Action RPG / twin-stick combat

The Captive Spire

An action twin-stick RPG about fighting your way ever higher through the shifting floors of the spire.

Steam page soonitch.io page soon Screenshots

Overview

Fun combat while surviving an intense bullet hell

Pick a captive and take the spire one tier at a time. Fast twin-stick action meets a camera that can shift among over-the-shoulder, isometric, top-down perspective, and orthographic views, always providing a clear view of the action.

  • Twin-stick combat tuned around immediate action, with additional spells and very generous temporary buffs.
  • Three pickable captives with distinct kits - the Bell-Bound Bombardier, the Spellweaver, and the Warp-Strider - with more planned.
  • Over-the-shoulder and multiple top-down camera modes - pick your favorite view.
  • Every run is a fresh climb. No carry-over progression, no permanent upgrades.
  • Multiple challenge modes layer extra rules over the spire for when you want to try something a little different.

Gallery

In-game captures from the working build. A trailer will be coming soon, once I have sound added.

Top-down view of the Bell-Bound Bombardier dodging dense purple projectile spirals from the jellyfish spinners.
Top-down bullet storm
Over-the-shoulder view of the Warp-Strider facing ghost sorcerers and their green projectile patterns across a torch-lit castle tier.
Warp-Strider under pressure
Isometric view of the Spellweaver weaving through a wide spiral of purple projectiles from the spinners.
Spellweaver spiral barrage
The Bell-Bound Bombardier stands inside crackling electric magic facing the jellyfish sparkers and bolters.
Bombardier electric blues
Character select screen for The Captive Spire showing the Spellweaver, Bell-Bound Bombardier and the Warp-Strider.
Choose your captive
The Bombardier confronts a ghost grunt in a green-lit castle arena filled with mist and ranged attacks.
Bombardier vs ghost

From the developer

Forty years in the making

When I was younger, Berzerk and Robotron: 2084 hooked me on frantic battles against rooms packed with enemies. Then Gauntlet brought that same pressure into a dungeon with four fun classes. I never really got over it - the endless combat, the journey through hostile rooms, and the question of whether your skills or your coin stack would run out first.

Smash TV arrived a few years later and pushed that frantic action into a twin-stick format. Much later, Enter the Gungeon and other indie hits reminded me how much I still loved that kind of action dungeon crawl. The Captive Spire draws from all of them: pickable classes, immediate combat, and a dungeon that does not let go.

Inspired by Gauntlet (1985) · Smash TV · Enter the Gungeon

Follow

Wishlist on Steam and itch.io

Store pages are on the way. When they're live, the buttons in the hero will take you straight to wishlists, demos, and downloads.

Press & press kit: torchspine.com/press - fact sheet, screenshots, and contact details.

Studio: About Torchspine - solo developer looking to provide fun action games.

The studio

Torchspine Games

Torchspine Games is a one-person game studio. Its first project is The Captive Spire, a twin-stick action RPG in development for Windows and macOS.