Hey everyone below is the current 1.6 roadmap. This is still a work in progress so nothing is set in stone. I am working on a couple little tweaks and bug fixes for version 1.5.4 which I've included below as well. I'm always open to and appreciative of feedback and ideas! Let me know what you think.

-------------------- 1.5.4 Roadmap -------------------

[] BUG - Level 6 monsters not spawning

[] CHANGE - minimum monster party level should increase slightly faster
[] CHANGE - low tier npcs should never stop being spawnable

-------------------- 1.6 Roadmap --------------------

[] FEATURE - New functionality - Monster Spawners - destroyable portals that will periodically spawn monsters into the dungeon level
[] FEATURE - New functionality - ADLIB audio
[] FEATURE - New functionality - Unbreakable walls

[] FEATURE - New functionality - Enchanting Equipment - uses scrolls enchanting up to +4 safe for weapons gives +1 to items highest stat, after +4 1/[target enchantment level] chance to succeed or weapon is
destroyed for every level over 4 +3 for highest stat. same for armor but +6 is safe.

[] FEATURE - New functionality - Alignment - Based on number of NPCs killed vs Monsters Killed. -3 Alignment for killing NPC, -5 for killing NPC who has helped you (peasants and beggars don't count because
talking to them conveys no benefit), +1 Alignment for killing Mob. Graded scale with Alignment names [Prime Evil, Evil, Chaotic, Rogue, Neutral, Just, Honorable, Heroic, Radiant]
[] FEATURE - New functionality - Alignment should effect an NPCs willingness to interact with you, the lower your alignment the lower the chances they interact, if it's low enough they should attack you
when you try to interact, if they chose not to interact but not to attack they should use up their interaction and give you a rude message. High alignment: additional benefits (Stay at inn twice, shop with
merchant/trader twice, knights never attack player, two pieces of equipment granted or upgraded by blacksmiths)
[] FEATURE - New functionality - Alignment should be included in high score

[] FEATURE - New functionality - Monster special attacks and abilities
[] FEATURE - New Monster Ability - Poison - Add to spider - 1 to 3 turns of player damage (1-3 points per round)
[] FEATURE - New Monster Ability - Disease - Add to Zombie, Ghoul - random stat reduced by 1 until cured
[] FEATURE - New Monster Ability - Slowed - Add to slime, great serpent - lose 1 combat round every 3 rounds until slowing monster is killed
[] FEATURE - New Monster Ability - Thief - Add to bandit - steal gold from player (added to reward when combat is won, lost if player flees with teleport or smokebomb)
[] FEATURE - New Monster Ability - Summon - Add to dire wolf, cultist, lich, demon, arch-demon - Summon a monster to aid (dependent on summoming monster, high percentage change to fail)
[] FEATURE - New Monster Ability - Firebreathing - Add to dragon, elder dragon - deals magical damage to player
[] FEATURE - New Monster Ability - Heal Self - Add to - Wraith, Lich - Heals self based on wisdom
[] FEATURE - New Monster Ability - Heal Others - Add to Cultist, Demon - Heals others but only specific monsters IE cultist can heal imps and demons but nothing else

[] FEATURE - New NPC - Archmage - Teaches a spell or improves mastery of existing spell. If all spells are maxed gives message "There is nothing more I can teach you"

[] FEATURE - New NPC Ability - Healer also heals disease and slow conditions

[] FEATURE - New Monster - Mimic - only spawnable as single enemy encounter from chests with unique message "Oh no a mimic!", always drops high tier loot.

[] FEATURE - New Item - Smoke Bomb - single use item allows players to escape battle but doesn't teleport them
[] FEATURE - New Item - Scroll of map dungeon - shows entire current level
[] FEATURE - New Item - Scroll of egress - shows stairs on current level
[] FEATURE - New Item - Cure Potion - Heals disease condition

[] FEATURE - New Spell - Cleanse - Removes Poison, Disease, Slow conditions
[] FEATURE - New Spell - Detect Traps - detects traps success for each trap based on wisdom vs trap difficulty
[] FEATURE - New Spell - Armageddon - destroys everything on the floor except stairs down (walls, npcs, monsters, chests, spawners)

[] FEATURE - New functionality - Trap Squares - Hurt player, or grant conditions like slow, disease, or surprise battles; can be detected by player based on agility * wisdom vs trap difficulty rerolled every time player moves
adjacent to trap square , also detectable with detect traps spell; not present on easy
[] FEATURE - New Trap - Spikes - Damages player, save calculation for hit based on agility, calculation for damage based on player defense
[] FEATURE - New Trap - Slow - Player slows down allowing monsters and npcs two moves per player move, save calculation based on higher of wisdom or agility, calculation for length random 1-10 turns.
[] FEATURE - New Trap - Disease - Player gets -1 to random stat, calculation for save wisdom
[] FEATURE - New Trap - Surprise Battle - Player is attacked and moves second, calculation for save agility, on save monster party spawns in adjacent square to player rather than initiating battle

Thanks for providing the roadmap. I really look forward to the Adlib support the most.

