What is GRAVEBOUND — Knight of the Failed Dawn
Gravebound is a side-scrolling action platformer about a sworn knight walking east through a poisoned vale. Each stage is a grave: a stretch of broken ground with pits two or three tiles wide, wandering dead, buried chests and a sealed portal at the far end. The portal only opens once you pull the lever hidden somewhere in the middle third of the map, which grinds open the gate of bones standing before the exit. A clock runs the whole time, starting at two minutes and growing six seconds per grave, and every grave you seal pays five points for each second you had left.
There are thirty-five graves grouped into five acts, and every seventh grave is a Sentinel fight in a short walled arena. Your armour absorbs exactly one blow; without it, the next touch costs a life, and you carry three. Between graves you stop at a camp and spend the gold you picked up on armour plates, spare lives, a whetstone that adds fifteen per cent damage with no upper limit, greaves that raise your jump, or a gauntlet that speeds up your throwing arm. The run ends when the lives run out, and the score you have then is the score that counts.
How to play
- Arrow keys or A and D to move, space to jump, X to throw your weapon, shift to dash. On a phone, five large buttons sit under the board.
- Walk over the glowing lever to break the gate of bones, then reach the spinning portal at the end. Falling into a pit costs a life.
- Throw your weapon at chests, tombstones and braziers. Chests hold a weapon, gold or an armour plate; light all three braziers to reveal a hoard.
- Kills less than three and a half seconds apart build a combo that multiplies every soul, so chain the weak bats and zombies together.
Strategies that work
- The lever answers only within twenty-two pixels of it and roughly at its own height, so it is easy to sail over it mid-jump and reach a gate that will not open. If the exit is shut, walk the middle of the map again, on the ground.
- Cinders throws four embers every tenth of a second: about fifteen damage per second, against three for the javelin, the axe or the daggers. The embers die after a hundred pixels, so carry that weapon into a Sentinel arena and fight at touching distance, not from the far wall.
- The dash makes you untouchable for its whole duration, and it is the only reliable answer to gargoyles, which leap at you, and to ghosts, which drift straight through walls. Neither can be outrun, so dash through them. The cooldown is under a second: spend it every time it returns.
- Every valour level refills one point of armour. The Sentinel keeps summoning zombies while fewer than three are alive, so those summons are free armour in the middle of the fight, and the combo counter makes each one worth far more than the hundred points printed on the table.
- Running out of time costs a life, but the clock restarts at ninety seconds. Weigh five points a second against a hundred to two hundred and twenty per kill and eight hundred for a hoard: sweeping a grave slowly usually beats sprinting to the portal.
A little history
Gravebound was written for Puzzle-Me and belongs to the oldest branch of the action platformer: the arcade knight who throws his weapon instead of swinging it, and whose armour shatters at the first touch. Ghosts 'n Goblins, released by Capcom in 1985, is the ancestor everybody remembers. What Gravebound adds is bookkeeping. Every grave is generated from a number, so the same grave is the same for everyone, and the camp between graves turns the run into a series of small economic choices: plate or lives, damage or jump height. The daily challenge feeds the date into that generator.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to install anything?
No. Gravebound runs in the browser, on one page, with no download, no account and no plugin. The fonts and the sound are served or generated by the site itself, so nothing is fetched from anywhere else while you play.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. Held upright, the board sits in the middle of the screen and five large buttons — left, right, dash, throw and jump — sit underneath it, clear of the action. Turn the phone sideways and the board fills the screen.
How is the score built?
Each kill pays eighty to two hundred and twenty points, multiplied by your combo; a Sentinel pays three thousand. Sealing a grave adds five points per second left plus five hundred, growing fifty per grave. Chests, hoards and waystones pay their own bonuses.
Is the daily challenge the same for everyone?
Yes. The seed comes from the date in UTC, so every player in the world walks the same thirty-five graves that day: the same ground, the same pits, the same chests, the same lever. Only what you do with them differs.
