DEEPLANDERS

DEEPLANDERS is a minimalist construction puzzle game set beneath the surface. Its characters, the Deeplanders, have been banished to live underground and wander lost in the dark. As the player builds, they begin to arrive in search of somewhere to settle.

The core of the game is a logic puzzle. Each Deeplander wants something different, so the player must work out the right place for each one within the city. Once a city is complete, the player can stay to watch the Deeplanders go about their lives and decorate the environment, or descend further. Each descent adds new characters, environments and ways to build. Every depth can be solved in more than one way, so it can be replayed to produce different cities.

The game also has a mode that turns the Deeplanders into desktop companions. Their underground world keeps running while the player works, and the player can interact with it by exploring the depths. DEEPLANDERS has no mining, complex resource management, battles, fail states or leaderboards, and the developer describes it as a small-scale game.