Player guide

How to play Recollect in your browser — start a match, read the board, and reach every move with a mouse, a finger, or the keyboard alone. The client draws the whole game on a canvas, and you play right on it: touch a card to lift it, the tiles it can reach light up, then tap or drag to act. For the rules themselves — scoring, combat, the Dusk — see Rules in brief; to jump straight in, the Play page.

A note on words. Spirits are banished from a Memory, never "killed" or "destroyed." Only the Solace unwrites, and only the Solace's register speaks of "forgetting." A Stray is a wild spirit the Memory surfaces. The match's final rounds are the Dusk, then Nightfall. The game uses this language; so does this guide.

Starting a match

Open the game from the Play page and you land on the picker, Choose your story. Up top sits an Opponent dropdown — Easy, Normal, Hard, or Expert — then three deck styles, each shown with its one-line voice ("All teeth…") and an at-a-glance read of the deck — its resonance lean, tempo, aggression, and body-vs-spell mix, plus a preview of the cards it opens with — so you choose on substance, not just flavour.

Two ways in:

• Quick Play vs the AI. Pick a difficulty, then click a deck style — you're straight into a match against the bot, no waiting for anyone to show up. You take the first or second word; the opener is announced as the match begins.
• Host a match with a friend. Choose Play online to set up your own game: pick 1v1 or 2v2, fill each seat with a player or a bot (in 2v2 any mix works — an ally can be a bot, an opponent a human), set the bot difficulty and which faction you contend against, and Recollect hands you an invite code for each human seat. Send the code; they join with it. To take a seat in someone else's game, choose Play online → join and enter their code.

There's also Watch a 2v2 — spectate four AI players on the larger 6×6 board. However you start, every match runs the same rules and the same canvas, and you only ever see your own seat (you never see an opponent's hand or deck). See the Play page for the host / join forms.

The shape of the screen

The browser client draws the whole game on a canvas in the game's paper & ink palette — the board, the HUD, your hand, and every action you can take, set in a real serif type that matches the rest of the site. The layout is responsive: it reflows for phones, tablets, and desktops — the canvas scales to fit the viewport (staying sharp on high-DPI screens, re-fitting on resize or rotate), the controls are touch-sized for an easy tap, and nothing scrolls sideways or clips. On a wide screen the game sits as a centred, framed "table"; in portrait it stacks so you can play one-handed. Top to bottom, the canvas regions are:

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  the Solace          score 5 (3 erased) ▮▮▮▮ │  opponent strip (their hand = card backs)
│              ┌───────────────┐                │
│              │     · ·       │                │  the board (5×5; 6×6 in 2v2):
│              │  the board  ^ │                │  a quiet · dot = a piece that can act;
│              │     ·         │                │  a ^ chevron = a Fading base that can evolve
│              └───────────────┘                │
│  3  ◆ 4           Round 3   ▮▮▮○○○○○○○○○ ⟳     │  HUD: your score · Anima · the 12-pip clock
│   ┌───┐ ┌───┐ ┌───┐               ┌─────────┐ │
│   │ 2 │ │ 1 │ │ 3·│  your hand    │ Glimpse │ │  your hand (real cards; · = a legal play);
│   │Cin│ │Hsh│ │Tcl│  (tap to lift)├─────────┤ │  the buttons float lower-right
│   └───┘ └───┘ └───┘               │End Turn │ │
│                                   └─────────┘ │
│      ┌ Cinderling — Spirit · A3 D1 HP2 ┐      │  inspect panel (hover / long-press)
│      │ reach Cross · Mobile · ★ ● ● ●  │      │
│      └─────────────────────────────────┘      │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
  (an accessible mirror — a live status line + a full actions tree — sits in the
   accessibility layer: read by screen readers, invisible on screen)

