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

Made by hand

All art, the brush font, every sound effect and all music are generated by the game's own code. No generative AI was used for art or sound.