Deeper
A puzzle roguelike for the Game Boy Advance: dig down through timed puzzle rooms, run after run. Made in about 15 hours; the developer credits the code to Claude Opus 5.
Links go to the official store or developer page. Last verified Nov 3, 2026.
Where to play
Every platform this game is on. Links are checked against official sources; we never host or mirror games.
- View on itch.ioitch.ioReleased · Game Boy Advance ROM (Deeper.gba, 11 MB) for an emulator; no browser versionFree
Download from itch.io.
Desktop · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
- View on GitHubGitHubReleased · C source, puzzle generator and tests (MIT licence per the README)Free
Download from the GitHub releases page.
Desktop · GitHub (Khopa)
About Deeper
Deeper is a puzzle roguelike for the Game Boy Advance in which dwarves dig their way down through the underground, run after run. You pick a descent of 15, 30 or 60 layers and work through a branching map of rooms: dig sites, ore veins, prospector ledgers (which the README calls sudoku-like), galleries, cavities to fill with stone blocks, firedamp faces to clear without a blast (a minesweeper-like room, per the README) and, at the very bottom, a picture hidden in the rock. Between rooms there are goblins, orcs and trolls to beat with key sequences, walls to hammer through, crates to gamble on and a dwarf merchant who trades your ore for beer, bread, keys, boots and a sturdier helmet. Every room is against the clock: solving fast brings a bigger haul, and mistakes make the cave fall in. Losing your last life ends the descent, but the ore you brought back buys gear for the next one. The page lists seven kinds of puzzles with more than 2,900 puzzles, six biomes, several monsters and French, English, Spanish and German. The developer, Khopa, says the game's creation was heavily AI-assisted, made with Claude Opus 5, Suno and PixelLab in about 15 hours of development; the README credits the code to Claude Opus 5 and says game design, balance and pixel art were then tuned by hand. A free .gba ROM (name your own price) on itch.io, with the C source on GitHub under the MIT licence.
How it was built
Partially verifiedThe itch.io page says the creation of the game was heavily AI-assisted and that it was made with Claude Opus 5, Suno and PixelLab, in about 15 hours of development; its AI disclosure ticks AI Assisted, Code, Graphics, Sounds and Text. The README of the GitHub repository under the same Khopa name gives the split: code by Claude Opus 5 (“High” reasoning, on the Claude Pro plan), music by Suno (Pro licence) and graphics by PixelLab (Pixel Apprentice tier), after which game design, balance and pixel art were all tuned by hand. Suno and PixelLab are not in our tool list. Neither source says which Claude product was used; the repository also contains a CLAUDE.md file with build steps and coding conventions, which suggests but does not establish Claude Code.
- DeveloperREADME, “How it was made”: Code — Claude Opus 5 (High reasoning, Claude Pro plan); Music — Suno; Graphics — PixelLab; “Everything was then tuned by hand: game design, balance and pixel art.” The itch.io page does not link this repository. — GitHub (Khopa)
- UnverifiedCLAUDE.md in the repository, describing the build, layout and commit conventions and calling the game a “Dwarves Manager spin-off”; it does not say which tool used it. — GitHub (Khopa)
Written in pure C on devkitARM and libtonc, with no C++ or assembly, per the repository's CLAUDE.md. The puzzle rules live in a platform-independent layer that is compiled three times: into the ROM, into a PC puzzle generator and solver that builds the puzzle banks embedded in the ROM from deterministic seeds, and into host unit tests. Scripted scenarios are also played in the mGBA emulator, and the README shows a complete 15-layer descent recorded by that test harness. The README credits the code to Claude Opus 5, the music to Suno and the graphics to PixelLab, and says design, balance and pixel art were tuned by hand afterwards; the design notes in the repository are in French.
- Engine / framework
- No engine (C with devkitARM and libtonc)
- Languages
- C
- Team size
- Not disclosed
- Initial build time
- About 15 hours of developmentDeveloper Reporteditch.io
- Development time
- Not disclosed
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- Not disclosed
“The creation of this game was heavily AI-assisted. Made with Claude Opus 5, Suno and PixelLab.”Verification notes: AI use, features, supported languages and the 15-hour figure come from the itch.io page; the publication time (17 Sep 2026, 00:10 UTC; updated 00:25 UTC) from the itch.io listing feed, because the page itself shows no date. The split by tool (code, music, graphics) and the hand-tuning come from the README of github.com/Khopa/deeper-gba. The itch.io page says the source code is on the developer's GitHub but does not link it, so the repository is tied to the game only by the shared Khopa name, the matching title and description, and the CLAUDE.md file calling the game a “Dwarves Manager spin-off” (Dwarves Manager is another game on Khopa's itch.io profile); the GitHub listing is therefore marked unverified. The README and CLAUDE.md were read as raw files; github.com pages and repository statistics could not be opened from the research environment. Neither source says which Claude product was used, so the tool is recorded as Claude, with the CLAUDE.md file noted only as a hint. No AI code share is recorded because no number is given. Price: name your own price, 0 € minimum, suggested 2.00 €. Puzzle count: the page says 2,900+, the README badge 2,908 puzzles in the banks. The game had no itch.io ratings on 4 Nov 2026. Team size and location are not stated. The ROM was not run.
Development history
Published on itch.io (00:10 UTC) as a name-your-own-price Game Boy Advance ROM.
Game performance
Each figure measures something different — concurrent players, owners, downloads and sales are never interchangeable and are never added together. Labels show where each number comes from.
itch.io
Name your own price: free download, with a suggested price of 2.00 €.
Not publicly available: itch.io rating, Gross revenue.
GitHub
No public metrics recorded for this listing.
Not publicly available: GitHub stars.
Reviews & rankings
Not yet reviewed by our editors.
Not currently ranked.
Sources
| Source | Type | Published | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deeper by Khopa itch.io | Store page | Sep 17, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Khopa/deeper-gba — README GitHub (Khopa) | Repository | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Khopa/deeper-gba — CLAUDE.md GitHub (Khopa) | Repository | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Khopa — itch.io profile itch.io | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| itch.io games tagged ai-assisted (listing feed) itch.io | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
