Planned Release Date: Oct 8, 2026

About This Game

Nine Lives Deep is a 2D top-down action roguelike about cats exploring a mysterious world at night. Every run is a fresh layout: fight through alleys, sewers, caves, and city streets, tearing enemies apart with three distinct weapon families, stacking passive upgrades into a build that's genuinely yours, and clawing your way toward the thing waiting at the end.

This isn't a deckbuilder. There are no cards, no turns, just fast, readable, hands-on combat: claws, yarn, and fish-bone throws, each with their own combo finishers, evolving as you find new gear mid-run.

Nine lives, spent wisely. Every death costs a life. Run out, and the expedition ends, but what you've unlocked stays unlocked. Cats found in secret rooms or earned by beating a boss carry over to your next attempt, each with a completely different playstyle.

Key Features

• 12 playable cats, each with unique stats, a signature special ability, and its own look, from Whiskers, the balanced backyard tabby you start with, to Chonkers, who fights with mass instead of speed, to Shadow, a fragile hit-and-run specialist who's gone before you blink.

• weapon families (Claw / Yarn / Fish) you find and swap between mid-run, each with melee, control, and ranged flavor, combo finishers, and their own hand-animated attack visuals, then evolve each one into one of 4 distinct upgrade paths (bleed, lifesteal, a berserk frenzy, a sweeping AOE, and more) as you push into the run's toughest stretch.

• 158 passive, dodge, and special upgrades that stack and layer into real build diversity, multiple differently-flavored upgrades can feed the same underlying effect, so a build deepens the more you find of what it already wants.

• 32 enemy types across four distinct biomes (park, sewer, cave, city each tougher than the last), each demanding a different approach.

• 5 bosses, including a true final boss with a mid-fight escalation none of the others have, the fight changes under you, not just its health bar.

• Procedurally generated levels, every run and room layout, enemy placement, secret rooms, and locked vaults are never the same twice.

• 30 achievements tracking everything from your first kill to a sub-20-minute clear.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

Some 2D artwork in Nine Lives Deep including select UI elements, item icons, and environment backgrounds was created with the help of generative AI image tools during development. All such content is static and fixed at the time the game ships; nothing is generated live during gameplay, and the game does not connect to any AI service while you play.