The darker it gets, the faster you run

You wake up underground holding somebody else's torch. There are ninety seconds of light in it, one
way out, and no reason given. The way out is down.

Cave Escape is a top-down maze-escape game about a light that is always leaving. Every level
is generated fresh, timed to the hundredth of a second, and scored — and the further you go, the
less the cave behaves.

The torch is the whole game

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 — whether you want to or not. That is not a power, it's panic, and it will run you straight past the turning you needed.
Torches left burning by whoever came before add twelve seconds each. You will hear one before you
see it.

Nothing down here is safe in both directions

• Hunters are repelled by a bright torch. They stalk you at less than your speed — you can
  always walk away — then stop dead, flare their eyes, screech, and pounce. The warning is real: move
  during it and the lunge misses.
  
• The Lost are drawn to a bright torch. They wear your own shape, drained of colour, and
  they cry out in a voice that is not yours. Something came down here before you did.

So a full torch keeps the hunters off and brings the Lost. A dying one loses the Lost and commits
the hunters — while you are already running at three times your own speed. Neither state is
safe. There is no setting on the torch that solves the cave.

One verb, and it costs light

Hold the compass and it points the way out. It also burns your torch three times faster, charges
you the moment you press it, and the deeper you are the more it lies — sweeping off true rather
than pointing, so it has to be watched to be read. Watching is what you are paying for.

Every cave is a different cave

The further you fall, the moodier the caves get... Face modifiers such as:

• Infested
  
• Warren
  
• Draughty
  
• Lodestone
  
• Sparse
  
• Deep

There is no bottom

The maze grows, the exit moves further away, the dead ends open into loops, and the creatures keep
coming. Your best time on every level is kept, and the Descent leaderboard ranks the whole
world by how far down you got and how fast you moved once you were there.

Nobody has found the bottom, because there isn't one.

Features

• A cave that regrows every run — no two descents are the same maze
  
• Ninety seconds of light, and everything you do spends it
  
• Two creatures that want opposite things from your torch
  
• Seven cave moods that change what a level is, not just how big it is
  
• A global leaderboard, and a personal best on every level you have ever escaped
  
• 22 achievements
  
• Full controller support, and it runs at the Steam Deck's native resolution