About
Deep Descent is a 2D side-scrolling extraction survival game. You live aboard a research vessel and dive down a shaft to a failing underwater station. The countdown starts when you deploy, and if it runs out before you are back aboard, the station explodes.
The clock is not the whole story. Your tank is smaller than the countdown, so air is what you actually manage, along with how loud you are. Noise and time spent deep draw sharks, and several kinds of shark behave differently. Octopuses can grab you too. Boosting your thruster is the loudest thing you can do, so speed has a price.
What you carry matters as well. Every kilogram slows you down, so you choose what to haul back. Loot that makes it to the vessel pays for permanent upgrades, and the next dive starts from there.
What is in it
- A countdown and a smaller air tank, so you are always watching two clocks
- Noise draws sharks, and boosting is the loudest thing you can do
- Carry weight slows you down, so every item is a choice
- Upgrades bought with what you bring back to the research vessel
- Watch AI mode: an expert pilot plays a dive while you watch
- Play with keyboard and mouse, or an Xbox or DualSense controller
Screenshots
How far along
Playable build, 63 out of 100, ranked 7 of 17 on the progress ranking.
A Windows build plays across several sites with a crew, trophies and a much fuller sea, and automated runs now play both routes from start to finish without stalls, while art quality, music and a hands-on pass by a person still lag the code.
- Playable7/10
A 45 minute headless Watch AI run on the second route finished with 84 dives home, 1 lost, 0 errors and 0 stalls, and both routes now play from their starting points to the end of a run, though much of the newest work has not yet been played by a person.
- Core gameplay7/10
The Watch AI stabilised Leviathan on its first dive, unassisted, in 16 minutes, where it had not managed it in ten dives before the starter stash and a better upgrade order, and sharks, swallows and dismemberment now work as designed.
- Content6/10
The Nordic Base has a crew of four with its first three jobs, fifteen trophies are in, and the sea gained ten depth layers and a dozen new animals, while the scenery is still code-drawn stand-ins.
- Art and audio6/10
The library holds 1,089 painted sprites, but the studio's art check scored the art 5.4 out of 10 on 2026-10-13, and the topside music is switched off to be redone.
- Stability7/10
Ten headless Watch AI runs of 30 to 50 minutes at 12x to 16x game speed logged 0 Unity errors, and a 45 minute run at 17x had 0 stalls and a clean audio log.
- Release readiness3/10
Only local Windows builds exist and no public build is deployed, though a second credits page, draft privacy policy and EULA text, and a Steam Deck pass are done.
Assessed Oct 16, 2026. Based on some documentation and posts. This is the studio’s own assessment and it changes as the game does.
Updates
Silence that is proven in the log
The headless Watch AI is now provably silent after an early version flooded the audio engine with 24,000 errors. The Watch AI also played a 45 minute run on the second route with no stalls.
A headless Watch AI, and five faults that were the AI's own
A fast, windowless Watch AI ran ten long runs with no Unity errors, and the logs it left pinned down five faults in the AI's own habits.
The Watch AI stabilises Leviathan on its first dive
Two small changes took the Watch AI from never stabilising Leviathan unassisted in ten dives to doing it on its first dive in 16 minutes. Controller prompts and a round of bug hunting also went in.
Three stars, a starter stash, and a run that could not be used
Leviathan's three stars now follow the design, four station cutscenes are in, new divers start with a small stash, and a Watch AI run was thrown away because the game ran at a quarter of real time.
Sharks that really bite, and a Watch AI that learns to shop
Sharks finally hurt because a hidden god mode setting had been blocking every bite, and the sea gained orcas, eels and a dozen more animals. A three hour Watch AI run then showed it had never bought an upgrade.
People at the Nordic Base, and bugs found by reading
The Nordic Base now has a crew of four with their first jobs, and the game has fifteen trophies. None of it has run yet, but two read-through reviews already caught three real bugs.
Show 5 earlier updates
The first compile in days, and the new crew on deck
Days of work had never been compiled. When it finally was, it found one error, in a test. The new crew art is in the game, and every debug log now says what kind of run produced it.
Frost, fishing and a crew with faces
A third station under the ice with a ceiling that calves, a tiki bar and fishing on the aft deck, real-time seasons, a fully recorded voice cast, and a new crew drawn at twice the pixel density with no outlines.
The pilot that got trapped
Making the Watch AI explore instead of knowing the whole map exposed an event planner still working on the old depth scale, which could drop a solid block across the station and trap any player. Also a ladder fix, a noise rebalance with real shares, and a 1080p bug.
One number, not forty
The shaft changed depth again, and the depth scale built the day before meant it was one number to edit. The timing check on the quiet run barely moved.
The wrong clock
Six dives with no clean run, and three of them ended in drowning with roughly five to six minutes still on the countdown. The player was watching the wrong clock. Also, how to shorten a shaft without rewriting forty depth thresholds, and why upgrades should add instead of replace.