The Ember Depths

Loot · Legend · The Deep Below

A loot-driven pixel-art action RPG with classic tabletop rules: walk an open road through 5 acts and 15 wild areas, ride it, and go down its 25 dungeons alone or in online co-op, with pets, a PvP arena and a town to build. Free, right in your browser, on phone, tablet or desktop.

4.8 / 5 from players · 90% five stars

Play free in your browser Join the Discord

No download. No sign-up. Your heroes are saved to the cloud automatically, with a recovery code so you never lose them.

Trailer and the story intro, captured in-game · Watch: Trailer · Gameplay · Story intro

Latest v0.28.0 The Seal Road

Down the Seal Road

Watch gameplay

From Hearthold down the Seal Road to Vhoruun's Pyre: a goblin camp in the Bramblewold, wayshrine travel, the Ashen Barrows, the Rotting Fen, a Vow and a runeword, Emberwing on the Ridge, the Infernal Descent and the last boss. All captured in the game as it plays.

A paladin and three sellswords fighting Vhoruun, the Ember Tyrant, in his Pyre — Gameplay · Watch page · Download the MP4 · Music: “Colossal Boss Battle Theme (Blackmoor Colossus)” by Matthew Pablo, www.matthewpablo.com, CC BY 3.0

What players say

4.8/ 5

Average of 30 in-game ratings · 90% give five stars

“There’s no way this is free.”
★★★★★ · 9 hours played
“It’s the best of Diablo, Dungeon Siege and most roguelikes.”
★★★★★ · 14 hours played
“Just bringing me back to my old-school Diablo days, and I am loving it.”
★★★★★ · First hour
“Loving the game. Really laid back and chill.”
★★★★★ · 4 hours played

Your call

Two ways to see the Depths

The same game, the same heroes, the same loot. Play it in 2D pixel art based on our own hand-drawn originals, with new heroes, monsters and spells, or switch on the 2.5D view with real lighting, depth and a camera you can turn. It's up to you, and you can change your mind any time.

A fight in 2D: heroes against a pack, top-down pixel art — In the Depths

The same kind of fight in 2.5D: lit torches, depth and shadows — In the Depths

Hearthold in 2D, its townsfolk going about their day — In Hearthold

Hearthold in 2.5D at night, windows lit — In Hearthold

2D Pixel art based on our own hand-drawn originals, seen from straight above. Light on any phone or laptop, and the default.
2.5D Real light from torches and spells, walls with depth, a camera you can turn and zoom. Best on a desktop or a recent phone.
Switch any time Settings → Accessibility → Performance → 2.5D view. Your heroes don't notice.

The endgame: The Deep Charts

An endgame you draw yourself

Beat the campaign and the map keeps going. Charts let you pick a dungeon, a depth from Tier 1 to 16 and up to 4 of 43 Marks; every hour an Ember Breach sets one dungeon burning for everyone; and the Forge, Masterwork and 47 Deep items give your gear somewhere to climb.

Explore The Deep Patch notes

14classes
12races
55bosses
196monsters
117uniques
174legendaries
26pets
25dungeons
15wild areas
24mounts

Kill. Loot. Compare. Equip. Go deeper.

Everything you want from a dungeon crawler

A wizard casting fire into a swarm of imps on a lava floor

Combat & bosses

Real-time fights with tabletop bones

Every swing rolls a d20 against armour class, spells force saves and crits double the dice. Up front it is fast and tactile: a thumb joystick, auto-attacks, and skills you tap to auto-target or drag to aim. On a keyboard and mouse you can switch to click-to-attack: hold the button on a foe to keep swinging, Shift + click to stand your ground, right-click for a skill.

55 bosses and minibosses each have detailed bodies that crack, glow and transform as their health falls, with telegraphed slams, charges and rings you can read and dodge. 196 monster types, 70 item affixes and elite modifiers keep every floor different.

Grukk the Goblin KingCrown-King of the Warcamp
Morvaine the NecromancerKeeper of the Seal of Bone
Old Gutrot the Swamp OgreSquatter on the Seal of Water
Seraphel the FallenHolder of the Seal of Light
Vhoruun the Ember TyrantThe Fire Under the Seal of Ash

A ranger fighting a goblin warband in its camp in the Bramblewold, the palisade and watchtowers around them

The open world

Walk the Lastlight Road

Out of Hearthold's north gate the road runs through 5 lands, three wide areas to an act: goblin hills, a city of tombs in grey ash, a fen crossed on boardwalks, a ridge climbed terrace by terrace, and the Order's stair down into the fire. Every one of the 25 dungeons is a place on the road with its own yard and its own door. Light the wayshrines, clear the camps and ruins, and come back to an area as you left it.

