A descent into living light.
You are a falling spark of light, plunging through a dark, living cavern. Your glow paints the world into existence as you fall — gather light, awaken echoes, weave past lasers, and never let the shadows touch you. The deeper you go, the stranger and more dangerous the dark becomes.
It's a single self-contained HTML file: no installation, no dependencies, no build step. Hand-built physics, particle systems, dynamic lighting, and a generative soundtrack — all running in your browser.
Easiest: double-click start.bat — it opens the game in your default
browser.
Or: double-click lumenfall.html directly, or drag it onto any modern
browser window (Firefox, Chrome, or Edge).
🔊 Click "Begin the Fall" to start — that first click also unlocks the audio (browsers block sound until you interact with the page).
No internet connection is required; everything runs locally.
| Action | Keys |
|---|---|
| Steer left / right | ← → or A / D |
| Glide | Move the mouse (the spark drifts toward the cursor) |
| Flare | Hold SPACE or click / hold the mouse |
Flaring burns brighter, slows your fall, lights up more of the cavern, and pushes back the shadows — but it drains your energy. Let go to recharge.
- Gather motes (golden sparks) for light — chain them for a score multiplier.
- Awaken echoes (the big rippling rings) — each one banks an Echo Boost.
- Survive — reach as deep as you can. Your best descent is saved.
- Shadows — drifting void-creatures that fear your light. Touch one and you scatter into the dark. Flaring scatters them instead, for points.
- Lasers — red beams with a single gap. Weave through the opening.
- Gates — purple veils of dark. Lethal to cross unless you are flaring, which burns them open. Flaring cleanly through earns bonus points.
Every echo you awaken stores a charge (shown as a glowing gold dot, top-right). When your flame runs dry, pressing flare spends one charge for a golden supernova: it refills your energy, makes you briefly invincible, and detonates a shockwave that shatters every shadow on screen and blows open nearby gates and lasers. Stockpile up to 7 and unleash them when you're cornered.
The cavern cycles through five distinct zones as you descend (~850m each), each with its own palette, music, and rules — and it loops back harder every time:
- The Threshold — where the fall begins.
- Crystal Reach — bright and refractive; your light reaches farther.
- The Hollows — open and purple; the shadows swarm.
- Magma Veins — hot and fast.
- The Deep Choir — near-total darkness; only your flare reveals the path.
The light you gather banks between runs. After you fall, visit The Sanctum to spend it on permanent upgrades:
- Inner Light — a wider glow.
- Deep Reserve — a larger flame (flare longer).
- Rekindle — faster energy regen.
- Yearning — a magnet that pulls motes toward you.
- Aegis Spark — begin each fall with shields (survive a hit without flaring).
- Avarice — every mote and echo is worth more light.
Your bank, best score, and upgrades are saved automatically in your browser (localStorage), so they persist across sessions.
Resetting progress: clear this site's local storage in your browser, or open the game in a private/incognito window for a clean slate.
- Don't hold flare constantly — you'll run dry. Pulse it when you need light or need to scatter a shadow.
- Save an Echo Boost for the deep biomes; the supernova is a lifesaver in the dark.
- Chaining pickups builds a multiplier (up to ×3) — grab motes in quick succession for big light.
- In The Deep Choir you're nearly blind. Flare to see, then dim to recharge.
- One file.
lumenfall.htmlcontains everything — markup, styling, and all game code. - No dependencies, no build. It uses the HTML5 Canvas and Web Audio APIs directly.
- Best on a recent desktop browser. Tested in Firefox. Works in Chrome and Edge. It also supports touch, so it runs on phones/tablets.
Fall well. ⟡