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 are told
Everything anyone explains to you
This is the whole 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 is your clock and your map at once, and it is the only light down here. As it burns down the walls close in, the corridor you are standing in stops being visible, and you start moving faster — up to three times your walking speed, whether you want to or not. That is not a power. That is panic, and it will run you straight past the turning you needed.
Torches left burning by whoever came before add twelve seconds each. The game has one line about where they came from, and it does not enlarge 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 are not the first
Two things live in the dark, and they want opposite things from your light. Hunters are driven off by a bright torch. The Lost are drawn to one — and they wear your own shape, drained of colour, crying out in a voice that is not yours.
Nobody explains them either. The silhouette does that, and it says the only thing about this cave that anyone ever confirms: somebody came down here before you did, and they are still here.
Seven moods
The cave has opinions
Every level draws a mood, and deeper levels draw from a wider pool — so a plain cave gets rarer the further you fall. 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 moves further away, the dead ends open into loops, and the creatures keep coming. There is no level ceiling and no final cave — only how far down you got, and how fast you moved once you were there.
Nobody has found the bottom, because there isn't one.