echodepths

A roguelite played in total darkness

To see
is to be seen.

You are a blind cave salamander a kilometer under the earth. Tap, and a ring of sound paints the cavern in fading bioluminescent lines: the ledge above, the tunnel splitting left, the shape of something large that just turned toward the noise. Every ping buys you vision and sells your position.

play in browser google play headphones · one thumb · 5 to 15 minute runs

How it plays

Three ways to make noise. One way to stay alive.

01 · tap

click

Three meters of wall, faintly, for two seconds. Cheap. Quiet. Barely enough.

02 · hold

chirp

Eight meters, clearly. The map you actually need, and the sound that wakes a bristlemaw two tunnels over.

03 · hold longer

shout

The whole chamber, for six seconds. It echoes. Everything hears it. The Warden gets faster, permanently.

Then the walls fade, bright to dim to nothing, and you swim through what you remember, one thumb on the glass, a soft buzz when you graze a surface. Predators hunt by hearing. Drift silently, throw a pebble somewhere else, and evolve new senses between runs.

What it looks like

Six frames from the dark.

Title screen: a lamp hangs in a cave and a ring of sound has lit the walls around it, above the word echodepths and four menu buttons
the title, live
A chirp has revealed the cave walls around the salamander in cyan lines
a chirp
A shout has lit the whole chamber; an ember ring around the salamander shows how loud you were
a shout, and its noise
The throat chamber, a winding tunnel revealed by a shout
the throat
The death screen: the sonar art of the run, the path you swam and every sound you made, above the run's numbers
sonar art of a run
The grotto: a drawn cave cross-section with three tunnel branches and six evolution cards
the grotto
EchoDepths launcher icon: a lamp with three rings of sound leaving it, cyan on deep navy

The icon is the first screen: a lamp in the dark, and the ring of sound leaving it.

Eyes closed mode

This is not an accessibility toggle bolted on at the end. Sound and touch are the canonical game. Sighted players are the ones adapting.

  • spatial audioPredator clicks, lure hums, the downdraft of the exit: every sound is panned and attenuated by where it actually is. Drips are pitched to the size of the room.
  • haptic languageWall brush, predator bearing, current, damage: a designed vocabulary with amplitude control on devices that support it, and a calibration slider on the rest.
  • spoken cuesIn Eyes Closed mode, predator bearings are spoken through the screen reader: “clicks, ahead-left, close.” Menus are real buttons, navigable with TalkBack.
  • no flashingNothing on screen ever flashes above threshold. The brightest thing in the game is a line.

The grotto

Evolve senses, not stats.

Death is permanent for the run. You keep otoliths, ear stones, and spend them between dives. Every evolution changes how the cave feels, and you can long-press to feel one before you buy it.

Sense

lateral linefeel moving creatures within 8 m as bearing pulses.
heat pitspredators within 6 m glow faint red. no ping required.

Body

fat reservesone extra hit before the dark keeps you.
slick skinwall brushes make no noise. you glide farther.

Voice

vocal sacyour tap becomes a whisper: a third of the noise.
deep lungsshouts stop echoing so long.

The pledge

No ads. No energy timers. No accounts.

EchoDepths runs entirely offline and collects nothing. The app does not even ask for internet permission. Your save lives on your phone. The daily descent uses the date as its seed, so everyone dives the same cave.

rootwater shallows through the warden's throat, three predator behaviours, six evolutions, eyes closed mode, a daily descent kept on your phone. no leaderboard, no unlock, nothing to buy.

free1.0.1 · android 8 and up · under a megabyte