The Kybalion

This game was developed in 7 very long days for the Epic MegaJam 2022 as a solo entry by Ambershee.

Enter the dark fantasy world of Kybalion and use your wits to challenge seven devious enemies known as 'Principles' in dice-based combat. Choose one of three playable classes, and up to two pairs of moves called 'Invocations' and strategise your way into defeating these cosmic horrors and taking their Invocations for your own.

As it turns out as above, so below, - you can't choose the outcome of your dice rolls, but you can certainly still choose which moves to allocate them to and take control of your own destiny.

How to Play

The character may navigate through the world by looking with the mouse, and by using the W, S, A, and D keys to move. Using the left mouse allows the player to interact with elements in the game world, and the mouse is also used during combat; drag dice into the receptacles of your choosing and hit the 'Use' button to trigger the Invocation. When you have no more moves or dice remaining, end your turn and the opponent will make their moves.

There are a total of seven Principles to defeat, with varying difficulties and each with a unique move set and AI. You may challenge them in any order of your choosing, though you may inevitably find some a lot easier to defeat than others, and that you may not initially have the moves you require to counter theirs.

The game does not automatically end when all seven Principles have been defeated; you are free to continue as you please and repeat challenges and try new builds. Press the Escape key at any time to immediately exit the game.

Minimum Hardware Requirements

This game was built as a showcase for advanced raytracing features in Unreal Engine 4* and as such has an absolute minimum GPU requirement of an RTX2070, though an RTX3060 or better is recommended for best results.

*features including raytraced lighting, ambient occlusion, reflection, and particular emphasis on translucency, dispersion and caustics. The game additionally features Restir global illumination from emissive sources, and DLSS.

Designer's Notes:

This game is loosely themed around the seven Hermetic principles in the New Age text The Kybalion: a Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece, in which the titular game jam theme 'as above, so below' appears - but the game mechanics themselves are more concerned with the literal interpretation of 'above and below', as well as the idea of being able to control one's own destiny regardless of the hand that fate deals you.

Generative AI Content Disclosure

A number of UI images used in the game were generated using a custom-built guided diffusion process named Morpheus. Morpheus was trained entirely using public domain artwork and was an experiment intended to allow level designers to generate 'paintovers' of their greybox work with models trained from concept art.

In light of more recent development, with unacceptable large scale data scraping and contempt for artists, their work, and their rights, all further development of Morpheus has ceased and all related work destroyed.