Bound by Pages

Updated 15.09.2025

The Game 

Discover a tactical RPG set in an open sandbox world where every step uncovers the ruins of a sunken civilization—and the dangers guarding its secrets.

Explore at your own pace, experiment with abilities and tools you find in the wild, and let deep tactical gameplay emerge from your choices.

Play solo with NPC companions or team up with friends to take on tougher challenges more smoothly.

Story unfolds through the world itself: environments, encounters, and items reveal layered conflicts seen from many angles—where right and wrong blur easily.

This is a long-running passion project and still very much in development. I’m starting to share progress to gather feedback and push the project forward. If the idea speaks to you, I’d love your thoughts.

Planned components:

🔄 Travel System : Travel is done by turning pages or consulting other records for information and loot.

🧭 Exploration System : Locations are described immersively, divided by directions to create a spatial impression of the area.
Update: Im working on a more traditional top down map for better combat overview, Still only with text and Symbols and little or now picture, because I fell in love with the power of text to increase imagination.

🗺️ Mapping Players map their journey to enable fast travel and to track one-time or shifting elements in each location.

🎲 Event System Each visit to a location can trigger a different random piece of the world’s history—offering new challenges, rewards, or story fragments.

👾 Engagements: Challenges often appear visibly during travel or actions. You can choose to engage, retreat, or face only some. Unengaged challenges may still force engagement, based on their properties—keeping every decision risky and tactical.

🔍 Discoverys : Players spend resources to search and roll on a discovery table. This creates variety in findings, with some rare items adding excitement and making revisiting worthwhile. Even failed searches have the benefit of revealing what can possibly be found.

⚔️ Flexible Challenges : Players face challenges ranging from hostile creatures and steep mountain climbs to overwhelming fears.

🎯 Tactical Gameplay Each turn, the player chooses an ability, then resolves a random challenge card. The system focuses more on pattern recognition than overwhelming complexity, while still involving positioning, range, multiple resistance typs, and situational depding Bonuses and in gerneral amy diverse Effects.

🧰 Gear System Characters choose attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Agility, Magic), which determine what gear they can use.🥻 Garb boosts resistances. 🛠️ Tools improve abilities and dtermine range and Targets. Tools fall into the categories: Fighting, Traversing, Crafting, Laboring, Analyzing, and Feeling.

🌟 Classes = Callings, representing thematic themnes and gameplay role focus while still allwoing most roles to be filled from each:

• Fire – Warrior-like
• Water – Healer-like
• Wind – Scout-like
• Earth – Guardian-like

All callings can use all gear but are limited to a specific set of abilities, allowing combinations like Wind Shielder, Water Mage, or Earth Bowman when only looking at fighting. Secondary (weaker) callings are planned as well.

📶 Progression Player characters can improve their attributes through experience and gain new gear and abilities from specific challenges or locations.

📏 Scale The game is currently planned for a maximum of 3 characters and 3 challenges per situation.

♟️ Pawns When playing with fewer than 3 players, you can bring non-player characters with you. Their behavior during challenges is random, but you can still choose their targets, movement, and other basic actions to guide them.