Each act is a road of its own on the Seal Road: open its doors in order, swear one of three Vows at each Seal (a rule that changes how you fight), and earn the runes for a runeword of your own. Answer the road's Alarms (hold a beacon, walk a wagon home, run down a thief) and the act's Wake rises to fight you. Then ride: 24 mounts from side jobs, Wakes, deeds and the rarest drops.

The open world Mounts

A unique item card showing rolled stats and a special power

Loot: legendaries & uniques

The drop you were hoping for

Gear rolls rarity, affixes and upgrade badges so you always know whether it is better. Chase 174 legendaries with build-changing powers, including 10 class sets, and 117 uniques: named items with their own lore and powers that attune to you as you fight.

Salvage, upgrade and enchant at the Smithy, stash the keepers, and trade with other players when a drop is perfect for their build.

A hero and their pet fighting side by side in a dungeon

Pets

26 companions who grow with you

Find them in cages, nests and puzzle eggs, or earn them from bosses. Every pet has a role (tank, healer, damage, support or utility), its own skills and talents, and it evolves through stages as your bond deepens. Meet Hearth Hound, Mossback Tortoise, Lantern Moth, Pocket Magpie, Frostfang Fox and Sparkjaw Ferret and more in the Menagerie.

Co-op & social

Bring up to three friends

Send an invite link and your friends drop straight into your party: no codes to type, no accounts to make. Parties of up to four clear dungeons together, with loot for everyone.

Pick a handle, add friends, chat in global, trade and looking-for-group channels, send direct messages, trade items safely and climb the leaderboards. Solo? Hire sellswords at the Tavern instead.

Join the Discord — find a party, share builds, report bugs and hear about patches first.

Guilds

Found a guild, fly your banner

Pay the Guild Hall's charter and you get a name, a tag beside yours in chat, a banner you design cloth to emblem, and a channel only guildmates see. Officers invite by handle; open guilds post to the notice board, where anyone can apply with a line.

Every run earns your guild renown. Fill the Guild Coffer together and everyone claims its chests on Monday, take writs from the townsfolk, and let your officers raise Banner Blessings over the whole guild. Your Standing climbs from Apprentice to Ember-Sworn and follows you wherever you serve.

PvP arena

Settle it in the arena

Duels, 2v2 teams and free-for-alls across 7 arenas with their own hazards, with Elo ratings, win streaks and titles from Contender to Sovereign of the Pit. Stats can be normalised so skill decides the fight. Looking for a fight? Post a card in Arena chat or hit Find match and keep playing while the game finds you an opponent.

Hearthold Sparring Yard
The Ember Pit
Frostglass Ring
The Bone Colosseum
Stormspire
The Sunken Shrine
Void Ascent

Hearthold, a lively pixel-art town with a temple, tavern, smithy and merchant

The town

Hearthold grows with every run

Between delves you come home to a living town you walk through: villagers going about their day, lanterns at dusk, the old well in the square and the Mayor's notice board beside it. Spend what you bring back to upgrade the Smithy, Merchant, Tavern, Temple, Guild Hall, Stash, Training Grounds, Cartographer's Lodge and Menagerie, and each one unlocks new services, sellswords and boons. Ada's Riding Yard, over the bridge, keeps your mounts.

Bank gold from Tavern expeditions while you're away, and when you have conquered the Depths, keep going: Legend levels, the endless Descent, and a guild of your own at the Guild Hall.

Hardcore heroes

One life. Make it count.

Flip the Hardcore switch when you forge a hero and every fight is for keeps. Your name burns ember-red in chat with the skull sigil and the HC chip, so everyone knows what you are risking.