Testing 1.5.3 on my Olivetti and it works. Also tested the game on a Zenith Z-150 (XT) machine with no issues. I don't really have much more to add currently. I feel I need to spend some more time with the game before I'm able to give some more feedback.

delinthe wrote on 2025-11-20, 06:05:

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS ------------------------ […]
Show full quote

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
------------------------

Target Platform: IBM PC/XT and compatibles
Display: Text mode 80x25 (CGA/MDA/EGA/VGA)
Compiler: Borland Turbo C 2.01
Language Standard: Strict C89 (ANSI C)
Audio: PC Speaker, PI-XT serial audio (optional)
Memory: Conventional memory only (real mode DOS)
Storage: Save files use standard DOS file I/O

it's good, i thought the ability to dig through everything perhaps potentially game breaking, maybe it needs some kind of constraint like a tool that wears out or an energy level or something. cool though

Anyway, I can see why text mode and pc speaker - to keep things simple and universal, i'm interested in why C89 and Turbo C 2.01. It make sense, but so would Quick Basic, Turbo Pascal and some other tools. Just interested in tool choice really 😀

Fun fact that game started it's life as an IBM BASIC game, I found myself hitting limits because of the rudimentary capabilities of the language. I went for C89 and Turbo C 2.01 specifically because I have experience developing games in C and they were period authentic choices that would compile and run on real hardware (I still test every build on my IBM XT!). I love Quick BASIC, and I know you can go much further with it than IBM BASIC but I never pushed my craft with that language to the point where i could pull off this game, especially without compiling the code. Same with Pascal, it was one of a handful of languages I have experience with, but I haven't touched it in over 20 years so it just wasn't my go to choice.

Hey everyone just uploaded version 1.5.4 here are the changes!

=====1.5.4=====

[X] BUG - Level 6 monsters not spawning
[X] BUG - Iron Golem was displaying great serpent art
[X] BUG - Bat was never spawning due to off by 1 error

[X] CHANGE - slight tweaks to minumum and maximum monster party levels for better difficulty scaling
[X] CHANGE - low tier npcs should never stop being spawnable

It's a relatively small update but it fixes a missing level 1 monster, and every missing level 6 monster hopefully that gives you something fun to see in your deeper dives!

With this version complete I'm going to start diving into version 1.6 which is a major feature update!

Thanks for the update!

Looking forward already to 1.6!

I love the game, but I'm having trouble with saved games. The program appears to do some strange magic with memory snapshots and saving games. When I save a game and quit the game, and then immediately execute the game again and restore, the saved game loads fine.

When I do other stuff, like use Xtree Gold, other DOS programs, etc., execute the binary, then re-load my saved game, I either get a page full of garbage or a system freeze. I've also gotten a cryptic "saved game corrupt" error. This occurs on any difficulty, and regardless of my DOS configuration. Why all the secret suace with saved games?! This should be a simple and straightforward part of Press Deeper.

The above makes "saving" essentially useless for me. I'm not sure what's different about my system, except I'm running on bare metal MS-DOS 7.1 with sound disabled, in real mode. Your program doesn't appear to access either EMS or XMS, but I do have an XMS driver loaded, with no EMS enabled. I've got plenty of free DOS memory (~598 kb). The behavior persists on multiple bare metal DOS systems I've tried - with the same config...

Do you have any possible explanation or solution?

Hey Zyzzle,

Thanks for the heads up. That's a very interesting issue. What version of the game are you running? Could you drop one or two corrupted save files here so I can check them out. There was a bug in one version which I fixed where it turns out I was forgetting to write some necessary values to the save file, so if you reloaded immediately that data would still be resident in memory, but if you exited the program and reloaded it that data would be lost and the save files wouldn't work. I suspect you're running one of the versions that had that bug.

Quick status update for everyone I'm about 2/3 of the way done with version 1.6 which adds in a lot of new content and features. hoping to have it completed this week! When it's complete do you guys think I should drop the update in this thread. Or create a new 1.6 release thread?

delinthe wrote on 2025-12-15, 16:38:

Quick status update for everyone I'm about 2/3 of the way done with version 1.6 which adds in a lot of new content and features. hoping to have it completed this week! When it's complete do you guys think I should drop the update in this thread. Or create a new 1.6 release thread?

Exciting!

