Castle Of No Escape is a roguelike based off of the game Leygref's Castle (1986). If you know what you're doing, this game can be completed in less than 10 minutes. That being said, part of the fun in these old style roguelikes is to experiement with what works, so I recommend you try to figure out how to play the game first before reading this guide.

Enter - Start the game
Arrow Keys - Move
Z (or Enter) - Perform Action
X (or Space) - Use Flare or Spell
1, 2, & 3 - Select Options when casting Spells, buying Potions, or selecting Character
F4 - Switch to windowed mode (not recommended due to small size)
Escape - Exits game immediately

Before starting the game you must choose between the Champion, Bandit, or Shamaness. The stats shown next to each character are their maximum values; each character will start the game at half their max value.

Strength - This is both your Hit Points and Attack Strength
Intelligence - This is both your Mana and your Spell Strength (more on that later)
Dexterity - This is both your attack and defense accuracy

Don't agonize too much over which character to play since they all essantially work out to be the same funcionally. I recommend playing the Bandit since he has a higher dexterity, and I'll explain my reasoning why later on.

There are three spells available to players during combat:

1 - Web: immobilizes a monster for 1-3 turns. Costs one Intelligence point per use.
2 - Fireball: Does some damage to a monster. Costs two Intelligence points per use.
3 - IQ: Instantly kills the monster if their IQ is lower than yours. Conversely, it kills you if theirs is higher than you. Using on the Nikolai will just kill you.

The object of the game is to defeat the final boss Nikolai. In oder to do this you will need to collect the five gemstones and defeat Nikolai in combat. The problem is that you niether know where the gemstones are nor where Nikolai is in the castle.

You'll start the game on a random tile on the first of six floors:

Each side of the screen is connected, so you can walk North and appear on the South side for instance. When walking around, you will either encounter a monster, or a number of other objects. If you encounter a monster, you have the option to fight, cast one of three magic spells, or run away to another tile.

Besides monsters, here are the other objects that can be found within tiles:

Coins



These will give you a random amount of Gold which can be spent at vendors.

Flares



These give you 1-3 Flares. You can use a Flare in any non-Monster tile to reveal the surrounding eight tiles.

Stairs



Use these to travel up and down in the castle.

Sinkholes



This will drop you down one or more floors.

Warps



Similar to the Sinkhole except that it can warp you to any tile in the castle.

Pools



Using these will raise or lower your STATS, but can also outright kill you.

Books



Using these will either raise one of your STATS, curse you, or do nothing.

Chests



Using these can give you Gold, better weapons or armor, or explode and deal damage.

Vendors



You will only be able to talk to the vendor if you have at least 10 Gold. You have the choice of three different potions which costs 10 Gold each, and each one raises your STATS by 3 points.

Orbs



At the cost of one strength per use, the orb will either tell you nothing, or give you some clues about which floors contain gemstones.

Gemstones and Items



Each of the five gemstones are needed in order to win the game. In addition, they can protect you from and cure curses accuired from reading cursed books. The other three Items are the Blue Flame, Sign, and Lantern. The Lantern is the most valueable item in the game, and will illuminate the tiles surrounding the player for free. The Sign will cure all curses you have when it is picked up. And, to be honest, I've never figured out what the Blue Flame does. I believe it reveal's monsters IQ STAT, but If anyone knows for sure then feel free to post it in the comments section.

Ok so you want to just beat this game already, here's how:

First off, this game is extremely random, so no matter what you do, you're going to die a lot. Even though the Gemstones always appear in the castle, I once had a round that didn't spawn a single Vendor. In addition, you're almost guarenteed to make it through the game without the best weapons and armor, so I'm not even going to talk about them since they're that unlikely to collect.

It doesn't matter which character you pick, but I would recommend the Bandit since having a high Dexterity will allow you to run away from fights much easier.

To win the game pretty easily, all you need to do is find the Lantern asap. Since there are 216 tiles in the game, the chances of running into it quickly are not high. So, first thing you'll need to do is find some Flares. These reveal all your surrounding tiles, and just wandering around the castle is likely to get you killed. Avoid all monster encounters and just run to a new room without fighting. once you've collected some torches, go up or down the stairs and use one in the new room. Doing this will reveal the maximum amount of tiles (8) and therefore give you a better chance of finding the Lantern. If you cannot find any Flares, you're better off sticking to lower floors, as monsters increase in strength as you get higher in the castle. Do not open any chests or read any books at this point unless you have to.

Once you've found the Lantern, you can basically walk all throughout the remainer of the castle and find all the Gemstones and Gold. Once you have all the Gemstones, you'll be immune to all the curses and can read all the books and open all the chests in the castle. At this point you'll have the best weapons and armor you can, and now all you need to do is find a vendor and raise all your STATS to their maximum values. At this point you can start killing monsters for extra gold, but most don't drop that much, so you might just want to skip to the last fight.

The Final Boss is Nikolai, and he can be found on any floor.



Nikolai has 999 HP, but he can be beaten fairly simply. Just cast Web on him and attack him until he falls.

This is a small game made by a small team, and I enjoyed figuring out how to play. There is obviously much more to the game than I've covered, but since there isn't much depth to the game and virtually no replayability after winning, I think I've covered enough.

If you're interested in learning more about the game you can check the developers website here[xitilon.itch.io].