Post-Jam (non-RTX) Version Now Available!

Non-RTX Version Available

The original version of the game, built for the 2022 Epic Megajam required an RTX Nvidia graphics card to support a number of lighting features, including raytracing (including refraction and dispersion of caustics), real-time global illumination, and advanced transparency. Now that the jam period is over, a new version of the game is available with these features removed, so that a much broader range of hardware is able to play the game.

This build of the game is largely still true to the original; there is no real improvement in the game itself, barring a couple of changes;

• The game now has a proper menu, and a save/continue feature. The escape key will no longer immediately exit the game, and progress can be resumed between sessions!
• A bug involving the Static status effect persisting between combats has been fixed.

Visual Comparison

Without the advanced lighting, the game will look very different. No changes have been made to support the removal of the RTX outside of those that were necessary to keep the game playable (e.g. the invocations have had some slight changes to keep critical text readable). Screenshots highlighting these differences can be seen below;

The starting area is the most dramatically affected; the main directional light source is considerably more pronounced.

ReSTIR Global Illumination is no longer enabled, preventing the glow sticks and other small light sources (e.g. invocations and dice) from illuminating their surrounding environment through their materials.

The lack of ReSTIR GI and bounce lighting has left both the upper and lower rooms shrouded in darkness; the lava plume is also no longer able to cast light into the room from it's materials. A small fill light was added to both rooms to keep the playable area visible.

Enemy Points are also strongly affected - they no longer render correctly due to the removal of advanced transparency; all colour information has been lost and they appear strongly reflective instead of transparent. The internal light sources no longer cast dramatic raytraced caustic effects from within the polyhedra.

Similarly, the polyhedra belonging to enemies don't cast the more subtle caustic effects, nor do dice - though due to the use of coloured lighting is still quite visible. The dice have also lost their transparency and colour information. The invocation needed adjustment to it's materials in order to keep the text legible (the background to the text was previously white!).

If you'd like to play the new version, simply download it from the main page, unpack it in a sensible location, and run Kybalion.exe.