NINE BELLS

Ashcross is under quarantine, and the bell tower is counting. Nine tolls, and at the ninth the district is bricked shut with whoever is still inside it.

You are the physician — beaked mask, oiled coat, cane, censer, a belt of three tinctures. There are people still breathing behind the shuttered doors, and you have nine bells to reach every one of them and get out through the lazaretto gate.

The turn

Your instruments are your traversal. The cane is not a weapon; it is what vaults you onto a roof. The censer is not a flamethrower; its smoke rises in a column you can ride, and it makes the infected recoil without your touching them. The tinctures do no damage; they change how you move, for a few seconds at a time.

Nothing in this game is killed. The infected are hazards — routed around, warded off with smoke, or, if you can hold still long enough beside one, treated, which calms them for good.

The loop

Read the street above you. Pick the instrument the obstacle wants. Climb. When you reach a patient, hold still beside them while you work — standing still, in the open, is exactly what the street punishes. Their lantern lights, a bell tolls, the miasma rises a little further, and you go on.

Treat all five and reach the gate before the ninth bell and you are out. Let the contagion meter fill, or let the ninth bell find you still climbing, and the district closes around you.

Controls

Move	A / D
Jump	Space or W — held longer, it carries higher
Drop through a board	Down + Jump
Cane	J — tap to vault, hold still to probe the ground ahead
Censer	K — lays a column of smoke you can ride
Belt / Drink	Q to select, L to drink
Treat	E — hold, standing still
Dash	Shift — only while Aqua Vitae is in the blood

Everything is bound on keyboard, gamepad and touch.

Worth seeing

• The flooded well at the bottom. Green water, braziers, and the miasma that starts the meter moving.
• A lantern lighting. Every patient has a name and something to say when the work is done, and they say it aloud.
• The bellman. He rings whether or not you are ready, and he tells you so.
• The censer column. Lay it, stand in it, and go up through the scaffolds.

Portrait screen, one district, one continuous run of about six minutes.