Lean-authored · every move re-checked
The Descent
You go down carrying a torch that does not refill. Every verb spends one breath of it, the climb out included, and a relic is only yours once a proved exit banks it.
Where do you want it to run?
On the server default
Starts immediately, downloads nothing, and works with JavaScript turned off. Your moves, the dungeon and the result live on this server, and anyone with your session link can read them.
In your browser
The whole ruleset is compiled to WebAssembly and runs in this tab. Nothing about the run leaves your browser, and the tab checks today's public random beacon itself rather than taking this server's word for it. It costs a large one-time download and is slower to start.
Running in your browser now. Switch back to the server if it is slow.
Striking a light…
The rules, in one screen
- Get to the bottom, take the prize, climb back out. The dungeon is 4 floors deep and the prize lies on the lowest one. Nothing counts until you are standing on the surface again.
- The torch is the clock and it never refills. You have 30 breaths of light for the whole run, every button spends at least one, and there is no way to get more.
- The climb costs a breath a floor, and it is the only way out. So the light you have left is never the real number: subtract how deep you are. Standing on the bottom floor, 4 of your remaining breaths are already spoken for.
- Three of the 8 relics are keys. A locked way opens only if you are carrying its key, and a key is never hidden behind the door it opens, so every way down is openable if you go and fetch the key first.
- A guardian can be pressed or lunged at. Pressing costs two breaths and nothing else. Lunging does the same for one breath and permanently costs you one carrying slot for the rest of the run: cheap now, expensive at the bottom.
- You can carry 8, minus how deep you are, minus any lunge damage. That is 7 slots on floor 1 and 4 at the bottom, and the bottom needs three keys plus the prize, which is exactly 4. The dungeon gets stingier the further in you go, on purpose.
- Banking ends the run, and you only get one. You can bank only on the surface. Everything you carried out is yours; everything still down there is gone. There is no second attempt today.
Everyone gets the same dungeon today. It was drawn from a public random number published today by a public randomness service, so nobody, us included, could pick it in advance. There are 16 possible dungeons, every one of them checked beforehand to be beatable, and on any given day the best possible line spends between 24 and 30 of your 30 breaths. There is almost no slack.
Where your run lives. A run in progress is stored in this browser. By default you are identified by a browser cookie with no password and no recovery, so clearing your browser data loses it with no way back. If a recovery phrase is offered in the navigation, claiming one is what makes an identity survive that, and until you claim one it does not. A run you play to its end is submitted once to the day's board, which re-plays every move before it will rank it: a run that does not replay is shown as FAIL and never ranks.