Leap of Fate

Leap of Fate is a twin-stick shooter about four mages who want to bring down a sinister cult in New York City known as The Cabal. This is done by beating them in the Crucible of Fates, a psychological testing ground where the mages have to fight their own demons. At the start only Aeon, a shadow mage, is available. By completing missions and progressing, three additional characters can be unlocked: Big Mo, a cyborg technomancer, Mukai, a spirit channeler, and Rasimov, a rogue occultist. Each character has different abilities and a different fighting style. The game uses a large amount of roguelike elements: there is permadeath (except for a single continue based on certain currency), levels and level paths are procedurally generated, a run unlocks new abilities that can be used in the game, and there are single-run upgrades as well as permanent perks to be unlocked.

Each run consists of several levels split up in level paths that are built as a pyramid of tarot cards. By completing rooms and descending the pyramid the Guardian or boss of that level can be defeated to move on to the next one. Next to the Guardian there are combat cards with fights against enemies, challenge cards with a reward for a specific objective, a shop where a currency can be spent, gift cards with bonuses, upgrade cards, mystery cards, cursed cards, sacrifice cards and so on. Because of the pyramid structure not all cards have to be accessed to find the Guardian, but that means there is also a risk of missing out on gifts. The design of a combat card shows the difficulty level (number of characters) and the reward (treasure chest size). A combat room is a fairly small environment, with a random design, and filled with debris, explosive items, gaps, and traps. Spawn points trigger a wave of enemies and when all enemies have been defeated the mage can teleport back to the level path. Rewards and pick-ups are health, mana, keys to open chests and cards, energy cells and so on. Typically for a roguelike game there are many random elements and an assessment of risk and reward is often required when choosing the next card.

After each completed level a random upgrade from a selection of three can be chosen. The collected mana can be used to permanently upgrade a character's abilities, with different skill trees for mobility, attack and passive skills. Each character has a primary attack with unlimited ammo and two secondary attacks that consume energy cells. The primary attack is different for each character leading to different playing styles. For instance, Aeon fires a double stream of bullets, Big Mo has a permanent energy beam that grows stronger with use, but needs to be stopped every now and then to prevent overheating, and Mukai has a very powerful close range attack, but she needs to get much closer to enemies than the others. At the same type a secondary attack is equipped through glyphs and these can be swapped when new ones are found. Glyphs include grenades, energy beams and so on. Each character also has access to shadow walk, another move that consumes energy cells and can be used to attack in a quick dash or get out of crowded situations. Using secondary attacks or defeating enemies through environmental damage is rewarded with mana.

Next to a normal difficulty, a harder one can be unlocked for each character. Every mage is introduced through a story sequence and there are different types of endings to unlock.