This is the home of the roguelike game The Ground Gives Way. A coffee break roguelike with a simple interface, high re-playability, high variation, and lots and lots of stuff…

Read the first blog post for a more detailed description of the game.

Why you’ll want to play The Ground Gives Way (TGGW):

If you never played a roguelike game:

TGGW is an easy-to-learn introduction to this wonderful genre that comes with a complete tutorial that teaches you all necessary game mechanics.

Roguelikes are addictive, very challenging, exciting and have a lot of variation.

In contrast to traditional roguelikes, TGGW plays much like a console-game. No need to remember “command sets” or complicated key combinations.

TGGW has a short game time, so you can play many times and learn fast.

If you already played roguelikes, TGGW differs from others:

Characters will be very different from game to game since progress depends on what you happen to find.

Progress is made through equipment, items and paid training rather than experience points.

Nearly 700 unique items, and more than 180 different monsters, over 100 equipment enchantments, several NPCs, traps, enchantments and features of different rarity that will make each game different from the last. No winner will look the same in TGGW.

Rapidly increasing difficulty, there is no time to be bored.

There is no grinding because there are no experience points or character levels. Also, there is no hit point regeneration, so no tedious waiting.

TGGW has a console-game like interface. No keys or commands to remember. Game play is still smooth and quick.

Short game time. The game can be completed within two hours. However, the difficulty increases very fast.

Small levels, few levels, auto-running, a map system and a portal system makes quick and easy access through the dungeon.

Interesting equipment choices where most items have pros and cons, very few trivial choices.

Very simple to understand combat system.

Players’ comments about TGGW:

“Everything I was looking for in a roguelike is there, I feel like a kid playing zelda for the first time. Thank you for your awesome game!” -htime

“It’s a lot of fun! Really enjoying the large number of possible RNG permutations VS the short length of the game.” -Dragyn

“All the things, in which it differs from other contemporary (coffee-break-like) roguelikes, I just love. Especially, the resting mechanic is just genius; I cant wait to see other authors pick it up and make their own thing with it.” -Lua

“I’d argue it’s probably the most feature rich coffee-break roguelike out there. It’s my go-to game when I don’t feel like really digging into one of the more overwhelmingly big roguelikes out there.” – Fluff

“Thank you so much, I can’t stop dying, it’s so good…and evil !” -Guryushika

“Thanks for producing an awesome game! I really love the way your resting mechanic works; food is a fascinating resource and I love all the different factors in the game that interact the decision of when to take your next rest.” – trillioneyes

“First, thanks for your amazing game!! 🙂

I’ve played many other roguelike (such as URR, dwarf fortress, Brogue, many angband-like,etc…) but your game is easy to play and hard to finish (like a good roguelike) and i really like it. :)” -jordanbubus

“Hey, the new version is great. I like it more the more I play it. I love all the different stuff and room and level types. Also the way confusion works is awesome (never seen that before). This is my favorite game right now.” -Anatta

“Thank you so very much for all the hard work you’ve put into this game. This is clearly a labor of love and it shows with it’s careful attention to mechanics, ease of play, interesting decisions presented, and the cheeky bit of humor in unexpected places.

It’s a game I’ve always come back to because it demands that you use all the tools at your disposal rather than hammering against featureless monsters all the time.” -TyreForHyre