Elder Cave

Elder Cave is a cosmic horror strategy game made for the Ancient and Nameless DragonRuby game jam.

You are a cultist. You have found a cave. Something old and terrible is sleeping at the bottom of it, and you intend to wake it up.

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The Ritual

Place sacred idols to lure shoggoths through a merge chain: 8 small shoggoths coalesce near an idol into a medium one, and 4 medium shoggoths merge into a Great One. Drive 3 Great Ones to the altar, hold the ritual for a few seconds, and an Ancient power will rise to unmake the world.

You win.

When a merge happens, your idol returns to your hand. You only have a handful — place them wisely, relocate them when the swarm moves on, and explore the cave to find the ones scattered in the dark.

Standing at the altar yourself doubles the ritual charge rate. It is also the only place in the cave where shoggoths will leave you alone.

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The Opposition

The cave isn't empty. Inquisitors — righteous, relentless, and ultimately doomed — will hunt your idols and drain your time. They take a beating and keep coming. You can blast them back with your repel ability, but you cannot kill them. They always return.

Some runs spawn Watchers: slower than inquisitors, but they emit a sanity-drain aura. You will know them by their sickly green glow. Give them a wide berth.

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Sanity

Shoggoths close by erode your mind. The altar restores it. If your sanity reaches zero you don't die fighting — you just stop. Manage the swarm or the swarm manages you.

This creates a tension at the heart of every run: the creatures you need are also the creatures that will break you. Get them where they need to go before they undo you.

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Escalation

The pressure never lets up. Every minute that passes, shoggoths spawn faster and the hunter cap increases. There is no safe plateau — only the ritual getting closer or the cave getting worse. The only way to win is to finish before the cave becomes unmanageable.

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Controls

- `WASD` / arrow keys — move

- `Space` — place or pick up an idol

- `E` — repel (blasts nearby shoggoths and hunters; the inner kill zone destroys small shoggoths outright and splits medium ones back into smalls)

Touch controls appear automatically on mobile and web — a floating joystick and button overlay.

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Omens

Each run rolls three random Omens from a pool of eleven. These modify the rules before you start and are shown on the intro screen. Some are gifts. Some are curses. Most are both.

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Platform

Runs on desktop (Mac, Windows, Linux), and web. Built in DragonRuby GTK.