Just drop it in this thread, update the original post as well.

delinthe wrote on 2025-12-15, 16:37:

Hey Zyzzle,

Thanks for the heads up. That's a very interesting issue. What version of the game are you running? Could you drop one or two corrupted save files here so I can check them out. There was a bug in one version which I fixed where it turns out I was forgetting to write some necessary values to the save file, so if you reloaded immediately that data would still be resident in memory, but if you exited the program and reloaded it that data would be lost and the save files wouldn't work. I suspect you're running one of the versions that had that bug.

Sure, I'm using v 1.5.4

Has a later version been released? Like others I'm looked very forward to v1.6!

I've attached one save file which says "corrupt" when trying to load and one which loaded OK.

Hey everyone just wanted to pop in with a quick status update!

Version 1.6 is 90% feature complete. Sorry for the delay in getting this one out the door I have a tendency to underestimate how long things will take, especially during the holidays! I wrapped up a few more features over the weekend and I'm closing in on wrapping this one up.

@Zyzzle I reviewed the contents of the save game files you sent and realized that there is a pretty big bug in my save game module that is leaking some program data into the save and not including other expected values. As long as that data is still resident in memory everything works fine, but if you restart the computer, or load another program you risk overwriting those values and making the save games unreliable. I'll have that fixed up for the version 1.6 release. Thanks for pointing this out! I've also started working on a list of manual tests and checks to perform as part of my pre-release process. Hopefully this will help prevent some of these issues from making it out the door. Gotta love vintage coding where automated test coverage just isn't really in the cards.

I've also started compiling a feature list for version 1.7 when that list is complete I'll share it here with everyone.

delinthe wrote on 2026-01-05, 14:37:

@Zyzzle I reviewed the contents of the save game files you sent and realized that there is a pretty big bug in my save game module that is leaking some program data into the save and not including other expected values. As long as that data is still resident in memory everything works fine, but if you restart the computer, or load another program you risk overwriting those values and making the save games unreliable. I'll have that fixed up for the version 1.6 release. Thanks for pointing this out! I've also started working on a list of manual tests and checks to perform as part of my pre-release process. Hopefully this will help prevent some of these issues from making it out the door. Gotta love vintage coding where automated test coverage just isn't really in the cards.

I've also started compiling a feature list for version 1.7 when that list is complete I'll share it here with everyone.

Thanks for the update. I thought I couldn't be the only one with those corrupt saves... but apparently no one else reported it. I'm glad you found this bug and are addressing it- and thanks.

1.6 should be fabulous. Can't wait to see all of the improvements and features.

I didn't notice it tbh. I never used the save function as I played in one sitting and I just died when I got too far 😁

this is very nice indeed!
kudos on making it!
have you considered adding some simple adlib support to it? I think it will really be the cherry on top!

keropi wrote on 2026-01-12, 22:29:

this is very nice indeed!
kudos on making it!
have you considered adding some simple adlib support to it? I think it will really be the cherry on top!

Coming in new 1.6 version according to the OP

vetz wrote on 2026-01-12, 22:33:

Coming in new 1.6 version according to the OP

oh I missed that!
excellent 😁

Adlib music is working! Still working on SFX support for Adlib. Actually just got an Adlib for my XT so I can test it on real hardware too!

So a quick update for everyone, version 1.6 is feature complete and in testing. Hoping to have it out to everyone in the near future! It took a little longer than anticipated to build all the features I had in mind, tweak them until they were all fun, and of course totally change the memory map because this added so much that I kept hitting the DWORD segment limit, hooray real mode memory limitations haha.

Press Deeper v1.6 released – Major Gameplay and AdLib Update!

I just pushed version 1.6 of Press Deeper to Itch.io. This is by far the largest update since the initial release, and adds a lot of new systems while keeping everything compatible with real DOS hardware. That being said my IBM XT is currently undergoing surgery so I've been mostly testing this in DOSBox-X and on one of my 486s. I'd love to hear if there are any performance issues on PC/XT class systems!

Highlights in 1.6:

Full AdLib / Sound Blaster OPL2 support with VGM music playback and multi-channel SFX

Status effects (poison, disease, slow, haste)

Alignment system that affects NPC behavior, rewards, and high scores

Trap system with manual disarming, recovery / redeployment, avoidance based on stat checks, and monster interaction

Monster abilities like summoning, stealing gold, breath attacks, and healing

Enchanting and blacksmithing systems that scale equipment over time

Download and full changelog here:
https://ultramegahypergames.itch.io/press-deeper

I wanted to give a special thanks to everyone here who’s followed the project so far, to everyone who has played the game, to everyone whos provided feedback, and to the person who paid for it (You are the first person to ever pay me for a piece of software I wrote and it was really exciting!). The feedback from this community has genuinely shaped a lot of these systems. Looking forward to pressing deeper with everyone in 2026!

oh nice!!! thanks for the update and hard work delinthe!