First-person pixely dungeon crawler Delver is emerging from a mammoth four-and-a-half year stint in Early Access on Thursday (February 1), developer Priority Interrupt has announced. I think 'slow and steady' would fairly characterise its development since 2013, with updates arriving every six months on average. Still, I remember playing it on my phone five or so years ago and it's clearly come a long way since then.

You're an unarmed adventurer thrown into a randomly-generated dungeon with the task of retrieving a magic orb that's buried somewhere in the depths and bringing it back to the surface. You'll loot, explore, find lots of dead ends and defeat enemies with melee, ranged, and magical combat as you explore different dungeon floors, each of which has a particular theme (Temple, Sewers, etc).

The loot is randomly-generated, too, and the armour and weapons you'll equip should make your character feel different every time you restart. And you'll be restarting a lot, because Delver has permadeath. I can remember the pain that accompanied losing all the progress I'd accrued on a month's worth of train commutes.

The game comes with a level editor and has full Steam Workshop support. The workshop already has a fair few mods to choose from, mostly in the form of new items like guns or crossbows. I suspect that the full release of the game will only see the collection grow.

When it leaves early access the price will nearly double, to $14.99 from the current $7.99/£5.59, so if you know you plan to pick it up anyway, then now is the time. Here's the Steam page.