Jewels, Sigils and Traits
The build layer around your team: what Jewels do, how Sigils rewrite an action, and the Steam Jewel example the studio showed in the trailer.
Jewels are passive Neura artifacts forged by Iris; Sigils are modifiers attached to a single Neoran action; Traits are the broader passives that can affect every creature on the field. Jewels define a run's build, Sigils add the fine print.
Last checked: 28 October 2026 — studio gameplay page, Jewels and Sigils sections.
There are two passive layers under the seven-turn queue, and they do different jobs. Jewels decide what your team is for. Sigils decide how a single action misbehaves. Confusing the two is the fastest way to build a team that looks synergistic and fights like six strangers.
Jewels: the build
Jewels are artefacts of Neura, forged by Iris, that passively grant bonuses to the team. The studio calls them the foundation of a solid strategy and says they will be what most defines your build in every run — which is a strong statement for a roguelite, because it means the run-defining choice may be an item, not a creature.
The only concrete example published so far is the Steam Jewel, shown in the trailer: it boosts the power of Blue attacks and Red attacks when they are placed next to each other inside your timeline.
Read that again as a design rule, because it tells you what kind of game this is:
| Property of the Steam Jewel | What it implies |
|---|---|
| It cares about colour | Actions carry colour categories |
| It cares about adjacency | Position in the queue is a resource, not just order |
| It rewards two colours together | Team building is about pairing types, not stacking one |
| It is passive | You do not activate it; you arrange your plan around it |
A Jewel like that does nothing on its own. It turns slot planning into a matching puzzle: you want your two strongest blue and red actions adjacent, which may mean moving a block one slot later, which may mean eating a hit you would rather not eat. That trade is the build.
Sigils: the fine print
Sigils are modifiers applied to a Neoran's Actions. They increase strength or change how the action works. The studio describes them as less common than Jewels but more adaptable, and says they allow an immense number of different effect combinations.
The distinction matters:
| Jewel | Sigil | |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Team-wide passive | One action |
| Rarity | Common layer | Less common |
| Function | Defines the build | Rewrites a specific move |
| Flexibility | Commits you to a plan | Adapts a plan mid-run |
| Example | Steam Jewel: blue and red adjacent | Not yet shown in public |
Because Sigils attach to actions rather than creatures, a good Sigil can follow the action when you swap the creature carrying it — which in a roguelite is the difference between a run that survives a bad recruit and one that does not.
Traits: the third word
The studio mentions Traits in the same breath as Jewels and Sigils, and adds that some Jewels and Traits have global effects that apply to every creature on the field. Traits are therefore not a creature's stats — they are properties, and the global ones cut both ways: if a global Trait is on the field, it is probably buffing the enemy's team too.
How the three layers stack
A working model, from the studio's descriptions:
| Layer | Attaches to | Changes | Visible where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Actions | A Neoran | What happens on a slot | Action menu |
| Sigils | A single action | How that action behaves | Action menu |
| Jewels | The team | What your plan is worth | Passive, team-wide |
| Traits | Creature or field | Passive properties, sometimes global | Passive, field-wide |
| Synapse | A Neoran | What happens before slot 1 | Pre-timeline |
When you get the game, the first useful experiment is not "which creature is strongest" but "which two Jewels change how I want to order my slots". The second is "which Sigil makes my cheapest action worth a slot".
What this means for a 2028 purchase decision
None of this is testable yet, so the useful thing to watch for is not a tier list — it is whether the game ships enough Jewel variety to make runs feel different. The studio's own claim is that Jewels will be the main thing defining a build in every run. If that holds, the replay value lives in the item pool rather than the creature pool, and the first thing worth reading on release day is the Jewel list, not the roster.
Next
- The seven-turn timeline — where adjacency actually matters.
- Synapse — the layer that resolves before any of this.
- Progression and runs — how builds survive a run ending.
