Ricochet Ritual

What the game is

Throw it, then get it back

You have one orb and it is both the weapon and the problem. Thrown, it flies until something stops it, bouncing off walls and enemies and losing speed the whole time. Held, you have a melee swing and nothing else. Nearly every card in the game is an answer to some version of the question "what happens between the throw and the catch".

Recall is a second weapon

Holding right click hauls the orb back, and a returning orb hits whatever it meets just as hard as a thrown one. It comes home round the scenery, not through it — a tree in the way stops it until you step aside. Releasing early keeps the speed it gathered, so a recall is also how you re-aim without picking the orb up. Walking into a moving orb catches it — you do not have to wait for it to come to rest.

A wave, then one card

Clear the field and the upgrade screen deals three cards, and you take one. Utility abilities are not dealt here: they are sold only in the Essence Shop. Rerolls and banishes accumulate on a timer rather than being spent currency, so a bad screen late in a run is a smaller disaster than a bad screen early.

A build, not a pile

Every card belongs to one of twelve families, and every card you own in a family makes that family's other cards likelier to turn up — so an early lean compounds into an identity. Hold 3, 5 and 7 different cards of one family and its three traits switch on, tracked in a column on the right of the screen; a card that would complete one says so above it. A run starts with one card from the family you pick on the menu. A legendary bought in the shop comes with a curse, printed on the card before you take it. The run ends with your build's name — the leading family's adjective and the runner-up's noun, a Frost Juggernaut — and each build name keeps its own records.

Every fifth wave, the Essence Shop

Kills earn essence — one each, five for an elite, twenty-five for a boss — and after every fifth wave the free card is replaced by a shop: an ability, a boost and a card pack for each of your two biggest families, a reroll, and Transmute, which sacrifices random cards you own for a choice of one a rarity higher. Unspent essence carries over, and your total sits in the top-right corner beside a purple orb.

Why you died

The death screen has a recap down its left side: what killed you and how hard, which three enemies hurt you most, which three of your cards did the most damage, your biggest single hit, and how much you were healing per wave — averaged only since your healing last changed (a healing card, a curse, the drop rate halving), so it describes the build you died with rather than the one you had ten waves ago. See Upgrades opens every card you ended the run with, and the screen waits for Continue (or Space) rather than closing on the first click. Kills made through the F3 developer menu never count toward the recap.

It gets specific, not just bigger

Waves ramp, but the interesting pressure comes from named events: a modifier that changes the rules of one wave, a designed wave built from one kind of enemy, and a fixed boss every tenth. None of them are simply "the same wave with more health".

The field is part of the fight

Trees are cover, not just obstacles. A ranged enemy only fires with a clear line to you and its shots die on the first tree they cross (they fly over rocks and stumps), and a Siphon's beam snaps the moment something comes between you. Enemies arrive from just past the edge of the screen, walk round scenery rather than through it, and spread into a ring rather than a heap. When your orb is off screen a big outlined arrow at the edge points to it — one per orb if you have two — with how far away it is written beside it. A boss always has its own arrow: a large crimson one at the edge, labelled BOSS and with its name, whenever it is off screen, and a crimson marker bobbing over its head when it is on screen. Once a wave has nothing left to send and three or fewer enemies remain, arrows point to them too.

On easy and normal the map always leaves at least two orbs' width (96px) between any two solid obstacles, so there is room to throw between them and nothing to wedge in. Hard keeps its tight woods.

Glossary