A BitRoot game
The Only Eye: Arcane Legacy — Available now
A 2D pixel-art action roguelite. Every Form that falls leaves a technique for the next one — and the campaign is only the beginning.
Out now on Steam for PC.
- Action roguelite
- 2D pixel art
- Single-player
- PC · Steam
The game
Dying is part of it. Forgetting isn't.
You play as the Eye, a creature that wears Forms — each with its own weapon, combo, skill, movement, resource and passive. The path changes every attempt, and your build grows out of whatever turns up along it.
When a Form falls after a real fight, it leaves an Imprint behind. The next Form can inherit that technique, and it changes how that Form fights: the Warrior's sword starts burning with the Mage's Elemental Imbue.
Forms
Twenty ways to fight
Archer, Necromancer, Chronomancer, Stone Sentinel… Switching Forms changes your rhythm, reach and resource.
Inheritance
What stays after death
Imprints work on any Form and can be fused: the active of one, the passive of another.
After the ending
The game keeps going
The Reverberated Campaign, The Great Gaze, Visions and Masteries open after your first win.
You do not just change class. You carry what you learned.
By the numbers
How big the journey is
- 20 Playable Forms
- 20 Masteries
- 6 Campaign regions
- 20 Reverberated Campaign endings
Counts from the current build of the game.
Gameplay
Straight from the game
Clips and captures from the current build. Interface screens are shown in this page's language.
Gameplay clips
Trial II of the Mage of the Only Eye: waves of enemies in the Archive of Stolen Names 
Trial II of the Paladin of the Eclipse: waves of enemies in the Cathedral of a Thousand Faces 
The Summoner of Constellations and its creatures in the Observatory of the False Sun 
Mastery: the Void Mage flies through the Cathedral of a Thousand Faces
Screenshots
Tap a screenshot to enlarge itClick a screenshot to enlarge it
Forms
Twenty Forms. None play alike.
The Eye is always the same creature; what changes is the identity it wears. Pick a Form to see how it fights, with what weapon, and at what range.
Mage of the Only Eye
- Style
- Projectiles and elemental magic
- Weapon
- Black scepter
Pick a Form
Names and descriptions exactly as they appear in the game.
Imprints & Inheritance
Each Form learns from the one before.
A Form only leaves an Imprint if it did something with it: cleared rooms, took down enemies or faced the boss. On the next attempt, another Form can inherit that technique — with an active skill of its own and a passive that rewrites the way it fights.
Selling an Imprint gets you Fragments, but the Eye forgets it until you play the Form it came from again.
20 Imprints
One per Form
Every Imprint works on any of the twenty Forms, with no rule written for each pairing.
Imprint Fusion
One Form's active, another's passive
Two Imprints put together by hand, and from that pair a Resonance appears that exists nowhere else.
Imprint Trials
Learn before you risk it
Two Trials per Form in the Archive of Imprints: a guided lesson and a ready-made build against waves of enemies.
Relics & builds
Relics change the rules, not just the numbers.
Projectiles that orbit you before they fly. A bottled eye that makes every shot chase its target. Relics add new triggers and new behaviour, and some of them charge a real price.
A run's build is your Form, your Inheritance, your element and everything you pick up along the way — plus permanent pieces that stay with you between runs.
Six elements
Fire, Ice, Lightning, Nature, Void and Bleed
Every element has its afflictions, and two different afflictions on the same target set off one of the fifteen reactions. With Elemental Attunement, any Form can carry an element into its attacks, skills or dash.
Legendary & Blessed
Power with a Burden
After the campaign, Legendary Relics show up — strong, and carrying a Burden — alongside Blessed Relics that come with an extra blessing.
Set Pieces
Kept in the Vault of the Gaze
Permanent discoveries. Up to four equipped per profile, with a bonus when pieces from the same set meet.
Elements
Six colours. Fifteen reactions.
Every element stacks an affliction on whatever you hit, and each affliction behaves its own way: Burn detonates, Chill freezes, Poison lingers and ticks without ever bursting.
