Deeper

About Deeper

Deeper is a bite-sized roguelike by Hollow Codex Works, played in the browser on itch.io. The dungeon is drawn in text characters in the classic style: you are the @, walls are #, floors are dots and the stairs down are a >. You move one square at a time, attack by walking into a monster, pick up potions, better weapons and gold, and look for the stairs.

The Daily Run is built from the date. The game hashes the word DEEPER and the day's date into a seed, so everyone who plays on the same calendar date gets the same dungeon, with the same rooms, monsters and items in the same places. A new one appears at midnight. When you die, a share line gives the date, the deepest floor you reached, your kills and gold, and a strip of squares for the floors.

There are seven monster types, from rats and goblins through skeletons, orcs and wraiths to trolls and demons, and they get tougher further down; the description warns that demons live from floor 7. Floors persist, so you can climb back up the stairs to escape a bad fight and the level is as you left it. Endless mode gives a fresh random dungeon each time for practice.

It plays with arrow keys or WASD on a desktop, and by swiping, tapping or an on-screen d-pad on a phone, in portrait or landscape. The game is marked as in development; version 0.2 added sound and mobile support in July 2026.

How to play Deeper

1. Open the itch.io page, press Run game and choose Daily Run.
2. Move with the arrow keys or WASD, or swipe and tap on a phone.
3. Walk into a monster to attack it; step on potions, weapons (shown as /) and gold ($) to pick them up.
4. Find the > to go down a floor; use < to retreat upstairs if you are badly hurt.
5. When you die, share the result line with your floor, kills and gold.

Screenshots

Tips

• Retreating upstairs is always possible and floors keep their state, so back off to fight a strong monster one step at a time.
• Pick up every weapon you see early: attack power decides how fast the later trolls and demons fall.
• Save potions for deeper floors rather than drinking them on the first scratch.
• The daily dungeon is the same if you replay it the same day, so a second run can use what you learned of its layout.

Questions