guilds, the restless dead — track how you've
treated them, and remember. Follow a multi-stage main quest through a kingdom on the edge of
war, or simply wander and see what the wilderness turns up.
Music that lives in the world
There is no soundtrack piped over the top of the game. All music is diegetic — a bard in
the Hollowbrook Inn plays a real, seven-track songbook, and you hear it swell as you approach
and fade as you leave. The world sings for itself.
Built to be played, not rushed
Turn-based combat with nothing hidden — every hit shows its damage, type, and
resistances; enemies telegraph their big moves a turn early.

Data-driven quests and creature spawners keep the world stocked and reactive.

Smart inventory — comparison badges on pickup, no weight micromanagement.

A single session can be thirty minutes or an evening. The game saves and waits.

Come build a character worth walking back for.