Deckdelve

A card in one hand, a torch in the other.

They say you woke at the wood's edge with a notched blade and a fistful of cards, and no one in the village knew your name.

Deckdelve is a roguelike in a terminal. You walk a wild country and go down into the places under it, one step at a time, and every fight turns into a hand of cards. The cards are what you carry: a sword gives you its strikes and guards, a shield its block, a pair of boots a kick. Find a better blade and your deck changes with it.

Seven lords keep seven seals at the bottom of seven halls. Break every seal, go down to what sleeps under the last of them, and come back up alive. The village keeps its fires lit, but its beds are not free; the tavern sells word of places you have not found; and the dead do not come back.

Before you play

• It needs a keyboard. Every move and every card is a key, so it plays in a browser on a computer, not on a phone or a tablet.
• Click the game to give it your keys. While the page around it has the keys, arrows scroll the page instead.
• Fullscreen gives it room. It needs at least 100 columns by 30 rows, about a 900 by 560 window; the button in the corner is the easy way.
• Esc or z. Both go back, leave or close. In fullscreen the browser keeps Esc for itself, so use z there.
• Your run is saved in this browser, on this site. Closing the tab saves it and quits, just as quitting does, and c on the title continues it. A fight still open when the tab closes is fled, and you pay the blow for running. A private window, or clearing the site's data, loses the run.
• Tested in Edge and Firefox. Chrome shares Edge's engine and should match it. Safari is untested.

Keys, in brief

• h j k l or the arrows to move, y u b n for the diagonals. Hold shift to run.
• o explores as far as is safe, t travels to a place you know.
• In a fight, 1 to 5 play a card, space ends the turn, f flees.
• i, p and d open your gear, your stats and your deck.
• ? lists every key and everything on the map.
• q saves and quits.