When two different colours live on the same body, they react. Six elements, fifteen possible pairs, fifteen reactions — the matrix is closed, so there is no combination without an answer.
And the colour no longer has to come from the Mage’s Inheritance: Elemental Attunement, at the tip of the Constellation’s Elements branch, gives one element to one place — Attacks, Skills or Dash — and it works for any Form.
Fire
At the cap, Burn bursts in an area and hits whoever is near.
Ice
Each stack slows; at the cap the target freezes (bosses stagger).
Lightning
Bolts leap between neighbours; with Charge full, the target discharges.
Nature
It never bursts: it lasts and ticks, and sometimes roots.
Void
Each Mark boosts the next Skill hit, which spends them all.
Bleed
On the last Wound the body ruptures in one hit that can crit.
The fifteen reactions
FireNature
Corrosive Detonation
Poison on something burning (or the other way round) eats part of the stacks and bursts.
IceLightning
Shatter
Lightning on something with Chill breaks the ice into splinters.
FireLightning
Glare
Fire with lightning blinds: the enemy becomes Exposed and takes more damage.
NatureBleed
Wither
Bleed together with poison becomes an aura that spreads both.
FireIce
Thermal Shock
Fire and ice on the same body compress and burst: a heavy blast on one target.
FireVoid
Igneous Eclipse
Fire with Void Mark implodes into a dark core and gives back a burning wave.
FireBleed
Cauterize
Fire seals every Wound at once: the more Wounds, the bigger the burst - and the body is left clean.
IceNature
Toxic Crystallization
Ice crystallizes the poison, and the crystal shatters into shards.
IceVoid
Cryogenic Collapse
The Void pulls in the bodies around and the ice closes in a cold burst.
IceBleed
Crimson Fracture
Ice grows over the Wounds and cracks: a burst plus fragments, scaled to the Wounds.
NatureLightning
Neuroshock
Lightning runs along the poison and jumps to nearby enemies.
NatureVoid
Abyssal Plague
Poison and Void open a rift that pulses and drags in gently.
LightningVoid
Voltaic Singularity
Lightning and Void collapse into a point: a pull, an implosion and radial discharges.
LightningBleed
Voltaic Rupture
Lightning lights the Wounds and tears the body open, jumping to whoever is near.
VoidBleed
Crimson Rift
The Wounds tear and the Void opens inside the body: a burst and a few short pulses.
Names and descriptions as they appear in the game.
Campaign
A whole kingdom was torn from the world's memory.
The descent runs through six regions, each with its own weather, bestiary and boss. The map changes every attempt, and doors don't tell you what's on the other side — they only leave hints.
Beating a boss takes you deeper with the same build and the same wounds. Along the way: shops, rest altars, elite rooms, trapped keepers and affixes that trade danger for reward.
The regions
- I
Grove of Blind Roots
Where the roots still dream of the eyes they lost
- II
Forge of the Hollow Knights
Armor still standing with nobody inside
- III
Archive of Stolen Names
Every name the King took was filed away here
- IV
Cathedral of a Thousand Faces
A thousand saints, not one true face
- V
Observatory of the False Sun
They aimed the lenses at the sky and an eye looked back
- VI
Sixth region
That one you'll find by playing.
Sanctuary
Between attempts, somewhere to come back to.
The Sanctuary is a place you walk through, not a menu. The keepers you free in the campaign come home — and their houses need fixing before they reopen The Great Iris, the Gallery of Forms, the Archive of Imprints, the Brazier of Elements and the Codex of Memories.
Every keeper has something to say, and the conversations change as the story moves on.
The seven keepers
The Keeper of the Iris
The Great Iris
Spend Fragments on permanent upgrades.
The Archivist
Codex of Memories
What you have recovered of the kingdom's story.
The Potter
Gallery of Forms
See and unlock the Forms you have recovered.
The Kindler
Brazier of Elements
Unlock elements for the Imbue.
