Legerdemain takes place in a strange and cracked fantasy world called Phenomedom. You assume the role of an imprisoned magician seeking to learn the nature of your captivity. Along the way you’ll uncover vast conspiracies, morbid secrets, and the secrets of ancient puzzles. You’ll likely slay a few thousand monsters along the way too.

Legerdemain draws heavily upon interactive fiction and Roguelike games to provide an experience focusing on story and depth of play. From interactive fiction we inherit elements of scene description, exploration of new environments, and conversation with the game’s inhabitants. From Roguelike games we derive a top-down two-dimensional perspective and numerous strategic elements. Legerdemain’s glyph-based UI is also reminiscent of Roguelike games, but here we forego ASCII for the myriad and more modern conventions of Unicode.​