The Darkest Cave and Aiming Update

The Darkest Cave & Bow Aiming Update has been released! Here is a brief overview of the update, the full change-log, and the addressing of some upcoming features.

The Darkest Cave – 10 years before the events of Deep

The Darkest Cave campaign is finally here! Play through 20 new and exciting levels in the brand new Dark Mode where Jack needs to hold his torch to light up the dark cave. But there’s a twist: The Darkest Cave campaign is happening 10 years before the events of Deep’s story mode so there are some interesting places that looked a bit different than we know today. This new environment adds to the challenge of beating the levels and exiting the cave so you need to be very careful about every single step.

The Darkest Cave Expansion grants you the following:

• The Darkest Cave Campaign (20 levels)
• The Enlightener Skin – A cosmetic item that’s required in the dark
• Dark Mode for Story levels – Play all Story Mode chapters with this limited vision experience
• Dark Mode in Level Editor – Make your own dark levels and share them to the Workshop

LIMITED TIME SPECIAL PROMO

If you get The Darkest Cave Expansion before February 18th, 2021 you will receive the following item:

• The Vaporwave Skin – A cosmetic item with the vaporwave color scheme. Get it now or it’s gone forever!

Read more and buy The Darkest Cave Expansion here:

Bow Aiming

You are now able to use your mouse to aim with the bow! The default controls were also changed to comply with this new feature so you’ll be greeted with a notice about the control update the next time you play Deep. You can also bind the mouse buttons to other keybinds such as roll or melee attack.

Deep v6.0.0 Update Full Change-Log

[THE DARKEST CAVE]

• The Darkest Cave campaign with 20 levels has been added. The campaign features the new dark environment.
• The Dark Mode has been added to the Story Mode. Play the normal levels with the same scary feel featured in The Darkest Cave campaign. It’s accessible through the main menu.
• The Darkest Cave features a new soundtrack.

[GAMEPLAY]

• You can now aim using your mouse and shoot in all directions.
• You can revert to the classic bow shooting mode in the options.
• The controls have been updated to all players (you will be greeted with an info message the next time you enter Deep).
• Mouse buttons can now be used as keybinds.
• You are now able to shoot if you are located next to a wall (if you are facing the opposite direction).
• The tutorial level has been redesigned and it now dynamically displays controls set in the options.

[COSMETICS]

• Three new cosmetic items have been added:
• Franky (community skin by Apollyon)
• The Enlightener (part of The Darkest Cave expansion)
• Vaporwave (limited-time skin granted to early players of The Darkest Cave expansion)

[LEVEL EDITOR]

• Added an option to make your level use the Dark Mode.
• The fire particles in the Fire Escape mode are now more consistent and stable, but big levels may experience degraded performance.
• An option to change the speed of the fire in Fire Escape has been added.

[BUG FIXES]

• You can no longer avoid the gap in the intro of Chapter I.
• The bug that caused “ghosting” of the Steam Overlay (on achievement grant and other notifications) has been fixed.
• Fixed a bug where chest count didn’t display correctly on the main menu.

[MISC]

• The game now runs in a 16:9 aspect ratio to be more compatible with most monitors and to reduce the size of black bars on the sides of the screen.
• Steam Overlay now works more smoothly and it’s more consistent.
• Many security improvements.

New controller controls and addressing the full controller support

This update changes most of the controls because of the new Aim mechanic. These are the updated controls for the gamepad:

Movement – Left thumbstick or the D-Pad
Aiming – Right thumbstick
Bow attack – Right bumper (PS: R1) or Y button (PS: Triangle) for the Classic Aim Mode
Melee attack – X button (PS: Square)
Roll – B button (PS: Circle)
Jump – A button (PS: Cross)

The game still doesn’t support full controller support on menus and pause screens even though I tried to implement that in this update. I’m a solo developer and this is just a hobby, so I’m working as hard as I can to implement that basic functionality, but I always delay and postpone it for various reasons. I’m sorry for waiting, but I’m doing the best I can.

I hope you will enjoy this update and support the future development of the game.

Have a great day and I’ll see you in the cave!