The Copyist
Archive of Imprints
The techniques the Eye still remembers.
The Watcher of the Portal
Portal of the Attempt
Pick a Form and go down.
The Blind Cartographer
Archive of the Iris
Buy Echoes, take contracts, make sense of the Tiers.
After the campaign
The first ending opens up the rest of the game.
Winning the campaign lights up new paths in the Sanctuary. Each one pulls your build in a different direction — and all of them feed the same progression.
01
Campaign
The original descent, with challenges, keepers and memories still left to find.
02
Reverberated Campaign
The same descent, more dangerous. Every Form that clears it gets its own ending.
03
The Great Gaze
Echoes of the Gaze across twenty Tiers, Guardians, the Atlas, the Constellation and Forbidden Visions.
04
Masteries
The transformed version of each Form, for those who prove it in the Reverberated Campaign and The Great Gaze.
Reverberated Campaign
The same descent, with the world cracking apart.
Elites gain affixes, bosses gain an extra phase and resistances start to matter. It's also the bridge to The Great Gaze: every Reverberated boss pays out your first Vision Shards.
Clearing the Reverberated Campaign with a Form shows that Form's ending. There are twenty, and no two are the same.
The Great Gaze
An endgame you shape before you step in.
Echoes of the Gaze are large hand-drawn maps, each with a Tier, rarity, objective, modifiers and a Guardian at the end. The Blind Cartographer sells the Echoes; at the workbench you swap, reroll and reinforce their properties before risking the way in.
The more Threat you accept, the more crowded the map gets — and the bigger the reward.
Four currencies, four jobs
Vision Shards
Buy Echoes and unlocks
Iris Slivers
Everyday workbench jobs
Iris Memories
Precise adjustments
Exalted Eye
The most expensive gamble
Contracts
Orders from the Cartographer
Take contracts from the board and get paid for Echoes you clear.
Forbidden Visions
Handcrafted Echoes
Named places with their own rule, a fixed boss and a single attempt.
Progression
Each layer multiplies the one before it.
The Great Iris strengthens the journey from the campaign on. After the first ending, the Iris Constellation becomes your power tree and the Atlas of the Gaze decides what the endgame produces. The layers multiply, so what you invest keeps showing up in combat.
From the start
The Great Iris
Six branches of permanent upgrades — Body, Power, Focus, Legacy, Fortune and Exploration — paid for with Iris Fragments.
Power
Iris Constellation
A branching star of small, notable and special nodes. One point for every Echo you clear.
Content
Atlas of the Gaze
Decides what Echoes offer: events, rarity, elites, contracts and access to Blessed Relics and Set Pieces.
Masteries
Every Form has a version that only shows up in the endgame.
A Form's Mastery opens once it clears the Reverberated Campaign and an Echo of Tier 10 or higher. The body changes, an aura lights up, and new passives arrive along with an Inheritance of its own — the Void Mage, for one, flies by holding jump.
Mastery points come from bosses in The Great Gaze and go into health, damage, defenses, speed and the movement penalty when attacking.
Visions
Five encounters at the top of The Great Gaze.
From Tier 16 to 20, clearing an Echo opens a Vision: a handcrafted arena, a boss that changes between phases and missions in the middle of the fight. Only beating the boss opens the next Tier.
Who's waiting up there, we're not telling.
Details
Good to know before you play
- Platform
- PC (Windows), on Steam
- Mode
- Single-player
- Controls
- Keyboard and mouse or controller, with Xbox and PlayStation button icons
- Languages
- Interface in 12 languagesPortuguês (Brasil) · English · Español (Latinoamérica) · 简体中文 · 日本語 · 한국어 · Deutsch · Français · Русский · Polski · Türkçe · Italiano
- On Steam
- Achievements, stats and Steam Cloud
- Developer and publisher
- BitRoot Studios
Steam
Your next attempt starts on Steam.
Twenty Forms, six regions and a whole endgame waiting past the first ending.
(opens in a new tab)Out now on Steam for PC.