WANE turns an archaeologist’s fading memory into a dungeon — the roguelike loop is the plot

Tabletop RPG studios rarely survive their first move into video games with their design vocabulary intact. Metis Creative, the Istanbul-based studio whose Historica Arcanum series earned ENNIE Awards and a loyal following in narrative tabletop circles, is now attempting that crossing — and they have built their debut around a structural premise that works as hard as any rule set they have published. The game is called WANE. Its central argument fits on a card: the dungeon is a dying archaeologist’s mind.

WANE follows Declan Wayne, a fading archaeologist whose fractured sense of self has transformed an internal realm called Ravelle into a shifting labyrinth of trauma and regret. Players recruit a three-person party and descend through grid-based tactical encounters shaped by positioning, cover, and line-of-sight — all running on percentage-based attacks that keep certainty out of reach. Three distinct biomes mark the territory: the Ravellian Sanatorium, the Palace of Arvanshah, and the Death Pilgrimage to Erabel, each connected to Ravelle’s history and to Declan’s deteriorating interior life.

WANE RPG — tactical grid combat scene in an industrial noir environment — Image: Metis Creative / Shoreline Games

Between expeditions, players surface in Declan’s antiquarian shop, appraising relics and auctioning them off to fund the next run. The roguelike cycle accumulates in the usual ways — new synergies, permanent upgrades, shortcuts — but the story accumulates alongside it. WANE’s narrative is structured around repetition: each descent reveals more of Declan and his world, the architecture of his inner life surfacing across runs. The mechanic also names the game: to wane is to diminish, and Ravelle’s shifting corridors are the physical grammar of a disappearing self. That structural bet — the loop as the plot — puts WANE in conversation with a specific strain of roguelikes that treat the genre’s defining constraint as a storytelling engine rather than a gameplay wrapper. The difference is that the team building this engine made their name on the printed page.

The partnership with Shoreline Games — the publisher behind Celestial Return, Onirism, and Sanatorium — was announced alongside the reveal. “Having already had the chance to work with the team once before, we knew firsthand just how thoughtful and inventive they are,” said Keith Kawamura, CEO of Shoreline Games. Sarp Duyar, CEO of Metis Creative, framed the transition as creative expansion: “Our vision with WANE is to continue that tradition across a totally new medium for us and push the boundaries of our creativity.”

WANE RPG — Ravelle labyrinth environment, antiquarian shop scene — Image: Metis Creative / Shoreline Games

WANE is currently in development for PC. No release window or storefront has been announced. A full press kit is available through Shoreline Games. The reveal came at the PC Gaming Show Tokyo Direct.

Tags: Metis Creative, PC Gaming Show Tokyo Direct, Sarp Duyar, Shoreline Games, turn-based RPGs, WANE