Under Cappadocia, in Turkey, there is a real city called Derinkuyu - eighteen levels of streets, stables, chapels and wells cut into soft volcanic rock, deep enough to hide thousands of people with their animals and their wine. It was rediscovered in 1963 when a man knocked down a wall in his basement. Its name means "deep well."
This game carves a city like it, new from every seed: a thousand blocks of it, laid out the way refuge cities really were - straight streets of crossroads with the rooms hung off them, and stables and gate halls near the light, dwellings and kitchens below them, chapels deeper, and the wells, lakes and tombs at the bottom of the dark, fourteen levels down and more. Great millstone doors seal whole districts, and they only roll from the inside. Only the edges run to maze - crawls and cracks for those who look. The city is abandoned. Mostly.
You explore in first person: walk, climb, crawl, swim and dive. You write on the walls in charcoal so you can find your way back. Goblins hunt the halls - outrun them (it costs breath), fight them (find the arms), or use the city itself: they cannot stoop into a crawl bore, will not swim, will not cross a chapel threshold, and no goblin has ever moved a millstone.
WASD move • double-tap W to run • mouse to look • SPACE jump / climb / swim up • C crouch / dive • E use doors, gates & chests • 1-8 pick a hotbar slot • Q cycle • I open the pack • LMB use the held item • RMB raise your shield • F ghost mode • TAB stats • G reroll the city
Three meters of fall is free; more is not. Water is escape and treasure and drowning, all three. Meters for LIFE, STAMINA and AIR appear only when they're in play.
Every city is assembled from these standard carved blocks - ports always mate, so every seed is one connected complex. Click a block to carve it; drag to orbit, wheel to zoom. You are looking through the rock, the way ghost mode does.
The city is locked in four tiers, and the tiers follow the depth: BRASS rules the gatehouse and the dwellings, IRON the works and the civic quarter, SILVER the undercity and the tombs, GOLD the deep. A key of a tier opens every door and every chest of that tier, and once found it is yours forever.
Brass keys stand free in the upper city. Every higher key waits inside a chest one tier below its own doors - iron keys in brass chests, silver in iron, gold in silver - so the way down is earned, chest by chest. The chests also carry the arms you'll need for where you're going: iron swords behind brass, the deep blade behind silver. The creatures keep the same ladder - rats and green goblins near the light, bats and war-ragged goblin warriors in the middle city, scorpions and grey goblin elders in the dark below. Bring the blade the depth demands.
And the charcoal on the walls is not all yours. Someone went down before you, counting the levels beside every great stone, and never climbed back. Follow the tallies past the last gold lock and you will find where they stopped - and what they carried, and the one rite that ends the game: fire from the deepest hearth, every millstone sealed behind you, and your own feet back in the light.
| charcoal | Sticks of it near the gates and in the kitchens. Hold LMB with one in hand and write on the rock - your marks keep, seed by seed. |
| flatbread | Baked for the road and never taken. LMB with one in hand eats it - a third of your life back. Wounds otherwise knit very slowly. |
| the brand | Found cold beside its keeper, far below. Kindled at the last hearth it burns bright, rolls any millstone from either side - and asks a hand that could have held a sword. |
| the blades | A flint knife by the gates (quick, shallow), the old sword a stretch in, iron swords in brass-tier chests, and the deep blade - blue steel, four wounds a swing - behind silver locks. |
| the shields | A plank shield near the light; an iron shield in the chests below - it blocks a wider arc and hardly tires you. Held up, nothing frontal lands. Nothing helps your back. |
| the four keys | Brass, iron, silver, gold - each opens every lock of its tier, each kept forever. The locked doors and the chests both answer them. |
| the chests | Strapped in the metal of their tier, standing in granaries, dungeons, tomb chambers, wine cellars - and one on the lake bed, for whoever can hold their breath. |
| the pests | Rats, bats, scorpions - each region's small hungry things, meaner with depth. Any blade ends them in a stroke or two. |
| the goblins | Three castes: green skulkers above, red-ragged warriors with bone cleavers below, and the grey elders of the deep - red-eyed, half again your trouble. Faster than your walk, slower than your sprint. |