TRENCH WARS

The year is 2084. Decades of climate collapse turned the surface into a scarred oven. The air grew thick and poisonous. A slow burial. Those who could afford it did the only logical thing and went below. First came reinforced sub-basements. Then sprawling bunker cities carved beneath the ruins of old capitals. Air scrubbers. Hydroponic towers. Sealed armories. For the rich, this was survival. For everyone else, the surface became a death sentence. The wealthy built walls within walls to keep the poor out. Automated gun platforms rose in every corridor. Grid-based artillery linked to seismic sensors covered every junction. The bunker cities became labyrinths of paranoia. They were safe only for those with the right codes and the right bloodline. But even bunkers can’t hold forever. The suffering above boiled into desperation until starving crowds stole tunnel drills and breached the outer walls. No army marched. Just hungry people. The rich panicked and did what they always do. They left. Private spacecraft fired from deep silos. The billionaires fled toward orbiting habitats and rumors of Mars and abandoned everything. The reinforced walls. The stockpiled food. The water reclamation tanks. The climate-sealed clothes. All of it left behind and still humming. All of it still guarded by the same automated heavy artillery security system built to kill. Now those bunker cities are tombs of plenty. High risk, high reward. A single run could feed a settlement for a year. That is why you are here. You are a Digger. A soldier sent into the ruins. Not for glory but for survival. Your mission is simple: traverse the grid between the abandoned bunkers, the black squares. Start at the upper left corner. Reach the lower right evacuation point. The weapons hunt you by your coordinates. Every step risks incoming fire. Every mistake doubles the fire. There is no retreat. Only down. TRENCH WARS: THE DESCENT is a solo or two player grid based survival game that plays on a crossword puzzle. It is a game about nerve, pathfinding, and outrunning a machine that never stops firing. You will roll dice, trace your path, and watch the map burn around you one square at a time. Includes: Move exactly by die roll down, left, or right. No moving up. No changing direction. A cascading shelling system. Roll column and row. Every matching square gets hit. White turns black. Blast radius rules. Hit an already black square and the shell erases the nearest white square in all four directions. One wrong roll kills you instantly. Four unique soldier classes. Engineer, Scout, Twins, and Berserker. Each changes how you survive or sacrifice. Two player mode with competitive extraction, opposite corners, and a Construction Worker who builds bridges over destroyed squares. Quick reference sheet and an easy mode variant for a less lethal experience. Setup: Take any crossword or print the crossword style grid attached. Number the top and left side 1 through 6 repeatedly. Choose your soldier. Place your pen on the top left white square. Step 1. Roll the die. This is your movement order. Move exactly that many squares down, left, or right. Draw your path. Step 2. If you complete your move, stay silent. If you hit a black square or the map edge, you crash. Stop at the last possible square. The artillery now fires two shots this turn. Step 3. Roll the die twice. First roll is column. Second roll is row. Find every square where the top number matches the column and the side number matches the row. Fill white squares black. If a square is already black, hunt outward in all four directions until you find the first white square. Fill it black. If that square is you, you die. Step 4. Repeat until you reach the bottom right white square before it is destroyed. TRENCH WARS: THE DESCENT is for people who want something tense. Not a story. A puzzle. A grid. A gun that does not miss twice. It is fast. It is brutal. It takes 5 - 15 minutes But if you win, you do not just beat the bunker. You carry the supplies home. You feed a settlement for a year. The descent is not one soldier. It is the last chance of a starving world. Inspired by: Dread Sapper by @Alfred Valley