The Ladder

You wake with your hands wrapped around cold metal.

There is no ground beneath you. No ceiling above. No walls, no light — only twenty metres of ladder above you, twenty metres below, and the dark swallowing everything past that. You do not remember climbing here.

So you climb. Up or down is the only decision the game gives you, and it does not tell you which one is right.

Climbing is a rhythm, not a button. One hand at a time: hold your direction, then alternate left hand and right hand up the rungs. One hand must always be holding on. Move faster and you cover ground faster, but every grab costs you, and when your arms are done they are done.

The dark is not empty. Metal shifts somewhere far above. Something breathes when you stop moving. Rungs fail under the weight of a hand that trusted them. Things come down out of the fog with barely enough time to look up, work out which side they are falling past, and lean the other way — with one hand, because the other one is all that is holding you.

The ladder ends. Eventually. Maybe. There is a way out at the top and a way out at the bottom, and the game has opinions about which of the two you went looking for.

A short game about ambition, direction, and the distance between you and whatever is down there.