Explore
More than a hundred interconnected rooms, from overgrown ruins to sky shrines. Every new skill reopens somewhere you’ve already been.
A hand-made metroidvania
A small witch. A big sword and a world to explore.
Enter the Archives
Forests older than memory, temples adrift above the clouds, caves that swallow the light. And somewhere beyond them all, a palace waits.
Archives of Arcana is a hand-made metroidvania about a small witch with a big sword. Over a hundred rooms, more than twenty bosses, and new skills that open up paths you couldn’t take before. It began as a birthday present on a single disc — and now it’s free for everyone. No accounts, no ads, no microtransactions.
Fight
Sword-first combat with slams and dashes. Over twenty bosses, each with patterns to learn.
Grow
Defeat guardians, claim their gifts. Each skill changes how you move through the world.
From the Archives
The Making Of
It started as a gift.
An empty Blu-ray case, a birthday, and a childhood dream that never quite went away. How a gift turned into a hundred-room game and a hand-made collector’s edition.
Read the storyDownload
Free, no sign-up. Version 1.0.0.
Archives of Arcana is a desktop game. Open this page on your computer — or grab the files below and move them over.
Windows
Windows 10 / 11 · 64-bit
DownloadArchives of Arcana Windows.zip · ~300 MB
macOS
macOS 11+ · Apple Silicon & Intel
DownloadArchives of Arcana MACOS.zip · ~300 MB
Linux
x86_64 · 64-bit
DownloadArchives of Arcana Linux.zip · ~300 MB
First launch
The game isn’t signed with a paid developer certificate, so your system may ask if you trust it. It’s safe — here’s how to get past the warning.
Windows: “Windows protected your PC”
Unzip the folder, run ArchivesOfArcana.exe, then click More info → Run anyway. You only need to do this once.
macOS: “can’t be opened because Apple cannot check it”
Unzip and drag the app to Applications. Right-click (or Control-click) it and choose Open, then Open again. On macOS 15 and newer: try to open it once, then go to System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.
Linux: making the AppImage run
Make it executable with chmod +x ArchivesOfArcana-Linux.AppImage (or tick “Allow executing” in file properties), then double-click it.
I want to give this game away for free. But if the self-checkout at Walmart is brave enough to ask me for a tip, I figured I might as well include this link.
Buy me a coffeeEntirely optional. The game is, and stays, free.