Vespillo

 The heroes are dead. The work remains 

Vespillo is a multiplayer extraction platformer set after the end of the great adventure. The war is over. The treasure is still below. You are not a hero; you are one of the workers sent down to settle the account.

Grapple into a procedurally shifting underworld with other players. Pick through the remains, carry out what you can, and decide when to turn back. Greed has weight. The more you haul, the slower you move - and the harder it hits when you swing it.

 LIGHT THE CANDLE AND DEATH BECOMES REAL 

Most shifts, dying costs you your flesh and nothing else. You get up on borrowed bones and go back to work.

You can end that whenever you decide you are ready. Light your candle and there is no respawn. None. You lie where you fell, in the dark, in a world other people are still walking through - and you stay there until another player finds your skull and carries it home to the Keeper.

You cannot save yourself. Somebody has to come and get you.

You may light it once. Snuff it, and you go back to ordinary shifts forever. 

 DESCEND. HAUL. RETURN 

• Move by hook. Swing through vertical ruins, reel past hazards, and make every route count.
• Carry a real haul. Loot is physical. It slows you down, changes your silhouette, and can become the thing you fight with.
• Wear what you find. Your kit is loot. The Keeper will sell you boots and a rusty blade so you are never stuck, but everything worth carrying comes up out of the dark.
• Work together in the dark. Share the descent, trade rescues, and bring home what other shifts left behind.
• Lose your flesh, not the job. Ordinary death leaves your skull below and puts you back on borrowed bones. Recover it to become whole again.
• Answer to the Keeper. Fill personal work orders, turn excess into gilt, earn keys, and reinforce the body you are trying not to lose.

 THE POST IS FILLED 

One corridor off the Keeper's floor does not lead down. It leads to the Arena, and to the Incumbent, who has held the post of hero for a thousand years and declines to resign.

You cannot buy your way past him. Gold buys bandages, boots, and the dents beaten out of your plate. It never buys damage. Walk in wearing what you dragged up yourself, or do not walk in.

Lose, and the floor opens. Your kit and your skull go down the Gullet and are spat back out somewhere in the shared underworld - for you to go and find, or for somebody else to.

Nothing down there hates you. It is all just still working.