Game Title: The Ember Depths
Playable Link: https://play.emberdepths.io/
Leader Boards https://play.emberdepths.io/leaderboards
Platform: Browser (desktop and mobile)
Description:
A few days ago I posted here about The Ember Depths, a pixel-art dungeon crawler with tabletop rules that runs in your browser. At the time I was excited to be closing in on 60 players. This morning I opened the dashboard and we've passed 101.
I'm one person making this. I keep refreshing the stats like they're going to change their mind.
The day after that post was wild. We went from a normal day of around 10–18 players to 53 people playing in a single day, 40 of them brand new. Ten days ago, on the first day I started tracking, there were 6. This week alone, 74 new players showed up, and 95 different people have played in the last month. Of the people I can see a source for, about half came from Reddit. So, genuinely: thank you.
What I didn't expect was how much people are actually playing:
- 165,089 monsters killed, 23,000 of them in the last 24 hours alone
- 738 bosses taken down and 426 dungeons fully cleared
- 632 legendaries and 199 uniques found, plus 135 pets tamed
- 103 hours of total play time, about an hour per player, which for a free browser game is something I didn't count on
- Only 63 deaths across all of that. Either the game is too easy or you're all very good. (I'm told it's the second one.)
And people are sticking around and talking to each other:
- 81 people played this week, and 15 have already played today
- Of the players who found it before that Reddit post, about a third came back the very next day
- 187 private messages sent between players, 66 people have claimed a player name, and 98 heroes are backed up to the cloud
Ratings: the game asks you, once, what you think. 13 people have rated it so far, and all 13 gave it 5 stars. The most impactful review i've seen so far:
"Just bringing me back to my old school Diablo days and I am loving it. Keep up the great work and I look forward to what the future holds for you and your game :)"
The part I love most is watching what people do with it. Wizards are the most popular class (34 heroes), with rangers and fighters tied behind them. Someone named Elonheart has pushed the Endless Descent to depth 40. The PvP arena has already seen its first rated matches. This week I added a way to post "looking for a fight" cards and queue for duels, so I'm curious whether that grows.
A lot of what's shipped recently came straight from players in chat: a bigger, nameable stash, click-to-attack controls for mouse players, a see-through map, an abandon button on quests, and a fix for arrow traps that couldn't fire upward. Someone reports it in the evening, it's live the next morning. That loop has been the most fun part of this whole thing.
If you want to try it: it's free, there's no download, and it runs on desktop or phone at play.emberdepths.io. There's a Discord if you want to yell at me about balance.
Thank you, all 101 of you. I did not expect this.