Nine Circles

Overview

Nine Circles is an autobattler: the fight plays itself, so the whole game lives in the choices between fights. You enter as one of three — a warrior who blocks and answers, an assassin who cuts twice and bleeds, a mage whose spells are unstable — and take a first gift that sets the direction of the run.

Every victory offers three rewards and lets you keep one. Attributes make you sturdier or quicker; mechanics change how your class works. Ten fights later the build you assembled either carries you out of Limbo, the first circle, or it does not — and the log shows exactly why.

A hero who falls is not the end of the descent. The next squad picks up in the circle where they fell, as someone else, with what the fallen carried into it and one thing they found there; the squad that finally reaches the bottom of the ninth circle is named by its number, with everyone who fell before it. Limbo is the circle that is built; the eight below it are laid out and waiting for their own enemies, art and rules.

Built as a small, quiet web game: typographic UI, silhouette characters, painted ruins in fog, two languages. No engine, no canvas — DOM, React and a lot of care about what a choice feels like.