Permadeath. Fall and the hero is gone for good, with their gear and their bag. Quillon reads the eulogy and carves the stone in the Hall of the Fallen.
A realm of your own. Hardcore heroes keep their own gold, stash, town, sellswords and pets, apart from your softcore heroes.
Hard or harder. Hard, Epic or Legendary only: Easy and Medium are closed.
No trades, no carries. No trading or gifts, and hardcore heroes only party with other hardcore heroes.
Their own leaderboards. Highest living level, deepest Endless Descent, fastest campaign, and a wall for the fallen.

Hardcore rules Patch notes Hardcore leaderboards

A hardcore hero's funeral stone reading Here lies Aldric, slain by Seraphel, while Quillon reads the eulogy

The hero creator with the Hardcore switch turned on and its permadeath warning

Global chat where hardcore heroes show ember-red names, the skull sigil and the HC chip

Classes & races

14 classes. 28 subclasses. 12 races.

Build your hero from ability scores and a subclass at level 3, shape it with a talent tree of your own and a role in the party, then grow every skill through a mastery path of ranks and build-defining perks. Reach level 20, then keep going with Legend levels, 13 Pyre Tiers, the Endless Descent and guilds.

Choose your hero: a new player's first screen, five classes ready to play, with race and looks a tap away

Fighter
A master of arms and armor who out-fights anything foolish enough to close the distance.
Champion · Battle Master
Paladin
A holy warrior whose blade is bound with oath and radiance.
Oath of Devotion · Oath of Vengeance
Rogue
A quick, cunning blade that finds every opening and exploits it without mercy.
Thief · Assassin
Ranger
A hunter of the wild deep who never lets prey out of sight — or out of range.
Hunter · Beast Master
Wizard
A scholar of the arcane who bends fire, frost and lightning to their will.
Evocation · Elemental Binding
Cleric
A devoted channel of divine power who mends allies and smites the wicked in the same breath.
Life Domain · Tempest Domain
Barbarian
A storm of muscle and fury who shrugs off wounds that would drop anyone else — and answers with a greataxe.
Path of the Berserker · Path of the Emberblood
Bard
A spellsinger whose verses sharpen allies' blades and whose insults leave monsters weeping.
College of Lore · College of the Warhorn
Druid
A keeper of the old green who calls roots, moonlight, beasts and storm down into the deep.
Circle of the Land · Circle of the Fang
Monk
A disciplined fighter who needs no armor and little weapon — only speed, breath and a hundred precise blows.
Way of the Open Hand · Way of the Ashen Lotus
Sorcerer
Magic isn't studied, it's in the blood — and it comes out in torrents of fire, frost and lightning.
Draconic Bloodline · Stormborn Bloodline
Warlock
Power bought from something that lives beyond the stars. The price comes due later. The eldritch blast comes now.
The Fiend · The Hollow Star
Necromancer
You died once. You took notes. Now the dead answer when you call — and every wound you deal feeds you.
Bonecaller · Bloodmage
Dread Knight
A knight who walked into the dark and came back wearing it. Your blade remembers the grave.
Bloodreaver · Doomlord

Play as

Every class, skill & spell Open the compendium

Story

Hearthold needs a hero

Every spring for forty years, the Mayor of Hearthold has pinned up the same notice: HERO WANTED, the road north. Nobody ever answered it. You do. On the last mile of the south road the ground gives way under the girl sent to fetch you, and you jump in after her.

Hearthold is the last lit town in the Hearthvale, and it is built on the lid of the first fire in the world. The fire wants, and everyone out there with any power has said yes to its one offer: be warm forever. Walk the Lastlight Road out of the north gate, Seal by Seal, through 5 acts and 25 dungeons, to the Ember Tyrant at its end.

Act 1
The Goblin Warrens
The first stretch of the Lastlight Road: thorn hills, torn-open ground and a goblin moor, with burrows and looted crypts under every hill. Grukk wears the Earth Warden's crown, and it has united every warren under one crude, brutal will.
Act 2
The Necropolis of Ash
A buried city of the dead across the Ashen Barrows, west of the warcamp, its bone-white avenues lit by cold necrotic fire. Morvaine sits on the Seal of Bone and has raised its every citizen to serve her a second, unwilling life.
Act 3
The Rotting Fen
The Rotting Fen, downhill from the Barrows: a drowned lowland of sinking sewers and stagnant caves where nothing decays cleanly. Old Gutrot squats on the Seal of Water and has claimed the deepest mire as his festering throne.
Act 4
The Fallen Fortress
A once-holy bastion on the Ridge, turned to ruin, its ramparts held by orc warbands and worse. Seraphel holds the Seal of Light here, over the head of the Order's stair. She fell from grace within these walls and has never truly left.
Act 5
The Infernal Descent
The Order's stair, the one stretch of the road that goes down: a wound torn straight into the burning dark. Vhoruun waits at its foot under the last Seal, Ash, patient as only something eternal can afford to be.

