Cloaks of the Forest

The cloak is a single item you recover at the camp with a weight puzzle. What it becomes depends on which charm is equipped. Every transformation shares a shape: an open cell, a loop cell, a skill cell and one skill-button verb, mapped to L1 on a pad, K on the keyboard, or the CLOAK button on touch. Press it again to return. Temporary forms recover for six seconds after they end, menus pause the countdown, and death or a room reset clears everything.

The design is explicit that these are world progression, not build variety. A cloak is a permanent traversal power that opens the map, granted by a Keeper or a shrine. Arrows and charms are the loadout layer. The two are never mixed.

Press CLOAK and the Hunter morphs into a grey wolf with golden eyes and purple cloth for 15 seconds. Tap attack for alternating claws, hold it to follow with a bite, or press aim for the bite directly. The wolf leaps higher than the Hunter, keeps the double jump, wall jump and dash, and cannot fire arrows or use the Bladebow.

Once per transformation, on open ground, comes the Alpha Howl. The wolf grows into a broad black Alpha, raises its muzzle and howls. A moonlight grade fades in under the HUD and three soft blue pressure rings roll outward: normal creatures are stunned for three seconds, bosses for under one, allies untouched, and anything behind solid wall protected. The move took its first sound pass back to the drawing board: the owner rejected the gentle version, and five new cues lead with throaty growls, a low rushing weight on the swipes and a jaw snap on the bite.

Twelve seconds of eight-direction flight at 330 pixels a second. You steer with the stick, you are untouchable, and you pass through authored mist seams in the roots, glowing veins in the wood that mark the way. Solid stone and boss gates still stop you. If Mist expires inside a seam, the game recalls you to the last clear spot before collision returns. The Mist Veil upgrade keeps you protected for a moment after the form ends.

Ten seconds of real invisibility. Enemies lose acquisition and tracking entirely. Attacking, aiming, using the wisp or taking a hit reveals you, and a swing an enemy has already committed to will still land. Shadow Echo, its Memory upgrade, makes the first melee hit after Shadow ends deal half again as much. The stealth verbs finally have a use outside combat too: crouch-walk, Shadow and Mist all get you inside a prey animal's flight distance, and hunting is how the road feeds you.

Raven is the passive wing: a longer glide, and with Raven Wake a gust on landing that staggers whatever is close. Phoenix is the loud one. Hold jump in the air and the cloak ignites into blazing wings, held at half fall speed with embers drifting. Each tap of jump is a wingbeat, four per airtime, that crosses gaps nothing else crosses. The skill button throws the wings up and sweeps them down in a flame shower: five flame arrows fall in a fan and burn bodies, tufts and brambles.

The Phoenix wings were also where the art rules got tested. The owner wanted one consistent flap, the same wings up and down, with no clipping or fading. The answer was a single clean wing pair as two layers pivoting at the shoulders over a wingless hover cell. The body is never rotated in code. And fire is red, orange and gold only, because magenta is the key colour and a magenta flame reads as a halo.

Not a cloak, but it belongs here. Tip ten recruits a rat, elite rat, wolf or bear for eight seconds per hit, stacking to 24. Allies seek visible enemies, attack on animation contact and wait peacefully when there is nothing to fight. Bosses resist. Your own attacks cannot harm an ally. It is a playable foundation for a temporary-ally route, and the plan is to place it near an encounter with a trapped beast.