Deep Rise

Climb out of the dark.

A thousand years ago, the world above ended. The few who survived fled underground and built a society in the dark. None of us has seen the surface. None of our parents did. None of theirs.

Then the deep shook. A roar from far above, deeper than any thunder. The ceilings we had trusted for a thousand years came down to find us. When the dust settled, there were six of us left.

The same shaking that dropped our city cracked the old gates open. For the first time in memory, the road up is there to take.

Deeprise is an underground colony survival game about six people trying to reach a light no one alive has seen. Every run is one push up through a maze of tunnels knotted by collapse and time. Reach the gate, find the keys, and open the next zone above. Die in the dark, and your colony is one fewer.

Six survivors.

The last of us are not interchangeable. Two are strong, built to carry and to break. Two are clever, hard to corner, harder to catch. Two are more machine than flesh, fitted with worn plates and tireless hands.

• The Breaker can carry the heaviest loads, and the heaviest hits. Strong arms, strong stomach, one direct answer to most problems.

• The Welded is half human, half salvaged machine. Tireless, armored, and at home in the deepest dark, though they cannot carry a sleeping body home.

• The Tinker is quick, sharp-minded, and the cleverest of us. Where the Breaker takes a hit and the Welded shrugs one off, the Tinker steps aside.

The deep is not what it was.

The beasts in the maze were ordinary animals once, only rats and dogs and crawling things. Something took them. It bolted plates to their backs and bred them in the black, and fed them on whatever the dark provides. What came out is not what went in.

The Deep Ledger is the book dawnseekers carry into the maze and copy by hand as they go, every tunnel walked, every beast learned, every vein of salt found. What the Ledger holds, the colony keeps forever.

But the Ledger only comes back if its dawnseeker does. Those who die in the dark die with their pages. Whatever they learned, the colony loses with them.

A colony to feed. A climb to plan.

Between every run, the outpost waits. Fungal farms and water reclaimers keep the colony alive. Workshops, smithies, and med bays let you outfit the next runner. Stockpile salt, stalkwood, palecap, and the dead circuitry pried from the walls. Spend it on weapons, armor, research, and the salt it takes to wake a sleeper.

Some of us were left in cold glass, sealed and breathing slow. With the right hands and enough bittersalt, we can wake them. Every sleeper you carry home is one more pair of hands for the climb.

The road up is a faith.

There is nothing left below us now. The deep gave us all it had. To stay is to starve in the black. So we climb, toward a light the old stories promised and no living person has ever seen.

Up is not a direction to us anymore. It is the only one we have left.