Rust & Reliquary

A ten-minute descent into a kingdom that has already lost.

Rust & Reliquary is a short-run dark-fantasy auto-battler roguelite. Every run is a doomed pilgrimage to the seat of the Hollow Crown, the ruined circlet of iron and gold that broke the last hundred kings and every soul who tried to break it. You will not be the first to fall. You may be the first to finish.

What is this?

Three acts. A short few minutes to the throne. One hundred relics to draft between fights, twenty-six enemies waiting on the road there, three hero variants to choose between once you have earned them. The combat plays itself: the numbers do the talking, and speed controls (1x / 2x / 4x) let you set the pace without changing a single outcome. Your decisions live in the map, in the shop, in the relics you pick up, and in the tags you stack until a Synergy rewrites what your run is.

The road

The map is a branching graph. Combat nodes, elite fights, events, shops and rests all wait between you and the act boss. You cannot go backward. Every relic you find has stats and tags: three, five or seven items sharing a tag light up a Synergy, a build-defining passive that stacks in tiers and shapes what your final fight looks like.

Beat an act boss and pick a Boon: a permanent run-defining reward that lasts to the end of the road. Boons stack. So do curses. So do bleeding wounds and burning armor and the slow certain rise of your Infection meter. Every fight teaches the road ahead.

What you keep

The Reliquary remembers. Every boss you fell unlocks five new relics into future runs. Beating the game unlocks a new hero, each with their own opening loadout and posture. The Lantern-Bearer begins with a rusted blade and an old faith. The Ash Witch trades HP for damage and a poison sigil. The Bone Priest wades in slow and armored and bleeds foes on turn one. Your Chronicles remember your fastest crown, your longest streak, and the exact weight of the silence when you finally shattered it.

Losing on act three with two boss kills is still progress. Losing on act one to the same wolf twice is a lesson.

Features

• One hundred hand-designed relics with tag-driven synergies
• Twenty-six enemies across three acts, each with distinct threat patterns
• Three unlockable hero variants with distinct starting loadouts and playstyles
• Unlock-based meta-progression: no stat scaling, just a wider relic pool
• Auto-battler combat with variable speed. No timing, no APM, no penalty
• Cinematic victory sequence with staggered reveals for personal bests and new unlocks
• Fully offline: no accounts, no external dependencies, no data leaves your device
• Playable in-browser or downloadable HTML file. Full keyboard and gamepad support

Controls

Mouse, WASD, arrow keys, or gamepad. For the basic Keyboard controls, E or Enter confirms, Q cancels, R rerolls in shops or restarts on death, Esc opens the menu.

Early Access

Rust & Reliquary is in Early Access. The full loop is playable end to end. What you fight, what you draft, and how you die are all locked in. Expect balance passes, additional relics, and further acts as the crown gathers more dust.

If you find a bug, if a synergy breaks the game, or if you just want to tell me you fell to the same boss six times in a row: I want to hear about it. Leave a comment below.