A region, a story, eight badges, a champion. Drawn like the handheld games of 2004. Portrait, one thumb. Two kinds of creature: Beasts you catch, and Spirits that choose you. One price, nothing else to buy. One developer, shipping in chapters.
PortraitBuilt for a phone held in one hand. Sessions survive a phone call.
One priceNo coins, no energy, no packs. Pay to download, or free until the first badge: not decided yet.
A full regionTen towns, eighteen routes, six dungeons, a league, a postgame, side quests, optional areas, secrets. No hour count on it.
95 Beasts, 27 SpiritsNine Beasts per type across ten types, plus five Dragons. Six Spirits per type across four, plus three Cosmic. All original, one artist, one style.
Online battles and tradesFriend codes, ranked, direct trades, and an offer board that works while you sleep.
ChaptersThe first three badges ship first. The rest of the region arrives as free updates.
Two kinds of creature
Beasts
The animals and monsters of the region. Wild Beasts live on routes and in caves. Weaken one in battle, use a blank, and if it holds, it's a Tamed Beast in a carving.
Physical and special moves. The full turn-based ruleset.
Count
95. Nine per type, plus five Dragons: one each for Fire, Grass, Earth, Energy and Water. The other ring gets its five Dragons after launch.
Spirits
Made of a concept: light on a ridge, the echo in a cave, the quiet at a grave. You don't hunt them. A Wisp Spirit appears when you do the right thing in the right place, reads how you've played, and decides. If it chooses you, it's a Kith Spirit. Kith: the friends you choose.
Types
Light, Shade, Sound, Mind, and Cosmic.
Fight
Special moves only. Physical attacks do half to them.
Count
27. Six per type, three Cosmic. Each one is an individual with its own place.
Beasts
The wildlife of the region, and the region runs on them. Farmers plough with Earth Beasts, boats are pulled by Water Beasts, the mail comes by Air. Taming is ordinary work; everyone in town has one. Spirits are what people are reverent about. Beasts are what they know.
You see them. Beasts walk their territory on the map at 32×32. No hidden encounters in tall grass. Walk up to one, or wait for it to come to you. Some only come out at night, some only in rain, some only after you've cleared the route of the thing they're afraid of.
Strength is the whole test. Beat it down in battle, use your capture item, and it holds or it doesn't. Beasts don't judge you. Spirits do.
Three stages, the third earned. By level for most lines; by stone, by trade, or by a bond kept long enough for the rest.
Nine per type, one idea each. A Fire Beast that's a kiln-backed tortoise, not "the fire dog". Five Dragons at launch, one for each type in the first ring.
Blanks and carvings
The capture item is a Blank: a rough block of wood, stone or bone with the suggestion of an animal in it. Use it on a weakened Beast and the Beast is drawn in; the block reshapes into that Beast's silhouette, in the same material. Now it's a Carving, and it's yours. If it fails, the blank splits and the Beast stays.
Your party is six carvings on a shelf, each in its material. A whittled fox you caught on route one and a jade dragon from the postgame sit side by side, and you can tell which is which.
Five tiers: Whittled (you cut it yourself, free), Wood, Stone, Bone, and Jade, which always holds and exists twice in the game.
Ten specialty blanks that work three times better under their condition: Driftwood on Water Beasts or in rain, Ash on Fire, Yew on Poison, Antler on Normal, Ironwood on Metal, Petrified wood on Earth, Balsa on Air, Obsidian at night, Amber at dawn and dusk, Birch on anything under level 15. Sold where the type lives, or found, not sold.
Every town has a carver. The master carver in the capital will re-carve a Beast into a better material after badge six, so the whittled starter can end the game in jade.
Beasts live in carvings. Spirits live in crystal. Two vessels, two kinds of creature.
Spirits find you
Every Spirit has a place, a moment and a test. The place and moment are things you do in the world. The test reads your save. There is no battle. It comes to you or it doesn't. The table is examples, not the final list.
Type
Where and when (examples)
What it checks (examples)
Light
The summit at dawn. Sun clearing the valley ridge. Shafts through the forest at noon. The lighthouse beam at night.
Nothing in your party has fainted since your last rest.
Sound
Stand still by the waterfall. Stand still by the busker. The pass when the wind is up. Shout in the cave and wait for the echo.
You spoke to everyone in the last town.
Shade
Where one of your party fainted, at night. The graveyard. The old battlefield. The deep forest. The cave with no lamp.
Something of yours fainted recently. Shade comes to the losing side.
Mind
The dream when you sleep with an empty slot. The town puzzle. The riddle at the well. The chess hermit.
You solved it without the hint.
