Downwell is a game about a man who jumps into a hole and shoots things with his feet. That is the whole pitch, and it is enough. Moppin, the one-man studio of Ojiro Fumoto, built the game around a single idea — a pair of gunboots — and then refused to add anything that would dilute it. The result is one of the cleanest, most disciplined action games of the past decade.
It is also, at 7.8 out of 10, a game that stops just short of greatness. More on that below.
Trailer, via DevolverDigital.
Welltaro and the Gunboots
Downwell is a 2015 roguelike vertically scrolling shooter developed by Moppin and published by Devolver Digital. It was the first game Fumoto developed solely on his own. It came out for iOS and Microsoft Windows in October 2015, for Android in January 2016, and for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita in May 2016. A Nintendo Switch version followed in January 2019, with British studio Red Phantom Games handling the Switch and PlayStation ports.
The premise is exactly as strange as it sounds. Players control a “curious man” named Welltaro, who is at the local park one night when he decides to explore the depths of the well nearby. Knowing that monsters are waiting for him inside, he straps on his gunboots and starts his trip downwards, killing his enemies to proceed and collect treasure.
That is the entire story. There is no cutscene, no dialogue, no lore dump. Welltaro sees a well. Welltaro goes down the well. This is the correct amount of narrative for this game.
Three Controls, One Idea
Downwell has three basic controls: left and right movement, and the ability to jump while on a solid surface. When mid-air, pressing and holding the jump button fires from Welltaro’s gunboots.
That is it. That is the control scheme. Everything else in Downwell — every enemy, every upgrade, every decision — flows from the tension between those three inputs. Jumping is also shooting. Shooting is also falling. You cannot do one without committing to the other.
The gunboots are automatically reloaded when Welltaro hits a surface, regardless of whether or not it is solid. That reload rule is the game’s secret engine. It means every landing is a tactical reset, and every missed platform is a punishment that compounds. You are always either falling, firing, or reloading. There is no fourth state.
The well is procedurally generated, and the player is often confronted with a large number of different types of enemies, most of which can either be shot with the gunboots or stomped by jumping on them. Others, however, are resistant to being stomped and can thus only be killed with bullets.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. While normal enemies only feature a red glare alongside the white outlines, these stomp-resistant enemies are completely highlighted in red, with a more filled sprite body. The game tells you what you need to know in a single glance, without a tutorial or a tooltip. It is a masterclass in readable design.
Timevoids, Caves and the Shopkeeper
During the descent, players will find “timevoids,” which, upon entering, stop everything outside them, as well as the music. The silence is the point. Downwell is a loud game — gunboots popping, enemies bursting, gems clinking — and the timevoids strip all of that away for a few seconds.
These timevoids may lead to caves, which provide the player with a large amount of gems, or with an alternate weapon. Every alternate weapon rewrites the gunboots on several axes at once: how fast they fire, how long the gap is between shots, how much ammo each shot eats, how much ammo you carry, and the shape the bullets make. Each one also hands over either more health or a bigger ammo cap.
In other cases, the timevoids lead to a shop, where Welltaro is welcomed by a Jizō, who is taking the place of a shopkeeper, offering the player three different items in exchange for gems.
The shop is where Downwell’s roguelike structure gets its teeth. You are always spending gems you might need later. You are always guessing whether the next stage will punish you for the weapon you just bought.
The well is built up from multiple stages, each of them having three levels and featuring different sets of environmental designs.
Four Colors and a Red Glare
Downwell uses a palette of four colors, which default to black background and white outlines, with red as a highlight for gems, enemies and other important items, and blue for water environment features. The exact colors can be changed through unlockable in-game palettes.
The art style and underground level design have been compared to Spelunky and Cave Story, and the comparison holds. But Downwell is starker than either. Spelunky has texture and warmth. Cave Story has character portraits and a story. Downwell has four colors and a man falling.
That restraint is the game’s identity. Every red pixel on screen means something — a gem to grab, an enemy to avoid, a threat that cannot be stomped. Every blue pixel means water. Every white outline is a platform or a body. Nothing is decorative.
The unlockable palettes are a small thing, but they matter more than they should. They let you repaint the game without changing a single rule, which is the kind of feature that only makes sense in a game this stripped down.
What Downwell Gets Right
The core loop is close to perfect. Falling, firing, landing, reloading — it all fits together without friction. The procedural generation keeps the well from becoming memorizable, and the three-level stage structure gives each run a rhythm: descend, breathe, descend again.
The stomp-versus-shoot distinction is the best single decision in the game. It forces you to read enemies before you commit, and it punishes the instinct to bounce on everything. The red-filled sprites are a clean, wordless solution to a problem most games solve with a health bar and a tutorial.
The timevoids are the second-best decision. Stopping the music is a genuinely bold move. Most games are terrified of silence. Downwell uses it as a reward.
And the gunboots themselves — the whole absurd premise — hold up. The game never apologizes for them, never explains them, never winks at the player. It just hands you a man with guns for boots and lets you get on with it.
Where Downwell Stops Short
The problem is that Downwell is very good at one thing, and it does not want to be good at anything else.
The well is built from multiple stages, each with three levels, and the environmental designs change — but the game’s four-color palette and its single control scheme mean those changes are cosmetic more than mechanical. You are doing the same thing in stage five that you did in stage one. The enemies get harder. The layout shifts. The verb does not change.
That is a defensible design choice, and Downwell executes it well. But it caps the game. There is no moment in Downwell where the rules bend, where the game asks you to rethink what you have learned. The alternate weapons change how the gunboots fire, but they do not change the fundamental relationship between falling and firing.
The result is a game that is easy to admire and hard to love for long stretches. It is a perfect snack. It is not a meal.
The 7.8 out of 10 is the right score, and it is the right score for this reason: Downwell does exactly what it sets out to do, and what it sets out to do is deliberately small. It is not a flawed game. It is a complete game that chose its ceiling.
The Score
Downwell is one of the best-designed action games of its era, and it is also one of the most limited. The gunboots are a genuine invention. The four-color palette is a genuine constraint that produces genuine clarity. The stomp-versus-shoot rule is the kind of thing other developers should study.
But the game never grows. It never surprises you after the first hour. It gives you a perfect loop and then asks you to run that loop until you are done.
That is not a failure. It is a choice, and Downwell makes it with total confidence. The game knows exactly what it is: a man with guns for boots, falling into a well, shooting everything on the way down. Nothing more, nothing less.
Hard Numbers
- Game: Downwell
- Developer: Moppin (Ojiro Fumoto)
- Publisher: Devolver Digital
- Release: October 2015 (iOS, Microsoft Windows); January 2016 (Android); May 2016 (PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita); January 2019 (Nintendo Switch)
- Switch and PlayStation ports: Red Phantom Games
- Genre: Roguelike vertically scrolling shooter
- Modes: Single player
- Perspective: Side view
- Palette: Four colors — black background, white outlines, red highlights, blue water
- Controls: Left/right movement, jump, mid-air gunboot fire
- Structure: Multiple stages, three levels each
- Critic aggregate: 7.8/10, drawn from 8 outlets
- Platforms reviewed: PlayStation 4, Android, PC, iOS
What Downwell Contains
- Welltaro: the “curious man” who explores the well
- Gunboots: the weapon, fired by holding jump mid-air
- Timevoids: pockets that stop everything outside them, including the music
- Caves: timevoid destinations holding gems or alternate weapons
- Shops: timevoid destinations run by a Jizō, offering three items for gems
- Stomp-resistant enemies: red-filled sprites that can only be killed with bullets
- Unlockable palettes: in-game color swaps for the four-color scheme
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