Wardens of the Deep

Manage your persistant dungeon. Then descent down in endless depths.
An endless RPG descent and a persistent base to manage, in one game. Dig your halls from above, then step into your champion and loot the deep in first person. Four peoples hold the Deep: the Dwarfs, the Goblins, the Dark elves and the Undead.Build it from above
You are the Warden, bound to a core of stone and fire. Your workers do the digging.
Dig and claim an 80×60 dungeon. Earth pays stone, claiming spends it: every corridor is a bill.

Paint rooms that feed each other: a forge, crypts, training halls, guard rooms, and a web of workshops from the Boneworks to the Stitchery. A dungeon is a supply chain with a body count.

Grow your heart through five tiers, from Dormant Core to Exalted Core, unlocked by how deep you have gone and paid for in materials.

Style the dungeon There are hundreds of ways to make the dungeon your own. Furniture, torches and places to work.

Light the dark. What lives around your halls waits at the edge of your torchlight until enough of it gathers to step in.

Leave someone clever at home. Skeletons are loyal, tireless and exactly as clever as they look. Beat a Wraith or a Vampire Thrall in the deep and you can raise one of your own to keep your halls; your commissions, workshops and studies carry on while you are below.

Your Host has opinions. Every creature you raise has a name, a temper and a running monologue. "First blood. Finally. I was beginning to think I was ornamental."
Inhabit anything
One keypress and the camera dives from above straight into your champion's eyes. No loading screen, no cut.
Inhabit any body you own, a worker, a skeleton or your champion, and fight in first person: directional cuts, shield blocks and parries.

Hold to empower. Wind a spell up, then push it into an overcharge. The longer you hold, the likelier it goes wrong: a fizzle, or the whole thing in your face.

Command your squad from inside a skeleton's skull, then climb out and into the next one.

And the Gravesinger can Possess even an enemy: wear its claws, cast its spells, turn it on its kin.
Loot worth going down for
Rarities, unidentified finds, sockets, runes, runewords and class sets. Most of it is "dug out of the deep and only lightly cursed."

Forge it yourself in six hands-on games, or let your champion work the bench. Patterned gear is forge-only.

Every body in your Host wears the same eleven slots as your champion. Yes, the skeleton can have your best helm.
Hardcore, with a backup plan
"Your champion has fallen, and the fallen do not return." Play solo and that is the rule, on every floor. Its gear stays where it fell, in a glowing sack that waits for you: choose a new champion and dare that floor to win it back.
Or keep a veteran in reserve: the Sarcophagus Hall keeps up to two champions asleep in stone, rank, talents and gear intact. A fallen creature of your Host stays dead too, but its kit comes home to your bag.A Deep with no bottom
There is always a floor below. Authored floors give way to an endless deep of carved ruins, sunken chapels, fungal groves and abyss chasms, and every floor is harder than the last.

Every creature rolls its own temper. Wound one and it may fly into a rage, run for its friends, slip into the dark, or kneel and beg. Your Host won't cut down a kneeling beggar. You might.

Bind creature crystals and call your Host down from home: four walk beside you on any deep floor.

Phased bosses, rival Wardens with hearts of their own to break, descent pacts that curse the stairs for better spoils, and sieges back home with sappers tunnelling for your heart.
Delve together
Up to four Wardens, one shared delve, eight souls in all. Your champion re-forms at the stair; the fighters you bring from home do not, and their kit goes down with them. Loot is personal by default; whoever opens the game can switch to free-for-all, round robin or need/greed. Your home dungeon never enters a session.Early Access
The Undead are the first to open, with three champions: the Hollow Knight, the Pale Lich and the Gravesinger. The Dwarfs, the Dark Elves and the Goblins already walk the deep as your enemies. Each is planned to follow as a playable Warden during Early Access, with three champions, rooms and creatures of their own.

"You know enough to be dangerous, Warden. Dig. Claim. Descend. I shall be watching." — the Dungeon Spirit

For fans of Dungeon Keeper and Diablo II. This time, the dungeon stays.