Ensō

You are Sumi, a drop of ink with a brush for a tail, and the yokai have escaped into the old painter's scroll.

Features

• Paint to fight. Wherever you move, you leave a stroke of wet ink. Close it into a circle around the spirits to seal them.
• The rounder, the stronger. Every circle is judged: rough, fine or a perfect ensō. A perfect ensō rings the temple bell, triples your score and breaks even the toughest spirits.
• Many at once. Seal a whole kodama family in one stroke for a multiplier, and keep sealing to build chains.
• Ink dries. Wet ink fades after a few seconds. Paper cranes, lantern fire, crows and lightning cut your stroke - dash through danger, nothing can hurt you mid-flick.
• A story told in picture scrolls. The old painter Bokusai sealed every spirit of the land in his great scroll - until one night his last circle stayed open. You are the last drop of his ink. Every great spirit speaks in haiku and gives back a memory of his life, painted live as an emaki. What you learn changes how the story ends: close the last circle, or leave it open.
• Walk the painted world. Twelve worlds lie on a map you walk freely, from a bamboo grove and the palace of the moon to a spider castle, hot springs where Orochi sleeps and the underworld of Yomi. The painter's temple opens hall by hall as you go.
• Every scroll its own trick. Festival lanterns that burst into fireworks, the moon in a pond that mirrors your circles, bamboo that falls on the yokai, waves that wash your ink away, spider eggs to seal before they hatch. And every scroll teaches a brush technique of its own.
• The Shrine of Ink. Earn ink stones and spend them on ten lasting techniques, lucky charms and new brush spirits.
• Twelve great spirits, from the Drumming Tanuki to Yamata no Orochi and its eight heads - and the Shadow of the Brush at the end of the journey.
• 31 kinds of yokai from Japanese folklore, with elite variants: lion-dog guardians that roar each other back, a lantern whose light shields its friends, walls that block your brush, a shadow that mirrors your every move. Every one you seal goes into the bestiary with its story.
• More game modes. The Pilgrimage is a roguelike: all five scrolls in one run, a technique card after every wave, roadside shrines, fortunes and master strokes, its own shrine, and five dan ranks to climb for the leaderboard. The Zen garden asks nothing: no harm, no hurry, only the brush. More ways to play are being painted.
• Four difficulties, from Gentle to Ichigo Ichie: one drop of ink, one chance.
• Your run as a painting. Watch a time-lapse of the whole run and save it to your gallery.
• 8 inks to unlock - sumi, indigo, sepia, moss, plum, shu red, midnight and rust.
• Accessibility: gentle closing, reduced motion, high contrast. English and German.
• Everything is painted and played by the game itself: a real-time ink renderer, a hand-made brush font, and a fully synthesized soundtrack of koto, shakuhachi, taiko and temple bells.

Controls

• WASD / arrows / left stick - paint
• Mouse - the brush follows the cursor (left or right click to dash)
• Space / Shift / A - dash (invulnerable)
• Esc / P / Start - pause
• Gamepad supported