Catabasis

CATABASIS (ka-TAB-a-sis — a descent into the underworld)

You weren't paying attention. Nobody ever is. You clipped through the world like a bad video game character and fell out of reality — into six hundred million square miles of empty office: mono-yellow wallpaper, wet carpet, and fluorescent lights that never, ever turn off.

Find the tear in each level. Descend. Survive what's already down here.

FEATURES

• A true first-person raycast engine — flashlight cone, flickering fluorescents, textured corridors, heat-haze deep levels
• Procedurally generated floors, no two descents alike, across shifting themes: the classic yellow, mold, the flooded dark, the blackout, and the red deep
• Three horrors. One hunts the moment it sees you. One moves only when you look away. The third you will never see at all.
• Search the wreckage. Every toppled cabinet and office chair can be rummaged through, once — for a stashed bottle, a dead stranger's note, or nothing at all.
• Wrong doors. Office doors set into the walls in linked pairs. Step through and you come out half a level away, facing a corridor you've never seen. It'll shake whatever is chasing you. It might also drop you somewhere worse.
• A sanity system that bends the palette, the lights, and eventually the truth — manage it with almond water and the notes of those who fell before you
• Old-school level passwords (the level card waits while you write), CONTINUE straight back to your deepest floor, battery-style saves, a records screen, and an ending nine levels down — then endless New Game+ for those who leave and go back
• Options that respect you: minimap size (or off), turn speed, reduce flashing (accessibility), CRT scanline filter, smoothing — and the build number printed on the title screen, so a bug report is never a guess
• Stereo dread, haptic rumble, full gamepad support (great on Steam Deck with the desktop build, or Android + Bluetooth pad)
• No ads. No tracking. No internet permission. Fully offline.

CONTROLS (touch): left thumb — floating stick to move & strafe · right thumb — swipe to look · on-screen A (interact — noclip, search, open doors), B (run / back), MAP and MENU. Or just connect a controller.

TWO EDITIONS INCLUDED — BOTH FREE

• Android (.apk) — the enhanced port. Sideload it: download on your phone, tap the file, allow "install unknown apps" when prompted.
• Handheld cartridge ROM (.gba) — the original 240×160 build, 256 KB, bare metal. Runs in mGBA, Pizza Boy, My OldBoy, Delta or RetroArch — or on the real 2001 hardware with a flash cart. Yes, really.

IT'S FREE. PAY WHAT YOU WANT.

Both editions, the manual, everything — free, no strings, no unlocks, no second currency, nothing held back for a paid tier. If it kept you up, the suggested donation is $1.99, and that is the whole business model. If it didn't, take it anyway and tell someone about it.

(There is also a $1.99 paid version on Google Play, for anyone who would rather install from a store than sideload an APK. It is the same game — Play just has no way to ask for a suggested donation on a free app.)

Turn the lights off. Bring headphones. The manual is included, and the warranty section is legally binding nowhere.

A SuDDeN Interactive production — devlogs, the engine write-ups, and whatever comes next are at suddeninteractive.com.