It was an ordinary day in the Keybound software and The Mapper was mapping the keys as usual.
It was almost the end of the latest loop, but that execution was far from over…
Perhaps due to a bug or a hacking attack, a glitch happened and the Mapper fell to the lost areas of the software, where scrapped code was forgotten… never to be retrieved…
It also lost most of its keys and the remaining ones have their functions warped.
In order to save the software from breaking entirely, The Mapper decides there’s only one thing to do: Escaping the malevolent code and shutting down the system, before it’s too late.
Will it be able to fix the bug despite the challenge that lies ahead?
Or will it remain forever trapped in the depths of Keybound and become part of it?
Find it out now!

Keybound is a 2D platformer whose main feature is that the key bindings randomly change while you play, based on the currently available keys.
In order to finish the game you must adapt to the new controls on the run.
The keyboard is both your UI and your health.
When you take damage you lose a certain amount of keys and some of your controls will change.
When you lose all the keys it's gameover and you return to the latest checkpoint you interacted with.
Whenever you activate a checkpoint, or return to it after a gameover, the entire keyboard is refilled.
This means that is up to you to choose wether to keep the currently available keys you're familiar with, while risking a gameover, or to activate a checkpoint to refill your health thus changing the keys.
During the game you will face traps that have to be avoided and enemies with a very simple behavior, that can be destroyed by jumping on them.
If you find yourself struggling to finish the game, after any 5 consecutive gameovers you will have the option to switch to casual mode, which will give you hints on the functions of the currently activated keys. Or you can git gud. The choice is yours ;-)

This game was designed and developed during the Global Game Jam 2021.
The theme was Lost and Found (which we interpreted as losing and finding controls) and we used the RNG diversifier in which you randomize things usually not randomized (in our case the key bindings).

Let us know if you played and enjoyed the game and post a screenshot of the ending scene containing the time and mode you finished the game with :-)

Credits:
Marco Farina - Game & Level Designer;
Riccardo Lombardi - Game & Sound Designer;
Giacomo Romanello - Game Designer & Programmer;
Davide Valentini - Game Designer & Programmer.

Free assets used:
https://0x72.itch.io/16x16-industrial-tileset
https://www.dafont.com/04b-03.font
https://github.com/keijiro/KinoGlitch

Keybound (LombRicc, MarcoPown, Davide Valentini, Cubond) screenshots