Cavern Crawler
Posted July 5, 2025. Updated July 8, 2025. Played 7247 times for a total of 9797 hours.
description
short game where you crawl through caverns endlessly and get better each time
NOTE:
-
as of writing this description, this is a prototype made in a few days (and also my first incremental game, how neat!) so the balancing and general gameplay is most likely shoddy at best, sorry :/
-
there is technically no end to the game, but you'll see all the content in ~30-45 minutes.
newest comments
One of my favourite galaxy games, it would be better if there were like cave sounds and sound effects when you kill a monster and other qol stuff
@Maplefrog7 It looks like you get an additional prestige point every 5 depths.
What should I do after clicking 'delve into the caverns'? No response for clicking any button.
This is good
I love this!
top comments
Congrats on making your first game!
I like that the core game loop is more abstracted than just "buy upgrade, get more points." It rewards you for paying attention to why your run is ending early.
Probably the visuals of your character moving and the delve button could have been on screen at all times, so that you can browse upgrades without missing out on progress, or feeling the need to click back and forth so much.
Maybe the automation upgrade could have been enabled by default after prestiging? Eliminating a chore in a game always feels super rewarding, turning it back on, frustrating.
It seems you only get one prestige point even if you go farther than floor 6? That's a little bit of a feel-bad if you took the time to do a longer run.
Personally, if prestiging doesn't give new mechanics or fundamentally change the game loop somehow, I tend to lose interest.
This is certainly an enjoyable foundation, and I could see it going a couple of different satisfying ways. Bravo, keep making things!
developer response: thanks for the feedback!
i'm definitely in a place to admit a lot of the mechanics people (like you) have been taking note of were definitely less thought out than i would have liked, alongside being biased from the fact i had a very particular mindset in mind when playtesting this that wasn't shared by a lot of people. Prestiges especially weren't exactly well planned. I'll note that you do gain more prestige points if you go further down, but the floor requirement scales rather quickly. I have a lot in mind for potentially fixing combat and/or prestiges, but you'll have to see in the coming days how that turns out. Anyway, thanks again for your feedback, it's very much appreciated!
Kinda sucks that going past level 6 doesn't give you more than one prestige points.
I find myself wanting more of this... A lot more of this...
Overall very good but I'm trying to get 2 prestige points in one prestige. Is that even possible?
developer response: thanks! i dont remember if it's actually possible, but if it is, it's probably not worth trying to get to it until i get around to reworking the requirements and such (+2 prestige points requires getting past floor 10.)
Fun Fact: It IS possible to reach Floor 10, and therefore Prestige lv 2. It takes all purchases of the Basic Upgrades and all upgrades in the Combat tab, save for Enhance Sword and Armor, which only need 7 upgrades a piece. However, it takes tens of thousands of research points and definitely isn't worth it unless you run it as an idle game in the background.