Why Early Access?

“I'm one person making this, and I know what I want it to be. The game is built and playable from start to finish, and the roadmap's set. What I can't do on my own is tell whether it all feels right to play. I've been staring at it too long to know if the difficulty is fair, if a class still feels good ten floors in, or whether you can see a boss's attack coming the first time you fight it instead of the third.

That's what Early Access is for. I'm not short of ideas. What I need is the stuff that only turns up when someone who isn't me plays it.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“Somewhere around 3 to 6 months. It depends on what players turn up once they're actually playing it, so I'd rather give a range than pretend I know the date.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“Mostly more content and more tuning. The systems are built, so what's left is filling them out and getting the balance right.

What I plan to add:
- More spells and abilities for every class. All 8 classes are in, each with its own kit and way of playing, and one of them has to be earned.
- More items, including a new tier of base items and Epic and Legendary items.
- More monsters, and new art and animations for the monsters and bosses already in.
- More bosses. There are 7 in at the moment, each with its own abilities rather than the same fight with bigger numbers.
- More hand-crafted rooms mixed in among the procedurally generated ones, plus keys and locked rooms.
- Charms.
- Codex lore and environment entries.
- Ongoing art, animation, and audio passes, and more Steam achievements.
- More gameplay, UI, and accessibility options.

On accessibility specifically: the game is turn-based, so nothing ever needs a quick reaction, and no gameplay information is audio-only. It all shows up in the log or on screen. Every key and controller button can be rebound, you can play with just the mouse, and there are colour palettes and scaling options if the defaults are hard to read. If something is stopping you from playing, post about it. I'll prioritize accessibility requests ahead of most other things on the list.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“Stable and playable from the first floor to the ending.

It's got procedurally generated floors with hand-crafted rooms and boss arenas, full inventory and equipment with rarity and magic properties, and altars where you spend Faith to bless your gear. There are eight classes that each play differently, several with a resource all their own, a skills and spells book with ranks and passives, a flask that refills as you fight, throwable vials, status effects, monster affixes, multi-tile bosses, and a bestiary that changes as you go deeper. There's also a merchant who buys and sells, and special rooms to find on the way down.

A Codex fills in as you find things and keeps a record of everything you've killed and everything that's killed you, with stats for every class. Every finished run saves its full build, from your stats and gear to every ability and its rank.

Your best runs also go up on the Steam leaderboards, overall and per class, for both the main game and endless mode, and there's a board for the longest win streak too. Every run entry carries its full build, so you can open anyone's run and see how they got there.

There's auto-explore and auto-travel, a tutorial, first-time tips for each screen, Steam achievements, and Save and Exit, so you can stop mid-run and pick it up later.

Keyboard, mouse, and controller all work, including Steam Deck. Everything's rebindable, your progress is backed up automatically and syncs through Steam Cloud, and there are accessibility toggles, swappable colour palettes, and optional retro screen filters. You can also switch between classic ASCII and hand-drawn tiles whenever you like.

There's a real ending to reach, and I think it lands better if you don't know what's coming. Reaching it locks your score in, and if you'd rather not stop there, you can take the same character on into endless mode, which has new environments and a high score board of its own.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

“I plan to raise the base price as it leaves Early Access, so buying during Early Access means getting in at a lower price. Either way, you won't pay again for the full version.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“The Steam forums are the main place. I'm one person, so I can read basically everything that gets posted, and I'd much rather hear that a boss is unfair or a class is boring than not hear it.

Worth being straight about it though: feedback mostly shapes the order things get built in and how they're tuned, not what the game is. I know what I'm making. But difficulty, balance, and how things actually feel to play are the parts I can't get right on my own, so that's the feedback I need most.”