Apocryphon

Some pages are better left unread.

A forbidden tome lies open on your desk. You are the archivist of the Sealed Library, and tonight you must catalogue it: read what is safe, seal what is not.

Every glyph hides a numeral in the tome's own script. The numeral counts the forbidden glyphs among the six that touch it. Read a forbidden glyph and it speaks: a candle goes out, and the candles are your lives. Every page is generated to be solvable by logic alone. You never have to guess.

Between pages, the Restricted Section offers forbidden knowledge: 32 relics that bend the rules in your favour, nearly all at a price. The Inverted Psalter doubles your Insight, but numerals count the safe glyphs instead. The Black Candle puts a candle out and grows stronger with every one that dies. Ouroboros copies the relic beside it.

Build combinations, meet each page's quota, and survive three tomes and their Sealed Pages: numerals that fade, a page in darkness lit only near your quill, inverted numerals, blotted ink, and Focus that drains while you hesitate. On the Last Page you choose: read the final line, or seal the tome.

Every run leaves something behind: a 27-line story translated one line per page, four archivists to unlock (the Heretic, the Waxwright, the Debtor and the Night-Reader), and Today's Tome, where every reader gets the same pages and the same shops until midnight UTC.

How to play

• Left click a glyph to read it. Right click to seal it with wax.
• Middle click (or E) pencils a mark on a glyph you suspect. S seals every marked glyph at once.
• A numeral counts the forbidden glyphs among the six that touch it. Read every safe glyph to finish the page.
• Focus grows with every correct move and multiplies your Insight. A mistake halves it.
• Meet the quota on each page, or the Archive takes candles. When the last candle goes out, you are catalogued.
• Hover a relic card to read it. In the shop, hover your relics to move or burn them: order matters.
• New to it? Choose Learn to read on the title for a short guided page.

Windows: download the zip, extract it, and run run.bat.

EdenSpark version

https://games.edenspark.io/post/Dv2YfUGqgP6qIjch

Team

• Rohan Borade: design, code, art direction.

Made with, and third-party assets

• Engine: EdenSpark 1.0 (Gaijin), Daslang. The HD renderer with global illumination from the candles and the gold ink, world-space UI on the left page, and a solver-backed no-guess puzzle generator.
• Textures (CC0): Poly Haven: wood_table_worn, castle_wall_slates, brown_leather.
• Models (CC0): Poly Haven: wooden_candlestick, wooden_bookshelf_worn, Lantern_01.
• Fonts (SIL OFL 1.1): IM Fell English and IM Fell English SC (Igino Marini), Cinzel (Natanael Gama). The IM Fell files include a simplified capital Q, modified under the OFL.
• Sound: synthesized for this game, layered with processed CC0 samples from Kenney.nl.
• Made for this game, procedurally: parchment pages, the numeral script, wax seals, the 32 relic sigils, card faces, the logo, tiles, leaded window glass, light shafts, particles, the quota bell.
• Everything was made during the jam (October 2026). Nothing was made before it.

AI usage

AI was used to Polish the game and also to polish the Art.