Swords And Souls

A role-playing game where statistics are trained rather than bought. Each attribute has its own small skill game — deflecting, dodging, aiming, striking — and how well you do at it determines how much of that statistic you gain, which means your character's build is a direct record of what you are personally good at. That is an unusually honest progression system and it changes how the game plays. A player with excellent reflexes ends up with a fast, evasive character; one with patience ends up with a defensive one, and both are viable in the arena. The combat itself is semi-automatic with timed interventions — blocks, counters, special moves — so the training transfers directly rather than being an abstraction. There is a long campaign through an arena ladder, a town that expands, and an equipment system behind it all. It takes several hours, saves progress reliably, and the difficulty is pitched so that a wall means more training rather than better luck. It plays with a mouse on a desktop or taps on a phone, runs on anything, and is one of the better-designed browser RPGs available.