• The board. Your spirits and the opponent's, terrain, impressions, and the Dusk edge as it darkens. At rest, a quiet dot sits on any of your pieces with an available action, an upward green ^ chevron marks a base that can evolve, and a downward amber v chevron marks a form that can recede (devolve). A small corner dot on each of your Mobile spirits cues its move: green = it can still take its one free step this turn; dim = it's rested (it moved already, or just arrived and is summoning-sick). A spirit of yours banished in combat doesn't vanish at once — it stands Faded for a turn under a warm amber rescue glow: a glance says this one can be saved this turn. The Solace's unwritten leave no mark on the board — its forgetting scores off the board (watch the HUD and the status line).
• The HUD. Your score, your Anima (the ◆ drop — your play budget, the real limiter since there's no fixed action count), and the round on a 12-pip clock (the lit pips count rounds elapsed; the Dusk pips past round 8 darken; the final Nightfall pip is ringed).
• The opponent strip. Their name, their running score — including the Solace's off-board erasure tally, shown as score N (M erased) when it's non-zero — and their hand as that many face-down card backs: a count only, never their cards.
• Your hand. Your cards as real placeholder cards (cost · name · the attack / defense / health stat block). A quiet marks a card with a legal play this turn (a dimmed card has none); a green ^ marks an evolution form card. Tap a card to lift it (it rises with a gilt halo) and its legal tiles light up — tap one to place it, or drag the card onto a tile.
• End Turn & Glimpse. The two floating buttons lower-right — the only global controls. End Turn (filled) passes the turn — nothing auto-ends. Glimpse (outlined) burns a hand card, then peeks the top card of your deck — keep it, or bottom it for an Anima. Evolve and Reclaim aren't buttons here; they're contextual affordances on the eligible piece.
• The inspect panel. Hover a card or piece with the mouse, or long-press it on touch, to float a panel beside it — full stats, keywords, rules text, and a passive reach grid (★ the card, ● each tile it could threaten). Inspecting is a read, not a move — it shows what a piece could threaten, softly; selecting shows what you can hit right now, brightly.
• The accessible mirror. A live status line (the round, the score, your Anima, whose turn) announces each change aloud, and a full actions tree mirrors every affordance as a labeled button — so the whole match is reachable by keyboard and screen reader. It lives in the accessibility layer: present to assistive tech, invisible on screen.

Your turn, in plain terms

A turn moves through three phases — Flow → Main → Fade — and then you end it. You rarely think about the names; the canvas folds them into the affordances. But here's the shape of it.

In Main, here's the full range of what you can do — each surfaces as its own affordance the moment it's available:

• Play cards: spirits onto tiles; spells, terrain, and fabrications as their cards describe.
• Move each Mobile spirit once, for free — but never the turn it arrived (summoning sickness). A free move can carry it into an engagement.
• Evolve or recede a spirit — see Evolve & recede below.
• Call a Kindred (one living Kindred per caller).
• Glimpse once: burn a card of your choice from your hand, then peek the top of your deck and keep it (no Anima) or bottom it for +1 Anima. It costs a hand card and thins your deck, so it's a deliberate move — not every turn.
• Reclaim one of your own standing spirits to cash it back for Anima.
• Overwrite a tile, reveal a lurker, or make any choice an effect offers.

Standing spirits never act on their own, but they still retaliate when struck and intercept through their reach. When you're done, press End Turn and play passes — nothing auto-ends. In a vs-AI match you then watch the bot take its turn, paced a beat at a time and captioned, and your affordances return when it's your word again. The match runs twelve rounds. The full income table, scoring, and Held Ground live in the rules.

Acting on the board

You play right on the canvas. There are two ways to make a move, and they do the same thing: pick up a spirit or a hand card, and its legal destinations light up green (an engageable target pulses brighter); then tap a glow, or drag onto it.

A few things read straight off the board:

• The score is a contest of presence — and of forgetting. The HUD shows your score, the strip the opponent's. The Solace scores its board presence plus an off-board erasure tally — every banish or unwriting it lands. Its unwritten leave no mark, so when that tally is non-zero the strip splits it out, e.g. score 5 (3 erased); at Nightfall it folds into the total.
• Anima is the limiter, not an action count. There's no fixed number of moves — you play as far as your Anima (the ◆ drop) reaches, then end the turn.
• Move cues. A green corner dot on one of your Mobile spirits means it can still take its one free step; a dim dot means it's rested — it moved already, or it just arrived and is summoning-sick (it can't step until next turn).

