Planned Release Date: Nov 16, 2026

About This Game

Every pixel is alive

Cave Alchemist is a falling-sand roguelite. Every grain of sand, drop of water and lick of flame is simulated, so the caves react to everything you do. Lava hardens into rock when water hits it. Acid dissolves stone. Oil floats on water and burns from end to end. Frost bolts freeze a pond solid. Gunpowder seams and pockets of swamp gas are waiting for one stray spark.

Wooden crates and chunks of rock are real physical objects. Kick a crate down a slope, float one across a lake, blow a pile of them sky-high, or watch the ceiling of a crater break off and come crashing down.

You are a very small wizard cat

Armed with a wand held firmly in your mouth, you descend through six biomes: the Mines, the Coal Pits, the Frozen Depths, the Overgrown Jungle, the Vault and the Inferno. Every level is generated fresh, with new tunnels, hidden pools of lava and water, and creatures that hop, fly, spit acid, cast spells or burrow through the rock. Every fifth level, something much bigger guards the way down.

Build your own wands

Wands fire their spells like a deck of cards, left to right. Mix projectiles, jets, modifiers and multicasts to make something devastating, or something hilarious:

• Projectiles: Spark Bolt, Bomb, Fireball, Frost Bolt, Thunderbolt, Black Hole, Chainsaw and more

• Jets: spray water, oil, acid, lava, sand or gunpowder straight into the world

• Modifiers: Homing, Bounce, Piercing Shot, Burning Trail, Explosive, Gravity and more

• Multicasts: Double, Triple, Quadruple and Scatter Cast pull in the next spells and fire them together

Pair a burning trail with a pool of oil, flood a spitter's ledge, dig an escape tunnel straight down, or drop lava on your problems. The cave doesn't care how you solve it.

Rest in the Sanctum

Between levels you reach the Sanctum: heal up, refill your spells, spend your gold on new wands and spells, and choose one of the perks on offer. Perks stack and combine, from vampire fangs to an explosion-proof hide.

Features

• Pixel-level physics: powders, liquids, gases and fire, with reactions between them

• Physical crates and falling rock that burn, float, break apart and crush things

• Fully destructible, procedurally generated caves across six biomes

• 45 spells and a drag-and-drop wand editor

• 29 perks, a shop and a boss every five levels

• Flasks of strange liquids to pour, drink or throw

• Material brush: paint sand, water, lava and more straight into the world, just to see what happens

• Full controller support, including wand editing

• Your run is saved automatically, so you can quit and continue later

• 100 Steam achievements, each with its own hand-drawn cat icon

• Steam Cloud saves for your lifetime stats and achievement progress

AI Generated Content Disclosure

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

Much of Cave Alchemist’s code and pixel art was created with an AI coding assistant (Claude), directed and reviewed by the developer. Some optional Steam profile backgrounds were made with Midjourney/photoshop. The game doesn’t generate anything with AI while you play.