Depths of Death by Philocode

Dive into Hades' challenges
A brave hero returns, only to find his princess stolen by Hades. Challenge Hades and fight through his Depths of Death in a fast-paced survivors-like. In the end, you will be reuninted with your princess - one way or another.
I would love to hear about your times and scores in the comments!
Controls
- Move: W/A/S/D
- Block: Right Mouse
- Dash: Shift
- Pause: Escape
Screenshots



Changelog:
- 08.04.2025: Fix input for WebGL
| Link | https://gitlab.com/ppeess/ld57-depths |
| Link | https://ppeess.itch.io/depths-of-death |
| Link | https://ppeess.itch.io/depths-of-death |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/depths-of-death |
Ratings
| Overall | 399th | 3.615⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 183th | 3.769⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 716th | 2.769⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 754th | 2.885⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 667th | 3.096⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 538th | 2.596⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 666th | 3.173⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 25🗳️ | 30🗨️ |
By the 5 minute mark I was carving those Minotaurs up!!! I really like the particle effects in this, they are very tasty :ok_hand:
Sounds effects were nice and punchy, the rat scurrying one was a little loud and shrill but other than that it was great.
Nice gameplay loop, and appreciated the level variety too. I managed to get through it without the block or dash buttons. All in all a solid game, you should be very happy :D
Where I would call for improvement is level variety and and some music and variety on attack sound effect.
Well done!
A nice little game, good work!
The fact that you can pick "negative upgrades" to gain money is a nice touch. They don't seem really worth it though =)
The dashing ability was kind of useless to me. Maybe in the future if you add some "barrage" attacks, it might be useful, otherwise you'd just dodge them by moving. Also, it felt like you couldn't dash through some projectiles?
Movement speed seems to be very important in this kind of game. I think reducing the base speed and adding some movement upgrades could make it a bit more challenging (and would also force the player to rely on dashing).
The only bug that I noticed is that the rats seem to be "backwards" when the spawn to the right of the character and they stay that way when moving towards me. At least that's what I experienced on my system (using the downloaded version from Itch).
I like the various choices in the shop with *plus* and *minus* being offered and rerolls as icing on the cake.
My biggest issue is how burning and thunder work which are so random and hard to use effectively. I ended up avoiding any fire thinking they might hurt me.