The opening: riding into Hearthold on the south road beside Mazzy's bread cart, with three hired sellswords as escort

Join the Hearthold community

The Ember Depths is built in the open, and the Discord is where it happens.

Find a party for co-op, the Daily Descent or a Hardcore run
Patch notes, sneak peeks and new features before anyone else
Report bugs and pitch ideas straight to the developer
Show off your uniques, builds and legendary pulls

Join the Discord

Quillon keeps the door open

Free to join.
Bring friends.

Channels for looking-for-group, builds, trading, bug reports and fan art — and a creator who actually reads them.

Live from the Depths

Hall of Heroes

…adventurers
…online now
…monsters slain
…bosses felled

Hero power

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Endless Descent

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Arena rating

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Deepest chart

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Breach Wardens slain

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Full leaderboards & stats

Media

Screenshots

Tap any picture to see it full size. Press and creators: the press kit has full-resolution screenshots, trailers and icons.

The Deep is waiting

One tap and you are making your first hero. Nothing to install.

Play free in your browser Join the Discord

FAQ

Questions, answered

Is it really free?

Yes. The Ember Depths is free to play in your browser at play.emberdepths.io: no download and no sign-up.

What can I play it on?

Any modern browser: phones and tablets (landscape), laptops and desktops. On touch screens you get a thumb joystick and a skill cluster; on desktop, WASD or click-to-move with number keys for skills. You can add it to your home screen to launch it like an app.

Where is my save? Do I need an account?

No account or sign-up needed. Your heroes are saved to the cloud automatically as you play, and kept in your browser too, so the game still works offline. The cloud keeps your last few versions as backups. Make a recovery code in Settings (Cloud save & recovery) to get your heroes back on a new device or after clearing your browser. Online features use an anonymous player id plus a public handle you choose.

Can I play on my phone and my computer?

Yes. On the device you already play on, open Settings, Cloud save & recovery, Link a device, then enter the 8-character code on the other device under Restore from cloud. Both play the same heroes and stay in sync. If both changed while offline, the game asks which save to keep and stores the other as a backup.

I played on emberdepths.mctl.io or dungeon2.mctl.io. Is my hero lost?

No. Open your old link once in the same browser: it packs your hero, your friends and your handle and carries them over to play.emberdepths.io automatically.

How does co-op work?

Open Party in town and share the invite link, or join a friend from your friends list, the player list or the looking-for-group channel. Up to four heroes per party; the party leader's device runs the dungeon, and loot is instanced, so every player gets their own drops.

Is it based on a tabletop game?

It plays by classic tabletop rules: ability scores, d20 attack rolls, armour class, saving throws, proficiency and subclasses. Rules content comes from the System Reference Document 5.1 (CC-BY-4.0) or is original.

How long is it?

The campaign runs 5 acts along an open road: 15 wild areas and 25 dungeons. After that come Pyre Tiers up to Pyre XIII, each guarded by one of the Crowned of the Ember Court, Legend levels, the Endless Descent (infinite floors), guilds, 117 uniques to collect, 26 pets to raise and the arena ladder.

Can I play solo?

Absolutely. Everything can be played alone, and the Tavern's 17 sellswords can fill out your party.

About the studio

The Ember Depths is made by Emptyset Media, an independent studio.

It is built for the open web: one link, any device, and your friends one tap away.

emptyset.io

The Ember Depths

What players say

An endgame you draw yourself

Real-time fights with tabletop bones

Walk the Lastlight Road

The drop you were hoping for

26 companions who grow with you

Bring up to three friends

Found a guild, fly your banner

Settle it in the arena

Hearthold Sparring Yard

The Ember Pit

Frostglass Ring

The Bone Colosseum

Stormspire

The Sunken Shrine

Void Ascent

Hearthold grows with every run

The Goblin Warrens

The Necropolis of Ash

The Rotting Fen

The Fallen Fortress

The Infernal Descent