Depths of Providence

Depths of Providence is a solo project by Ryan Lutz, released on Steam in August 2026. Like the Ancient Cave in Lufia II, every run starts your four-hero party on floor 1 at level 1. Battles are turn-based, with classes, spells, elemental affinities and eleven equipment slots, and the deeper floors are deliberately harsh, with instant-death gazes, petrification and attacks that hit the whole party.

In the main mode, red chests hold gear for the current run only, while blue chests hold rare named equipment you can bank forever if you escape alive. A single Providence chest found somewhere between floors 15 and 24 lets you leave from anywhere with everything you carry, so each run is a choice between cashing out and pushing on. A mini-boss guards every tenth floor, and floor 100 holds the final boss.

The daily run is the mode the developer says he built the game for. Everyone faces the same procedurally generated cave that day: the same enemy formations, chest contents, skill drops and blue chest items. Nothing from your vault comes with you, so you start with no skills and nothing banked. The developer tuned it to be hard, expecting most players to fall somewhere in the twenties, and a daily leaderboard ranks how deep each player gets. Every submitted run is checked by replaying it on the server, so the board stays fair. A patch that changes the game files closes the day's board to new runs.

It suits JRPG players who find most of the genre too easy and want a skill test they can compare with others every day. It can be played in 8-bit or 16-bit style.