The Ground Gives Way is a "coffee break" roguelike by BtS (2014–2022). There are no classes, races or experience levels: you grow stronger through the items you find, equipment enchantments and paid training. About 700 items and 180 monsters; a game takes roughly two hours. You start at the stairs to the surface and go down to retrieve an ancient artifact, then bring it back up.
This page runs the original Windows game unchanged inside an x86 emulator in your browser. Only the presentation is new: the game's windows became resizable panes. Game rules and keys are the original ones.
h j k l y u b n as in the game)z, y, wcxaThe main menu (Esc) holds: Activate, Inventory, Maps (v), Messages, Discovered people / items / monsters, Make Character Sheet, Quit & abandon, Save & quit. The game has its own in-game tutorial on the start menu. The effect reference that ships with the game is at thegroundgivesway.com.
Your saved games live in this browser (IndexedDB), in the slots of the game's start menu. Use Save & quit in the main menu: the game returns to its start menu and the slot lists your character. The game also autosaves while you play. File ▾ → Export save downloads all your slots as one file, Import save loads it again (on another browser or computer), New game deletes every slot in this browser. Clearing the browser's site data deletes your saves.
The Ground Gives Way v2.6 © BtS, all rights reserved; the developer states the source will stay closed. This web version is an unofficial port by memmaker: it contains the emulator (v86, BSD-2-Clause, by Fabian Hemmer) and a small Windows/PDCurses compatibility layer; it does not modify the game's code.