Five hundred years ago, a demon sorceress named Abys was sealed beneath her fortress by four legendary heroes and a fifth everyone seems to have forgotten about. The fortress eventually sank into the earth, filled up with monsters, dark magic, traps and whatever else the world above wanted to get rid of, and became known as the Catacombs. Naturally, people eventually started sending children down there.
Catacomb Kids is a platforming roguelike from solo developer Tyriq Plummer, working under the name FourbitFriday. It arrived on Steam Early Access in February 2015 and, more than 11 years later, is still there. That unusually long development has produced a game built around traditional roguelike ideas, fast platforming combat and a world where seemingly simple systems can interact in some surprisingly complicated ways.
Everybody Ends Up in the Catacombs
By the time Catacomb Kids begins, Abys has mostly faded into legend. What hasn’t disappeared is the enormous dungeon left behind, and heading into it has become part coming-of-age ceremony, part criminal punishment and part opportunity for anyone willing to risk their life chasing riches, knowledge or power.
Once you’re underground, survival comes down to much more than swinging a sword at whatever moves. Levels are procedurally generated, death is permanent, and combat mixes quick reactions with the need to actually think about what you’re doing. Swords, spears, axes, daggers and magic give you plenty of direct ways to deal with enemies, but fighting everything head-on isn’t necessarily the smartest option.
Monsters can be lured into attacking each other. Traps intended to kill you can just as easily kill something else. Fire, poison, water and other elements interact with the dungeon and its inhabitants, turning individual rooms into opportunities to experiment rather than simply another collection of enemies waiting to be cleared.
The Dungeon Is One Big Toolbox
This is where Catacomb Kids starts doing some particularly interesting things. Plummer describes the world itself as your crafting space, which means there isn’t a separate crafting screen asking you to collect twenty bits of wood before anything useful happens. Instead, items, creatures and environmental systems can be combined directly inside the dungeon.
That can produce some wonderfully strange solutions. Water can be poisoned, food can be cooked, steam can be created and even pieces of creatures can become useful tools. PC Gamer highlighted the ability to use parts of blobs to climb otherwise inaccessible walls, which gives you a good idea of just how far the game’s willingness to let players experiment actually goes.
The result is a roguelike where knowing how its world works can be just as valuable as finding a better weapon. A dangerous room doesn’t always need better reflexes; sometimes it needs a more creative way of making everything inside it kill itself.
Eleven Years and Still Not Finished
Perhaps the strangest part of Catacomb Kids isn’t hidden anywhere underground. It’s the fact that the game has been in Early Access since February 2015.
The Steam page currently warns that its last developer update was more than 17 months ago, while the Early Access description still lists two of four planned environments as complete alongside three large bosses. Local co-op and versus modes are already functional, with Remote Play Together also supported.
Its extended development hasn’t stopped the players who have found it from liking what is already there. Catacomb Kids currently has a Very Positive Steam rating, with 85% of its 534 Steam purchaser reviews recommending it.
That’s not a huge audience for something that has been available for more than a decade, particularly when the systems underneath its pixel-art dungeon go considerably deeper than they initially appear.
There are plenty of procedurally generated dungeons out there. Far fewer let you poison a pool, trick two monsters into killing each other, cook something over a fire and turn part of a dead blob into climbing equipment. Catacomb Kids has been letting players find increasingly inventive ways to survive, and die, for more than 11 years.