The Case of the Dungeon Descent
š Investigate the princess's fate
The princess has disappeared in the dungeon! Scry on magical events to deduce what spells were cast when, piece together the stories of multiple adventurers, and uncover the princessās fate.
š Inspired by games like Type Help, The Return of the Obra Dinn, and Her Story.
ā³ Playtime to discover the whole story is 1-2 hours.
š How to play
Explore what happened in the dungeon by scrying on targets and discovering new scenes.
- When you see new heroes, dungeon floors, or the names of spells or magical items, click them to collect scry targets.
- Chose one or more targets and click Scry to search for a scene.
- To unlock the details of a scene, you must find the combination of targets that identify exactly one scene.
- Click the Record Fates button to enter what happened to each hero.
- Your entries are saved as you go. Click the check button on the right to verify each entry.
- Your progress will be automatically saved to browser storage.
āØReviews
"The format is truly excellent--one of the best formats for an investigation game that I've seen. It definitely captured the "wikiwalking" feel of really feeling like a jackpot when you unlock a new keyword that leads to a bunch of new material."
- Gwen C. Katz, Nightwell Games
"I had a lot of fun with Dungeon Descent. Itās really cute and charming and tells a cool story."
- Robin Ward, The Roottrees Are Dead
š Credits
The initial version of the game was made for Ludum Dare 57 for the theme "Depths". This is an updated version.
- Celia: design, writing, code
- Rose: art, code
- Music by Audionautix.com
You can join Jamwitch's discord to discuss the game!
Development log
- Post-post-jam changelogJul 27, 2025
- A big post-jam update + some of our investigative inspirationsJun 29, 2025
Comments
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really enjoyed this one! i loved the format of like, puzzle piecing it. like ok its character X and object Y, that's close enough to show me location Z. great little game! wish i knew how to make things like this.
Great game, fun and satisfying to play
The kobolds are so cute- so friend shaped
Very cute, very fun, very satisfying!
I really enjoyed the unique format of unlocking information - and the story the game told really touched my heart. Loved playing this.
this was short and fun! thanks!!
Cool game!
C'Ć©tait un jeu vraiment cool ! AprĆØs l'avoir terminĆ© une premiĆØre fois, j'ai voulu voir s'il existait une mĆ©thode efficace pour atteindre la fin (je pensais que ce serait plus complexe, mais il semble que le destin dĆ©pende uniquement des endroits dĆ©couverts). Je pense avoir trouvĆ© un bon truc, mais je n'ai pas cherchĆ© toutes les combinaisons possibles.
Came here to play this after playing through Archives of Trevosa! This was lovely!
This was really fun! It was really fun looking at the undiscovered scenes and trying to figure out what I missed, and trying different combinations to see what came up. The story was wonderful, and it tied everything together beautifully. 10/10 game, would recommend, and was exactly what I was looking for and hoped it would be.
I loved this game! It's very well-plotted and well-paced ā you discover information at just the right time. Very charming! Thank you very much for sharing it.
nice game. i love this and Trevosa. made a small donation to support and hope to get a sequel where we could save Felicit
Thank you so much for the support! š
incredible game
so good
Super cute game. I like that you can tell who became who just by the designs being similar. I wish it was a little longer though!
Good game.
Please keep making bangers, they are really good
kindest deduction game ever played
I want to replay this game, but how do I delete my save file?
This game is great btw
Go to Settings (the '?' at upper right) and disable Autosave in Browser.
Oops. I looked in the settings and yet completely missed the plainly written instructions. Thank you!
I loved this, and felt annoyed that I got to play it for free so I just donated. Please make sequels/prequels/other settings but same format. I was surprised with how deeply the writing hooked me.
Thank you so much for donating! š Iām glad you liked the format, Iād like to do more with it someday too! (Though for now weāre focused on our latest narrative deduction game, The Archives of Trevosa.)
so we're getting more from Trevosa, then? nice
Yep, I discussed it in the last Trevosa devlog.
What a simple story can achieve! Is a wonderful game!
I loved this game, I've recently discovered browser games on this website and I really loved this one. Great story, cool mechanics. Really nice
I loved this, gorgeous art and I love how there's glimpses of scenes when you haven't got all the elements, and all you can see is specifically the pieces of what you put in, like an individual character! Also love how the backgrounds are colour-coded based on which party that scene involves, it's a helpful little hint without ruining the difficulty! :D
This game is amazing. Easily one of the best games on the site.
i wish there was chinese version
I loved this! I came after playing Trevosa and I was not disappointed!
This game was so fun! I stayed up way too late playing it (even though it is fairly short). Though, the lake for the old adventurer party was impossible to find without brute forcing, maybe I just missed something. Overall it was pretty fun.
i like this story
I love this game, to the point I'm saddened that it's so short. Despite it's length however, the characters have distinct and unique personalities and designs, and the color-coded scenes were useful when scrying in order to tell the stories apart. I would genuinely love it if this game could have a continuation or another game made with the same style. I hope this game gets noticed more, as the concept for it is really creative and unique.
Fantastic game, will check out your other stuff too!!
that "?" makes me hopeful for a squeal tragic story and a really fun
logic puzzle
There's a true ending you can unlock with an extra scry at the end.
!!!!!!!Spoilers Below !!!!!!!!
Scry for Caspian and The Orb of Eternity ;D
Fantastic. I really love the unique UI and the engaging storyline. I would love to volunteer to translate this game into Japanese, if you would allow me to.
Absolutely, Iām open to it! It might take me some time to add a translation into the code, but if youāre happy to provide the translation for free and you think there are players out there who would appreciate it, Iāll take it!
Letās chat on Bluesky or Discord? Iām celia14.
if interested, I would also love to translate the game for you, in this case in spanish. Give me the ok and I'll add you on discord!
Thank you! Iāve super busy with other games, so Iām a little behind on adding in the translations I have so farā¦ But Iād really like to and was intended to do that by the end of the month. So Iād love to discuss adding Spanish, would be happy to talk on discord.
You really have a talent for writing story-based deduction games. Took me about an hour to beat, but I've seriously enjoyed this adventure. Did not at all go where I thought it would.
really cool!!
This was an enjoyable game! After beating it the first time through, I really wanted to see if there was an efficient way to get to the ending (which I thought would be more involved but it seems like the fates are really only contingent on which locations you've found). I think I got it down pretty low, but I didn't go looking for every combination that was helpful.
Oh my gosh! I never thought Iād see a Dungeon Descent speedrun. I love that you wanted to explore the game this way!
Seeing this, I think I maybe should have made collecting peopleās portraits a requirement for solving their fates, but Iāll leave this optimization route intact. š
Thanks for this!
Good game, sad to watch one death after another. I like this feeling of spelling out the truth little by little, thank you.
i loved this game!!! can't wait to see more from you :)
This was really cool. Especially once you start figuring out how much is going on in the story, beyond just the basic mechanics.
This was a lot of fun! I enjoyed the parallels between the groups, and the epilogue scene was a lovely end-after-the-end to the story.
reminds me of āreturn of the obra dinnā mixed with āthe roottrees are deadā
This was crazy good! OMG! Once you get used to the format it just sucks you right in and you're swept away. Love this.
omg the twists in this were crazyyy (especially the druid's one) its 1:30 am rn and I just finished this instead of doing my german hw lmao but I don't regret it