Seraph

=Seraph (video game)=

Seraph is a 2D platform shooter video game, by indie game developer Dreadbit, for the PlayStation 4 home console and Microsoft Windows through Valve's Steam game distribution platform.

Summary
Seraph is an angel trapped in the body of a young woman named Talia. Upon their sudden release from their prison cell, Seraph discovers that the prison ship they are on, the Corangelis II, has been infested with daemons, and is told telepathically by a mysterious Guide that she is the one that caused the infestation in order to effect her escape. Seraph, however, denies this.

Through multiple decks and boss fights, Seraph fights the daemons to prevent them from escaping to the outside world, assure Talia's safety and freedom, and amass enough power to be able to leave Talia's body and return to her home, Origin.

Gameplay
Seraph is immediately equipped with a pair of pistols with unlimited ammunition, and must use them, along with other (non-unlimited) firearms, protective jewelry-set gemstones, and her innate Holy powers to destroy the daemons (returning them to their home in Terminus) and reach the exit of each stage.

Platforming
Seraph augments the natural human abilities of Talia's body, allowing them to double jump, wall cling and wall jump, teleport short distances with her Blink ability, and fall from seemingly infinite heights without harm.

Each deck is procedurally-generated, giving essentially infinite layouts, daemon spawns, and pickup spawns. Seraph must use her and Talia's abilities to find and destroy the stage objectives, then to find the exit and ascend to the next deck of the prison ship.

Firearms
Seraph is permanently equipped with a pair of pistols with infinite ammo, and can obtain various Primary Weapons in weapons lockers strewn throughout each deck. These weapons, however, do have limited amounts of ammunition.

If a Primary Weapon runs out of ammunition, the game will automatically switch back to Seraph's pistols so that the player is never completely defenseless. (If a Primary Weapon is out of ammunition when it is switched to, the next time the player fires will also switch back to the pistols after failing to fire.)

Miracles
Miracles are Seraph's special attacks, using Holy power to damage daemons. Seraph is initially equipped with the Orb and Repel Miracles, as well as the mandatory Miracle, Smite.

Other Miracles must be unlocked through the Transmutation feature between stages or in the main menus.

Transmutation
Transmutation is Seraph's method of improving her equipment and Miracles. Initially, the only option available is the one that unlocks all other basic entries. Transmutation requires various amounts of randomly-attained ingredients from destroyed daemons, most notably Terminessence, which is far more common than any other ingredient. Higher-rank Transmutation options can require the very-high-value Keleao and Agaros Shards normally used for Oaths (and in the case of Agaros Shards, Rebirth).

Oaths
Oaths are reassignable passive buffs that require Shards be used (but not expended) to be activated. Each Oath can only take one Shard, with higher-value Shards providing greater bonuses in that category. Oaths can be freely unequipped, freeing up the Shard to be advanced and/or reassigned to another Oath.

Oaths and Shards are persistent through multiple New Games and all Challenges, allowing a player to try again from the beginning with improved abilities to survive longer or get through the game more effectively.

Shards can be improved in quality by combining three of the same type of Shard, resulting in an equally-valuable improved Shard. Shards are obtained primarily in the main game as random pickups from destroyed daemons, but are also available through Daily and Survival Challenges as prizes based on performance compared to other players throughout the world.

Blessings
Blessings are non-reassignable passive buffs that, unlike Oaths, do not persist between games. (That is, starting a New Game, or apparently continuing a Survival Challenge, causes the player to lose all of their Blessings.) The player is given the opportunity to select or improve Blessings upon gaining Experience Levels (obtained through killing daemons and opening chests), to a maximum of four Blessings, each with 5 levels of strength.

Dynamic Difficulty
The game, Seraph, adjusts its difficulty (increasing quantity and quality of daemons) based on the player's performance. The current difficulty is always shown during gameplay in the bottom-left corner of the screen as a decimal value from 1.00 to 10.00.

Not taking hits while fighting and collecting Experience motes from destroyed daemons causes the difficulty acceleration to increase, as shown by six pips below the Difficulty Level; white pips denote increased acceleration. Conversely, receiving damage from daemons decreases the difficulty acceleration, shown by the difficulty pips going dark. As such, a lesser-skilled player will naturally tend to keep their difficulty low by being unable to avoid taking damage, subsequently making the game easier to clear, while high-skilled players that well evade enemy attacks may end up with extremely high (7.00+) difficulties earlier in the game, making it seemingly impossible to survive and advance.

Actual difficulty increase is fueled by Experience motes, with a multiplier based on the number of pips that the player has attained.

Rebirth
The game includes the ability to Rebirth, starting over from scratch, losing all Shards and Transmutations (including unequipping all Oaths), but gaining gameplay bonuses. The first Rebirth requires possessing 5 Agaros Shards (the most valuable), and each subsequent Rebirth requires increasing numbers of Agaros Shards.