ShadowdeepShadowdeep

Shadowdeep is a top-down action roguelite about descending a dungeon that is one thousand floors deep. You play a small hoplite. Every floor is generated when you arrive, and every piece of art in the game is drawn by code rather than loaded from a sprite sheet. The game never explains itself: there is no journal, no quest log, and no tooltip on anything that matters. It's designed like this to give the game more mystery and to feel less like an RPG and more like an adventure!

Death and Legacy

You begin each run with three lives. Losing all of your health costs one life and refills your hearts. Losing your last life ends the run, and you return to the surface. Progress between runs comes from Legacy: points earned by reaching new depths and spent on permanent increases to your Power, Magic and Armor. Nothing else carries over, so every descent starts fresh with a slightly stronger hero.

Four classes

You choose a class before each run, and each one plays differently.

• The Warrior carries a sword and a shield. Holding the attack winds up a spinning strike, and he alone has a dash, which ends in a burst of force. His shield turns aside projectiles from the front. His ultimate clears a room with a built-up blast of energy.

• The Archer fights with a bow. Arrows are not ammunition and never run out. A tap loses one arrow, holding the draw spreads three, and an overdrawn shot pierces through enemies. Every arrow carries the element of the bow. His ultimate is a burst or homing arrows that explode on impact.

• The Mage uses a staff and a ward. His snap bolt is free, and his mana regenerates on its own. How long you hold the cast decides its shape, from a single bolt to a fan of three to a shower over the whole screen, and the staff's element decides what it is made of. The ward absorbs blows before they reach him and recharges alongside his mana. His ultimate summons three giant hydras to clear a room.

• The Cleric swings a two-handed mace with longer reach than any sword but carries no shield. His lantern burns the undead that stand in its light, and his holy magic strikes the dead for double damage. His ultimate is a massive shockwave of holy energy that clears mobs and heals.

Every class has an ultra, a single devastating ability charged by combat and released on a button, with a second charge banked while you are at full health.

Weapons and gear

Swords, bows, staves and maces come in twenty tiers, and the better ones carry an element: frost, fire, poison, lightning or void. Each element has enemies it is strong against. Armor rolls perks such as thorns, regeneration or a second wind, and a handful of named legendary pieces sit at the top of both ladders.

The descent

The thousand floors are divided into ten bands of one hundred, each with its own look, hazards and creatures: the Cherry Blossom Ruins, the Graveyard, the Haunted Forest, the Caverns of No Hope, the Dark Wizard's Lair, the Drowned Vaults, the Frostbound Deep, the Iron Foundry, the City of the Dead and the Infernal Abyss. Every tenth floor is a boss, and every hundredth is a giant arena where one enormous creature personifies the band you are leaving. Some floors are mazes of small rooms joined by staircases. Trapdoors and bombable walls lead to basements, shops and sealed rooms beneath the main path. Bosses have no health bars. You judge how close one is to falling by how it behaves.

Day, night and weather

Time passes as you play. The floors darken when night falls, and night brings more enemies and stronger ones. On the first three bands, which stand under the open sky, storms can break: the floor darkens further, rain falls, lightning lights the whole room for an instant, and the rain puts out every flame but your own.

Nothing here is explained

No journal. No quest markers. No tooltip has ever opened on a mystery. You do something the game never told you to do, one ghostly line is whispered, and the run is quietly different from then on.

A cracked wall glows, and its color is a word in a language nobody will translate for you. A statue counts what you feed it. A broken mask asks to be made whole. Nothing prompts you: you step into the circle, or you walk past it. It's simple and leaves you with a sense of mystery. 

The spirit fox

From the eleventh floor onward, a ghostly green fox pup may fall in behind you. She is a companion rather than a weapon. She floats, plays, dozes when you idle, and every few minutes she leaves on an errand of her own and returns with something in her mouth: a heart when you are hurt, a bomb, coins, a piece of gear, or something you did not know you needed. In a fight she pounces. After a few floors together she grows and changes coat, and where the run takes her decides what she becomes.

Couch co-op

A second player can join on the same screen. On the class page, a second controller presses Start, chooses its own class and its own stats, and both players confirm before the run begins. The screen's edges are walls for both of you, so neither can wander off alone, and the floors run larger and half again as crowded to match. Co-op is local only.

Online co-op

Descend with up to four players over Steam. Choose MULTIPLAYER on the title screen to host a party or find a friend's, invite from the overlay or join from your friends list, pick your class, and set out together. Each player keeps their own hero between runs, and the leader's depth sets the floor. The party votes on who joins late and who gets removed, and if the host leaves, another player takes the lead and the run goes on.

Score, lives and modes

Quick kills build a multiplier that rewards tempo, and reaching score thresholds grants extra lives. Finish among the top ten and the table takes your three initials. Daily mode gives everyone the same dungeon for that day. Steam achievements track the journey and the hunts, and many of them stay hidden until you earn them.

Photosensitivity: some floors flash and strobe, from lightning, storms and the deep.