Gather your party, and venture forth to the frosty realm of Kyen! Delve into the mysterious caverns beneath Castle Buoyance and conquer the quest for the Skeleton Amulet.

Kyen - The Skeleton Amulet is a short adventure showcasing the engine of Bylina - Lure of the Sorceress. It is an old-school fantasy hack ‘n’ slash role-playing game, with turn-based tactical combat, glorious 16-colour graphics, and a simple one-hand interface.

CONTROLS

Numpad (you may have to turn num-lock on, to stop the page from scrolling) or mouse/touch.

Attributes:

Strength: Strength governs the physical prowess of the hero. The higher it is the more physical damage is dealt, and the more items the character can carry.

Accuracy: Accuracy determines how precise the hero is in his actions. The higher the value, the more likely the character's attack will succeed.

Toughness: The higher the hero's toughness is, the more hp will be dealt at levelling. The character is also more resistant against spell effects.

Awareness: The higher the awareness of the hero is, the more sp will be dealt at levelling. It also increases the character's chance to evade attacks.

Status effects:

Berserk: While berserk, combatant will get an extra attack (or spell cast) each turn.

Blessed: A blessed combatant suffers less damage from physical and magical attacks.

Blinded: When blinded, the combatant's chance to hit will be reduced considerably.

Eagle-eyed: An eagle-eyed combatant is more likely to hit with physical attacks.

Paralyzed: When paralyzed, a combatant cannot do anything and its turn is skipped.

Poisoned: A poisoned combatant suffers poison damage each turn, although it will not die from it.

Protected: A protected combatant is harder to hit with physical attacks.

Quick: A quick combatant can take additional steps when moving each turn.

Resistant: A resistant combatant is less affected by magical attacks.

Rooted: A rooted combatant cannot move, although it may still attack and cast spells.

Sluggish: A sluggish combatant is easier to hit with physical attacks.

Strong: A strong combatant inflicts more damage with physical attacks.

Weakened: A weakened combatant inflicts less damage with physical attacks. 


CREDITS

Music by alkakrab https://itch.io/profile/alkakrab.

If you enjoyed this, and long for a more epic adventure, try Bylina: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.AdamTilinger.BylinaLureoftheSo...

And of course Gurk, my main inspiration. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.larvalabs.gurk3&hl=en&gl=US

-o-

I was attending a class reunion the week after Bylina entered early access. A former classmate mentioned there that we used to play a crude rpg module during biology classes by “mail” - sending around notes and rolling a pencil instead of dice. I even started to write a blobber crpg based on our adventures back then in Turbo Pascal. I was already thinking about doing a smaller module with the engine, so that got me inspired. Despite not finding my 25-year-old notes, I recalled most of the details, added a few quests, and voila!

So, we might say that this game was 25 years in the making.

-o-

CHANGE LOG

V1.1:

  • Added an encounter to hint that you should recruit a party (also a reference to Gurk)
  • You can set the scanline transparency now with a toggle switch on the Komondor
  • Fixed the missing combat map for the frozen room
  • Removed random combats from teleport fields - they did not make that much sense



StatusIn development
PlatformsHTML5
Rating
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
(2 total ratings)
AuthorAdam
GenreRole Playing
Tagsgurk, Pixel Art, Retro, Turn-based

Also available on

Comments

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.

Would it be at all possible to make a standalone .exe for Windows? Or at the very least give the option to go fullscreen in browser. I used to love playing Gurk 1-3 on my mobile devices back in high school and I'm so glad people have been carrying on making games akin to them!

I guess it would be possible. I never really thought about it, but as I was planning to make the apk available here, I could compile and upload an exe as well. I have to check how different screen resolutions work first, but I might have time for that this weekend.

I still do replays of Gurk 2 and 3. I wish more people would make games like these.

(1 edit)

Hi Adam, I really liked your game (as you have already seen from my 5 stars review on google play store).

Is it possible to make your games available as downloadable apk here on itchio?
I really want to support your games BUT I hate google play store!

(+1)

Hi Vasileios, thanks again for the review! I consider publishing my android games here as well, but up until now I had a couple of reasons why I did not do it.

The play store might not be the most friendly platform, but updating new versions is really effective there. In the first months I had biweekly new features, and could be sure that all of the players had the latest version real quick.

Having all the statistics in one place is also a benefit, but I guess my main reason was that I still don't trust itch.io as much as the play store, and I fear that uploading an apk here will result in uncontrolled copies.

I admit I did not do any research in this topic, and will do that in the near future.

I hope this isn't a dumb question, but you're not able to sell items at merchants, correct?

(+1)

By pressing the left and right buttons you can switch to your characters to sell, equip items or rearrange them in the party.

Thank you!

Great game!

Thank you!

(1 edit)

Edit: got stuck in the crypt with seemingly nowhere to go. Turns out I hadn't noticed the large "map" button in the bottom right!

Yes, the map can be quite helpful. To think that I nearly binned the feature because it did not fit the grid style graphics.

(+1)

It would be nice to know what the different stats actually do.

Hi WolfgangSho, thank you for the hint! For now, I added a short description to the page, but will also add a small codex ingame.

Loved the changes you made! It’s a very neat project :)