Bottomless Bullets: Deepest Well

Combine powers and try to break the game in this roguelike shooter.

Oct 01, 2025

‣ Deepest Well
From: Smoking Cartridge
Platforms: PC
Release: November 2025
Genre: Bullet Hell Deckbuilder
Steam page • Developer Page
Demo Video • 10 Minute Video

One doesn’t just break the game’s difficulty curve, but also the presentation itself.

[This week’s article was produced by Trip Harrison—information scientist, hobbyist programmer, and lifelong gamer whose weekly publication explores the artistic and cultural horizons of game design. Follow him on Substack.]

“Break the game” is an instantly compelling but always-risky instruction for game developers to give their players. To base a game around its own degeneration takes confidence, bravery, and not a little audacity.

In the case of Deepest Well, a forthcoming 2D action roguelike by developer Smoking Cartridge, the phrase “break the game” appears prominently on the Steam store page and is near enough the entire instruction manual.

At its core, Deepest Well is a wave-based shooter that takes place in an enclosed arena with an infinitely destructible floor, hence the title. The player character is a nameless sorcerer wielding an upgradable magic wand. Each wave spawns a set number of enemies, whose defeat rewards the player with one of four randomly drawn upgrade cards.

The player’s attacks are feeble and sluggish at game-start, and strategically collecting upgrades is necessary for keeping pace with the enemies’ own evolution. Some have relatively modest effects like increasing movement speed or fire rate. Others significantly alter the player’s tactics by, for example, adding new effects to wand attacks or causing enemies to explode on death.

Crucially, accumulating several copies of like upgrades will fuse their cards into a deliberately overpowered Ascension, which is the basis of any remotely successful run — the game’s high base difficulty and the enemies’ rapidly growing strength will put a swift end to runs with carelessly built decks.

The demo version implements about a half-dozen distinct enemy types that reveal themselves as waves are cleared. These include various flying enemies that fire projectiles or chase the player, as well as a ground-based type that delivers hard-hitting attacks if the player comes too close. All occasionally drop gold when defeated, which can be spent on re-rolling the random draws at the end of each wave.

Taking advantage of this is important to building Ascensions before the difficulty curve outpaces the player’s deck. The Ascension system is what ultimately breaks a well-played run: it can replace the wand’s projectiles with a flamethrower, allow infinite mid-air jumps, cancel the first few enemy attacks in each wave, and much more.

The number of Ascensions in a given run is unlimited, so a particularly good deck will inevitably snowball and make the game effectively unloseable.

The game’s overall presentation is peculiar in its simplicity. Spritework is uncomplicated and flatly colored. Enemies are entirely silent but for a sound like a popped bubble that emits when they’re struck or killed, and it was underwhelming at first blush.

But before long, several dozen enemies can crowd the screen at any given moment, and their subtle design compounds into electrifying conglomerations of bright colors as the increasingly cacophonous sound of many attacks landing at once begins to drown out the background music. And as the player becomes more powerful, attacks are imbued with elaborate particle effects. One doesn’t just break the game’s difficulty curve, but also the presentation itself.

📽 Demo Snapshot: xxx

On broad analysis, Deepest Well is a confident and easily enjoyable take on action platforming. Its sole flaw is how quickly the player’s power can snowball, which defangs the challenge after several dozen waves. But fixing this issue for the full version will be a straightforward matter of fine-tuning, and in any case it will only affect players who carefully manage upgrades after growing used to the full roster of sixty-one cards.

Until then, the difficulty curve is steep but fair, rewarding thoughtful tactics just as generously as it rewards raw skill. As-is, the demo is trivial to learn and difficult but satisfying to master. It’s an easy recommendation for any adrenaline-seeking gamer with a half-hour to spare.

Deepest Well is set for release in 2025, on Steam.