Release Highlights
The features that define the game you can play today, at a glance.
Every layer buys time.
Highlights
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Dig to survive. Tunnel down through the layers of the world for the materials that keep everything above alive. Mining is the lifeline, not a side task.
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Hold the line against the Maw. A vast creature advances from the edge of the world and eats it one wall at a time. Build and reinforce to hold it back, knowing the deeper and longer you go, the hungrier it grows.
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Tend a living village. Above ground, a village of survivors grows. Feed them, shelter them, and they help you dig. They're fragile, and they're why you keep going.
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Craft tools and machines. Turn what you mine into better tools and working machines. Reach deeper, hold longer.
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A living sky. Weather rolls across the world on its own schedule, and it changes how you play the day. Rain soaks the digging, droughts squeeze your water and can drive villagers to leave (with caches worth diving for once the pond bed dries out), and the aurora lights the night with a reward for a village you've kept fed. Your villagers speak up about the weather and what it's doing to them.
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Lineage, not game-over. When a digger falls, the story keeps going. The next one takes up the shovel and digs on, past the graves of those before. The Line keeps their record — the ground each one moved, the rituals they fired, how long they lasted, and what took them — and you can walk out to any of their graves.
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Idle-friendly by design. Underroot keeps working while you're away. Come back for a long session or a quick check-in; progress carries on either way, and your run is saved.
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An endgame that reshapes the world. The Astrolabe ritual lets you remake the world, at a permanent cost. A decision for the deep endgame.
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Black Hollow. Wren knows a way into the village the Maw ate before yours. Dig a dead mine seam by seam for ore, relics, and the pages that say how the world got this way, pushing your luck for a richer haul and deciding when to climb out. It's playable from the title screen too, with no save behind it and nothing at stake but your score.
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Challenges for veterans. Opt-in Challenges, plus the design-your-own Artificer's Harrow, for players who want to push further.
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Play together on one machine. Player profiles give everyone in a household their own saves, cosmetics, and unlock codes. Pick who's playing, and your runs are yours.
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An interface that reads at a glance. The carved Talismans HUD keeps your tools, your village, and the Maw's countdown where your eyes already are. Prefer the old bars-and-panels look? It's a single toggle away.
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Texture in the depths and above. Discoveries waiting in the deep, a graveyard hill that remembers your dead, and milestone celebrations along the way.
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Free, in the browser or on PC. Play free in your browser or download for Windows and Linux. Name-your-own-price, no ads, no paywalls.
Keeping up with what changes
These highlights describe the game as it stands now. For update notes going forward, ContextOwl's native Changelog carries the running record of releases.