Story
The way out is down
You wake up underground holding somebody else's torch. There are ninety seconds of light in it, one way out, and no reason given.
What you get told
Everything anyone explains to you
This is all of it. Nobody comes back to fill in the rest.
Oh good — you're awake. The torch found you. Don't ask what happened to its last owner.
The arrangement is simple: the light is leaving, and you should too.
The way out is down. Nobody said the cave was reasonable.
This little one is for practice. Nothing in here bites. Almost certainly.
The torch
Somebody else's light
It's your clock and your map at once, and it's the only light down here. As it burns down the walls close in, the corridor you're standing in stops being visible, and you start moving faster. Up to three times your walking speed, whether you want to or not. That's not a power-up. It's panic, and it'll run you straight past the turning you needed.
Torches left burning by whoever came before are worth twelve seconds each. The game has one line about where they came from, and it doesn't dwell on it:
Someone left a torch burning, just ahead. Walk over it and take the flame — they've stopped needing it.
Who else is down there
You're not the first
Two things live in the dark, and they want opposite things from your light. A bright torch drives hunters off. The Lost it brings closer, and they wear your own shape with the colour drained out of it, crying out in a voice that isn't yours.
Nobody explains them either. The shape does that on its own, and it tells you the one thing about this cave anybody ever confirms: somebody came down here before you did, and they're still here.
Seven moods
The cave has opinions
Every level draws a mood, and the deeper ones draw from a wider pool, so a plain cave gets rarer the further down you go. Each one is named on your HUD, with a single line, before you take a step. These are those lines.
Infested
Something down here is awake.
Warren
The corridors loop back on themselves. Watch your own prints.
Draughty
A cold wind is eating your torch — but you can hear the way out.
Lodestone
The rock pulls at your compass. Hold it and watch it settle.
Sparse
Few torches were left burning here.
Deep
This one goes a long way down.
The end
There isn't one
The maze grows, the exit gets further away, dead ends start opening into loops, and the creatures keep coming. There's no level cap and no final cave. Just how far down you got, and how fast you moved once you were there.
Nobody has found the bottom, because there isn't one.