Overwriting onto a tile. Pick up a spirit and tap a tile an enemy holds (when it's a legal target, it lights up): you play onto it and resolve one exchange — win and your spirit takes the tile, lose and it dissolves. You can also Overwrite onto a Stray (a wild spirit the Memory surfaces): a revealed Stray is fought the same way, while a hidden one — a veiled spirit you can't yet see by name — is denied entry: it slips away with no impression and no reveal, and your spirit simply takes the cleared tile. The full rules live in the rules.

Evolve & recede

Evolution is a card you play. A Primal or Fabled form sits in your deck and is drawn to hand like any spirit (it wears a green ^ chevron in your hand). To evolve, pick up the form card and tap the matching base it can land on — a Primal onto one of your Fading bases (the last-round rescue), a Fabled onto a healthy base the turn after it arrived. You can't evolve a base you hold no form card for.

Devolution is the mirror — also a card you play. When a form of yours is banished in combat it stands Faded for a turn (the amber rescue glow). To recede it — the rescue — pick up a base card from your hand and tap that Faded form: it steps back a tier to the base, restored to full, and wears a downward amber v chevron to tell it apart from evolve's upward green one. Because it can recede and then climb again, a spirit can evolve↔devolve cycle for as long as you hold the forms and bases to feed it. (You revert as a Lorekeeper, recede as the Solace — the same move, your faction's word.)

Throughlines — lining your spirits up. Get three or more of your spirits sharing one Imprint into a connected, side-by-side run and a Throughline completes: the spirit that closes it gains +10 Attack / +10 Defense and a full heal. The board threads the line and the announcement calls it. The buff is once per spirit — but the becoming cycle can reset it: fading, evolving to a Primal, and devolving all hand the spirit a clean slate to earn it again, while evolving to a Fabled keeps it locked. The short version: Fabled keeps; everything else resets. And because devolving is an arrival, a base that recedes straight into a standing line re-completes the Throughline on the spot. The full account is in the rules.

The Dusk & Nightfall

The board is a fading Memory, and it closes from the edges in. Both moments arrive as animated set-pieces over the board (near-instant if your system prefers reduced motion — the announcement always lands).

• The Dusk. At the end of round 8 the Dusk falls and the board's empty edges go dark. An occupied edge tile is held — it stands lamplit, scores, may step away (the ground darkening behind it), and retaliates if struck, but it no longer intercepts and accepts no new writing. The Solace's unwritten are not held: the Dusk sweeps them from the margin. Rounds 9–12 are fought on the inner board plus whatever is still held.
• Nightfall. Round 12 is Nightfall — the Memory closes. The canvas draws the result in the game's voice (the Memory keeps the winner, or it's forgotten, or both are kept on a draw) with a score breakdown over the final board, and three actions follow: Rematch, New opponent, and Back to site. Whoever holds more of the board wins; a tie is a draw, and the Memory keeps both names.

Controls — mouse, touch, and keyboard

Every move is reachable three ways. On the board, pick up a spirit or a hand card and its legal destinations light up green (an engageable target pulses brighter); then tap a glow or drag onto it. For screen-reader and keyboard play, the actions tree mirrors every affordance as a labeled button — select, then choose a highlighted target, and the move is made.

The details that matter:

• Tap or drag — same move. On the board, tap-then-target and drag make the same move. Picking up a form card lights the matching base it can land on; picking up a base card lights any standing-Faded form it can recede.
• Reach vs. targets — two reads, no clash. Inspect (hover / long-press) shows a card's reach softly — what it could threaten. Select (pick up) shows the engageable targets brightly — what you can hit right now.
• Touch is first-class. The responsive layout sizes every control as an easy tap (at least 44 pixels) on a real phone or tablet — no fiddly targets, no stuck-hovered look after a tap.
• Keyboard- and screen-reader-reachable, end to end. The board is one Tab stop with a gilt focus cursor (arrows move it, Enter or Space picks up and places, Esc cancels), and a parallel text region narrates it tile by tile as a true grid (each cell announced by its row and column). On top of that, the actions tree mirrors every affordance — board tiles, hand cards, the opponent strip, End Turn, Glimpse — as a real <button> that fires the same command the canvas does. The live status line narrates every change aloud. This is the accessible path — at parity with the visual canvas, never a lesser one, to WCAG 2.1 AA.
• Reduced motion. If your system prefers reduced motion, the client honors it and the board doesn't animate.

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