Path of Adventure is an indie text-based Roguelike Role-Playing Game free-to-play Mobile Phone Game developed by Keeweed, in which you play as an adventurer who is traveling through a dangerous road called The Path, which contains monsters, dungeons and at least one traveling merchant. The goal is to make it to the end of The Path and defeat the terrible beast taking residence in the Castle.
Path of Adventure contains examples of the following tropes:
- 11th-Hour Superpower: Right before the final boss, you are given an extremely powerful piece of equipment if you have at least half of a special crown from completing the queen’s objectives. You get a random legendary item if you have half of the crown, and you get to choose if you have the full crown.
- Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: The Merchant’s prices are always higher than they were the last time you saw him.
- Anti-Armor: The Jellify spell reduces the target’s Defense by 2 for the rest of combat.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: You can avoid encounters by throwing treasure at monsters, distracting them long enough for you to run on by.
- Breakable Weapons: Weapons and shields will break after being used enough times, with its condition noted in the inventory. They can be repaired with the use of the Sharpening Stone item.
- Cast from Money: How magic works is that it initially costs 1 Treasure to cast a spell, and the cost doubles for all spells each time you cast. The cost can be reset by drinking a Mana Potion, and prevented from going higher at the cost of a Wizard Staff’s durability.
- Evil Sorcerer: The White Sorcerer, the game’s penultimate boss and the one who put the miniboss on the Path.
- Flaming Sword: The aptly-named Flame Sword artifact.
- "Get Back Here!" Boss: Every few turns, the Final Boss will fly/climb up to the next level of its tower, requiring you to fight some monsters before continuing the battle.
- Glass Cannon: The Assassin starts with a measly 10 Life and 0 Defense, and their 0 Speed makes dodging extremely unlikely, but has the highest Attack (2) out of all the classes.
- Healing Potion: The Heal Potion, which restores you to full Life.
- Jack of All Stats: The first character, the Rogue. They start with 15 Life (the other classes never go below 10) and 1 of each other stat, making them well-balanced but not as specialized as the Warrior and Assassin, who have 2 Defense and 2 Attack respectively.
- Level-Up Fill-Up: A variation. When you level up, you gain an Elixir of Growth, which in addition to increasing an attribute of your choice, heals you to full and cures poison.
- Light Is Not Good: The White Sorcerer is dressed all in white, but turns out to be an evil dude who placed the miniboss on the Path and fights you himself as the penultimate boss.
- Luck-Based Mission: Each dungeon is optional, and you can choose to turn around and leave at any time (unless you’re in a battle). The main reason to enter these dungeons aside from experience is for the powerful artifacts they contain. Its placement is completely random, so you could find it after enduring many grueling challenges that test your endurance and skill, or simply find it inside a coffin in the very first room.
- Mighty Glacier: The Warrior has the highest starting Defense out of all the classes and decent Life, making them able to take more punishment than any other class.
- Optional Boss: Sometimes, you’ll be given the opportunity to fight a spirit or demon, gaining an artifact as a reward. They are significantly stronger than regular monsters, with heavily-damaging attacks and a fairly large Life pool. In addition, you cannot use the same weapon consecutively against spirits. (Demons destroy the weapon you kill them with, which doesn’t help them in combat but may screw you over in the future.)
- Poison Mushroom: The only way to identify a type of mushroom is by eating it, consuming a Tome of Fungi to identify all mushrooms in your inventory, or having it identified during the mushroom identification event (which sacrifices said mushroom in the process). Mushrooms can have either positive or negative effects when eaten, one of which is the literal Poison Mushroom that poisons the eater.
- Rodents of Unusual Size: One enemy is a Giant Rat.
- Skeleton Key: The Key item seems to work on all locks somehow, but breaks after being used.
- Smoke Out: The Smoke Bomb item can be used for a guaranteed escape from combat, or to be guaranteed to start a battle with initiative[Action Initiative].
- Stat Sticks: Enchanted weapons increase a stat by 1 for as long as you have them, meaning the best way to make use of them is to avoid using them entirely. There’s also a negative version in the form of cursed weapons, which decrease a stat by 1 and cannot be dropped, requiring you to remove it from your inventory by breaking it through extended use.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: A random flavor text event involves a sign saying ‘There’s definitely no treasure buried here.” After digging for a very long time, you conclude that the sign was telling the truth.
- Too Awesome to Use: The Basilisk Fang, a weapon you start each Assassin playthrough with that breaks after a single use… but deals a massive 25-30 damage and gives +3 Speed, making missing the attack only possible (but still very unlikely) against enemies with extremely high Speed. You can hold onto this until the final boss, but it’ll take up one of your precious four equipment slots for that whole time.
- Utility Weapon: The Flame Sword can be used in place of Torches, and the Lock-Picking Knife can be used in place of Keys. They’re also powerful weapons. The Wizard Staff applies as this, at least for non-combat spells, as it prevents spell costs from increasing.