Crystals and the bond
A Spirit that chooses you goes into an empty crystal. From the crystal it fights as a party member. Or you let it out to bond with a Beast.
A bonded Beast gains the Spirit's type as its second type, the Spirit's ability, one Spirit move, and a bump to the stat that Spirit favours. It also gains the Spirit's weaknesses: a wolf bonded to a Shade Spirit takes double from Light.
The pair is one party slot. A Spirit fighting alone costs a slot a bonded Beast wouldn't.
Bonds survive evolution and survive trades. Trade a bonded Beast and the Spirit goes with it.
A bond can be broken at a shrine. It costs: the Spirit leaves as a Wisp and has to be earned again, and the Beast keeps the second type's weaknesses for good.
No empty crystal when a Spirit chooses you? Bond it to a Beast on the spot, permanently, or lose it. A permanent first-meeting bond grows with the Beast and reaches the Spirit's second form when the Beast evolves.
Let a Spirit out of its crystal too soon and it may leave. Keep it a few battles and it will bond to any Beast you pick.
The story: a group is harvesting Spirits into crystal by the thousand to wake the thing under the volcano and use it. Your rival joins them in the second act. You are doing the same thing they are, one Spirit at a time, and the Spirits chose you. The game asks what the difference is and lets you answer.
What it looks like
The 2004 handheld standard: 16×16 tiles, 16×32 people on the map, 32×32 creatures on the map, 64×64 creatures in battle. These mockups are drawn in the browser at those sizes. Final art is a real pixel artist's job.
16×16 tile
32×32 map creature
64×64 battle sprite
Shown at 3×. A phone screen is about 24 tiles wide at 1×.
Route at dawn. A Light Wisp on the hill. Stand there and it comes down.Battle, portrait. The Beast at the bottom is bonded to a Sound Spirit; the aura marks it.
Types
Ten Beast types in two rings of five; the arrows are every double-damage hit in the Beast game. Four Spirit types in a square. Every type also has a lesser advantage, two resistances, and is resisted by exactly two others.
Fire burns plants. Roots split rock. The ground takes the charge. Lightning strikes water. Water quenches fire.Poison sickens flesh. Brute force shatters ice. Cold makes steel brittle. Steel brings down fliers. Wind disperses gas.Light dispels Shade. Shade silences Sound. Sound breaks Mind. Mind bends Light. Across the square, equal rivals.
Dragon and Cosmic. Dragon hits every Beast type harder, resists them all, and is hurt by Spirits. Cosmic is the mirror: it rules Spirits and is hurt by Beasts. A team needs both classes to finish the game. Three lines each, late. The legendaries are Cosmic.
Battles and trades
Online battles by friend code or ranked. Both phones run the same battle engine; the server passes moves.
Direct trades between friends, an offer board (have this, want that) that fills while you're away, and a surprise trade.
Every creature has a signed identity on the server, so a trade moves it and never copies it.
Two sides chosen in your first hour, each with twelve creatures the other side never sees. Six lines evolve only when traded.
Also in
A day and night clock. Dawn, noon and night decide which Spirits show up, when shops open, where the busker is.
Optional hard rules at New Game: a fainted creature is gone for good, one catch per route, nicknames required. Off by default.
A randomiser with shareable seeds, a hard mode with full leader teams, New Game+ with the other side's creatures.
Original names for everything: the capture item, the storage, the index, the badges. Original creatures. Nothing borrowed.
Where we need help
One person is building this. The design is settled enough to share and open enough to change. Reply wherever you got this link.
Pick the name
Nothing is locked. Wisp & Wild is the one we keep coming back to. Kythe is an old Scots word meaning to show yourself, which is what a wisp does.
A type, a place, a moment, and what it checks. "A Sound Spirit in the bell tower at noon; it wants you to have never run from a battle in this town." Good ones go in the game with your name in the credits.
Invent a Beast
One line: what animal, what type or two, what its three stages become. Ninety-five across ten types, plus Dragons. The ones people remember have one clear idea.
Argue with the chart
If an arrow feels wrong, say which and why. Thin cells we already know about: Air over Energy, Normal over Air, Metal resisting Air.
Name the region
Ten towns, a volcano, a sea crossing, ruins in the north, a lighthouse. Town names, the region's name, what the two sides are called.
Play chapter one
The first three badges on a test build before anyone else. Say where it drags.
Draw
Pixel art in the handheld style: one artist for 122 creatures in one consistent hand. Paid.
Everything on this page is original work in progress. Names, creatures, mechanics and art are ours or will be. Nothing is taken from any existing game. Working title, working numbers, open to change.