We will also implement the Castoff’s Labyrinth. Death in Torment will not be the same as “game over,” and there’s more to it this time than waking up in a mortuary. Your body is mostly immortal. Your consciousness, on the other hand, is a twisted place. When you die, your consciousness travels somewhere else, to a labyrinth of the mind.
The Castoff’s Labyrinth is a strange realm, a dreamlike maze of jungles, stairways, tunnels, and ruined cities. It’s your mind, but you wouldn’t know it from all that’s in here (I mean, what the hell is that dead, tentacled thing the size of a mountain range?). When you die in the game, you could always just reload, or maybe find the easy way out of the maze and back to your body. But you’d be missing out – it’s our goal to make gameplay after death compelling enough that you won’t even think about reloading.
The Castoff’s Labyrinth is a bizarre and interesting gameplay area, one of haunting exploration and discovery. As it grows, its secrets become deeper and more complex. Its depths are called Fathoms, and each brings new secrets and -- for the determined -- new rewards. What types of secrets and rewards? One will be lost cyphers: Each time you die, a new cypher (a single-use numenera) appears in the Labyrinth that you can take back with you. As the Labyrinth gets bigger, more of these random cyphers will become available the deeper you go. More types of secrets are attached to upcoming Stretch Goals, some of which are described below.
For every 3000 Backers beyond 45,000 (roughly when the $2.5m Stretch Goal was reached), we will extend the Castoff’s Labyrinth by one Fathom. So at 48,000 Backers, we’ll be at Fathom 2, at 51,000 Fathom 3, etc. (As of this writing, we are well on the way to Fathom 2!) Each Fathom adds deeper playable content and reactivity, and more of the features reached through the Stretch Goals (e.g., like increased quantity and complexity of the Reflections discussed below).
