Two empty suits of the gaolers' armour coming at you through a torch-lit room, one with a falchion and a round red shield, a heavier one with a maul

Oubliette

A first-person crawl up out of the pit the village throws its dead into. In the making: Alpha 3.

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Under the Warden's prison is an oubliette, and the village sends its dead down it. Down there they are forgotten, and the longer they stay forgotten the more they fade, until they can't lift a thing or remember their own names.

You came down whole. The Warden has never been able to forget you.

So you climb. Fire in one hand, water in the other, through rooms the pit shifts around every time you fall. The faded know the way up, and they hold on to what they lost. You can carry it back to them.

The Guard, the gaolers' captain in blackened armour, with a headsman's sword and a tower shield
The Guard waits at the top of the Pit.
Aldo, a faded lamplighter with no arms left, hovering in his cell
The forgotten can't lift a thing. They can still talk.
A brazier burning on a raised stone dais in a dark room
Fire is the only light down here.
A long room ringed with small lit braziers
Light every lamp, and the room gives something back.
A small flask resting on a pedestal in a narrow room
Each floor keeps one thing worth taking with you.
A ladder against the wall of a dim room
The rooms shift every time you fall. The ladder is always somewhere.
A torch-lit hall with a table, banners and a brazier
What the prison left behind.
The inventory: equipment, a potion, your stats and a map of the floor
What you carry, and the floor as far as you've seen it.
The title screen over a torch-lit hall
The pit, waiting.
1 / 9

The Warden's ledger

He keeps the names of everyone who went down. Four lines have lost theirs.

  1. 311?
  2. 312?
  3. 313?
  4. 314?

Playing

The Alpha 3 playtest has the first two layers, the Pit and the Cistern. It's for friends for now, behind a password. It runs in the browser on a computer with a keyboard and mouse. Click the game to take the mouse; Esc gives it back.

WASD
Walk
Mouse
Look
Left mouse
Fire
Right mouse
Water
E
Use, talk, take
Q
Drink a potion
Tab
What you carry
Esc
Pause

When you've played, tell us what felt good, what felt bad and where you got stuck. Screenshots help. So do two numbers: the seed at the top right during a run, and the build in the corner of the title screen. With those we can walk the same floors you did.

Play