A freeware Action RPG, by a group of high school-aged developers from Maine, USA called Syzygy Cult, originally released in 1995 for macOS. There is also a sequel, Mantra II.
An open source version of the first game was released in 2010, written for the cross-platform game library Allegro. Builds for Windows and Mac OS X, and also the source code, can be downloaded from Sourceforge
; also, the developers have a website. The original macOS version is available for download here (and the sequel here).
Not to be confused with the comic book of the same name.
- Almost Dead Guy: The guy that gives you the first weapon.
- Chest Monster: One town has NPCs that look like any others, but if you get too close to them, they attack you. They're extremely fast and take lots of hits, also. It's not entirely unexpected, though, because some NPCs tell you that the town is on Balther's side.
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Enemies are vulnerable / invulnerable to different weapons, including the 5 Mantras as well as swords. There are also rings that give you protection from various things.
- Healing Spring
- Mook Maker: Some of the blob monsters can spawn more blobs of their own type, and the giant blobs spawn regular-sized ones at a faster rate. One dungeon has a room where spiders get spawned continously, apparently out of nowhere. Also, the final boss spawns beetles.
- Respawning Enemies
- Shout-Out:
- Smart Bomb: The Mantra of Force
- Sword of Plot Advancement: The 5 Mantras.
- Treacherous Advisor: The ambassador is actually Balther, and he wants you to gather the Mantras so he can kill you and take them for himself.
- Videogame Cruelty Potential: You can kill the NPCs in towns. (They just respawn like enemies do.)
- You All Look Familiar: The NPCs in towns.
