A gremlin stole the royal spellbook, tore out every page, and scattered them through the dungeon under the castle. The king went down alone to get it back. He has not come up. You are the party that follows him.

King's Descent is a party-based dungeon crawler in the style of Kevin Kenney's 1980's classic Tunnels of Doom: first-person corridors, top-down rooms, a map you have to find, and turn-based fights you have to think about. Name up to four adventurers, choose a fighter, a wizard or a rogue for each, pick a difficulty, and go down. Ten floors stand between you and the king, every one of them built fresh for each descent. Reach him and he joins the climb back out.

There are four endings, from the kingdom getting both its king and its spellbook back to the party coming home with nothing but its lives. A party that dies stays dead, and the next one starts a new dungeon.

What is down there

• Over a hundred kinds of monster, dealt deeper as you descend, each with its own attacks and its own way of reaching you.

• Fifty-one magic items: scrolls, wands, potions, and words of power, most of them unidentified until somebody dares to use one.

• Swords, bows, armor and shields, and in-dungeon stores where a shopkeeper named Sixpence sells and remembers you.

• Traps, locked chests, a Bath of Fates that helps or harms on a chance, and monsters that can sometimes be bribed instead of fought.

• A party that levels, learns spells, runs low on arrows and gold, and has to decide when to fight and when to flee.

How it plays

• Turn-based combat where position, reach and who acts first all matter.

• Three difficulties, from Newcomer to Hardest, that change what the party starts with and what the dungeon deals.

• 8-bit pixel art and chiptune sound, made for this game.

• Play with mouse, keyboard or touch.

• The game saves as you play. Continue where you left off, or start a new descent.

• No account, no network, nothing to install beyond the game.

Go down. Find the map. Get the king and his book. Come back up.