GAUNTLETING: Free One-Tap Dungeon Crawler

Yes. It is free to play in your browser, with no ads, no signup and nothing to buy.

Yes. It works in Safari and Chrome on iPhone and Android, held upright or sideways, and in any desktop browser. Add it to your Home Screen for fullscreen play.

Every foe and trap can be met three ways: STRIKE (STR), SNEAK (DEX) or SPELL (INT). Each foe family (BONE, WRAITH, BEAST, CONSTRUCT) is WEAK to one approach and RESISTS another, and the card tells you which. The % on each card is your chance to win. Win and it's slain. Miss and you take a wound: a miss on the weak side only glances, but a miss into a resistance hurts badly. Deeper down, reading a weakness is worth more.

Your torch. It starts at 8 and drops 1 every floor. Torchlit halls, shrines and merchants restore it. At Light 3 or less you can't read families or odds. At 0, every encounter costs 1 HP.

Tap any stat or chip to see what it does. STR, DEX, INT, LIGHT, FOOD, GOLD, the HP and XP bars, Depth, Score, the contract, every gear piece, talent, set, relic, curse and wound opens a tooltip with your live numbers. Tap it again, tap anywhere else, or press Esc to close it. It never plays a card.

Every depth is its own seeded floor: a main corridor of 6 to 9 rooms that ends at the stairs, plus 2 to 4 side branches that end in dead ends. Your cards move you through it: Walk forward (toward the stairs), Turn down a side hall (a branch), Go back, or Search the room. You only see the stairs from the room next to them. Once you've seen them, a card always offers them. From the room next to the stairs it reads Descend the stairs. From anywhere else it reads Head for the stairs (Stairs: N rooms) and moves you one room along the shortest path, costing a step and food like any move and able to roll an ambush (at a reduced rate in rooms you've already visited). Side rooms are more likely to hold chests and shrines, and every dead end holds something (a chest, a shrine or a champion). Exploring costs food, so weigh the loot against the hunger. When a room has only one way on, you can Make camp (-1 food, heal 12%, 30% ambush). The minimap in the bottom-right shows the rooms you've visited, a dim view of the rooms next to them, marks for what you met, and the stairs once found. A direct route is about 6 to 9 steps.

Nothing heals for free. Levelling up no longer heals, shrines no longer patch you up, flasks and potions are weaker and dearer, and a boss kill heals only 25%. One life, no saves.

You start with 6 rations and eat 1 every 6 steps. At 0 you are STARVING: -8 to every roll, and each missed meal costs 12% of your HP. Rations come from chests (TAKE THE RATIONS), merchants (BUY SUPPLIES), beasts you slay, searching old bones, and warming your hands at a shrine.

A lost fight leaves a wound by foe family: BEAST makes you BLEED (HP lost on your next 3 steps), BONE leaves you WEAK (-8 on your next 2 rolls), CONSTRUCT SUNDERS your armour (+25% damage taken for the rest of the floor), and WRAITH drinks 1 LIGHT. Potions stop bleeding, and prayer at a shrine cures every wound.

You have three slots: WEAPON, ARMOUR and CHARM. Gear drops from chests, from every elite (a choice of two pieces or salvage both for gold) and from every boss hoard (better odds). It comes in four rarities, Common, Magic, Rare and Legendary, with 1 to 4 affixes: +STR, +DEX or +INT, +MAX HP, less damage taken (capped at 40%), slay heals, or +LIGHT per floor. Equipping replaces and destroys what was in the slot, and the card shows both pieces so you can compare.

Win rolls for XP. Each level gives +1 to your class's main stat. Odd levels let you TRAIN an attribute (+3 STR and +4 max HP, +3 DEX and +1 food, or +3 INT and +2 light). Even levels give a choice of 3 talents (perks), which change the rules. Perks are tagged STEEL, BLOOD, LUCK or SHADOW. Three of a tag completes a set bonus. Two of your class's partner tag evolves your class (Reaver, Valhalla, Archmage or Deadeye).

Bosses have HP pips (3 for the first) and telegraph each move. Read the tell to take a pip for free. The boss's WEAK approach always lands, two pips on the tell, or one pip as a trade where you take a lighter hit. After its first move a boss may feint, and past half HP it feints more. Bright Light (6+) shows you which tells are false. The longer a boss fight runs, the harder it hits. The caption names the next boss's weakness 3 floors ahead.

One card on every foe carries a BOUNTY: x2 points and gold if you win that way. It's never the weak approach, so you choose between safe odds and a bigger payday. A roll that beats the DC by 30 or more is a CRIT (x1.5 points). Every win in a row adds +10% to slay points, up to +50%. About 1 foe in 25 is GILDED: x3 points, x5 gold and a treasure pick.

Even levels, contracts and shrines. Elites now drop gear instead.

Each stretch to a boss (depths 1, 11, 21...) gives you one contract in the top bar, such as SLAY BONE 0/3, WEAK WINS, BOUNTIES or TRAPS. Finish it before the boss for a perk pick, points and gold.

You earn points for depth, slays, champions, traps, treasure and bosses. They're multiplied by depth tier (x1, x1.5 at 10, x2 at 20, x2.5 at 30) and by +15% for each curse you carry. Killing a boss banks your score. Then choose DESCEND for a relic, or RETIRE A LEGEND to keep everything. If you die, you lose half of whatever wasn't banked.

Every run's score becomes lifetime EMBERS. Embers unlock new perks, rooms (mimics, Faustian shrines), relics, ascended bosses, a title and gilded frames. The codex tracks every perk, foe, boss and relic you've seen. When you fall, RUN AGAIN starts a new run with the same class in one tap.

No. Nothing happens until you tap, and no choice ever runs out.

Yes, a global all-time board. When you fall, tap ENTER INITIALS, set your three letters with the up and down arrows (typing works too) and tap SUBMIT to post your score, or SKIP to leave it off. Your initials are remembered for next time. You then see your rank and the top 10 (# · NAME · DATE · SCORE, with dates in Chicago time, CT), plus a THIS DEVICE tab with your own best runs. Tap LEADERBOARD on the title screen to see the board any time. Each run can be posted once, and if you're offline the score is saved on your device and sent on a later tap.

The hall is endless and TheWzrd waits atop The Tpwer. Nobody has reached him yet. See how deep you can go.