DEEP ROOTS
A side-scrolling action platformer in a root-choked underworld
About
Deep Roots is a side-scrolling action platformer set in a root system beneath a forest. Something down there has been feeding on what was buried, and you go after it. The world is a connected map of single-screen rooms, drawn as crisp pixel art at a fixed resolution so that every hazard reads at a glance.
Movement and combat are built around never being locked in place. A three-hit melee combo can be cancelled into a dash, a dash into a jump, and one button gives you a dash in the air, a roll on the ground or a slide when you hold down. You carry two weapons at once, and weapons are randomised, so what you find changes how you fight.
The Unity version is a port of an earlier browser game, held against the original frame by frame so the two play the same. Its hero, Morrow, has been redrawn as a hand-painted character: 806 frames across 52 animations, with no black outline.
What is in it
- Attacks cancel into dash and dash into jump, so you are never locked in an animation
- Three-hit melee combos with a second weapon slot for guns and throwers
- Randomised weapons across rarity tiers, with a smith who upgrades what you bring
- Abilities open routes you can already see, so backtracking is a plan, not a chore
- Hand-painted hero, Morrow, drawn without a black outline
- Music that shifts with the room you are standing in
Screenshots
How far along
Playable build, 58 out of 100, ranked 8 of 17 on the progress ranking.
A Windows build of the Unity port runs with the painted hero and all 78 rooms load in checks, with performance close to the frame budget.
- Playable6/10
A 361 MB Unity Windows build with Morrow in it exists, and the autopilot reaches the last keeper in five to eleven simulated minutes under the real rules.
- Core gameplay7/10
The feel is held to tuned values such as a run speed of 112 px/s and a jump velocity of -268, and the Unity port is checked against the browser game over 37 scripted parity scenarios.
- Content6/10
Six Ascent area files sit beside the 29 base-game rooms and the Unity soak check loads all 78 rooms, while enemy and boss art and the ending are listed as still open.
- Art and audio5/10
Morrow is 806 hand-painted frames across 52 animations, while the roadmap lists enemy and boss art as open with a licensed sprite haul on disk.
- Stability6/10
Seventeen test suites cover the browser game and a nine-stage check covers the Unity port, but the busiest room draws in about 15 ms against a 16.5 ms budget.
- Release readiness3/10
A zip and an unsigned single-file Windows exe can be built, and the project page lists no public play link.
Assessed Oct 4, 2026. Based on some documentation and posts. This is the studio’s own assessment and it changes as the game does.
Updates
A painted hero that runs, with no outline
Morrow, the Deep Roots hero, now exists in the Unity build as 806 hand-painted frames across 52 animations. Getting her to run without jitter meant fixing a cape that changed shape every frame and a foot that slid on the ground, and one rule shaped all of it: no black outline, ever.
Project page added
Deep Roots joins the permanent Hostile Environments project archive, ready for screenshots, footage, build notes, and future devlogs.