How to play
- Goal
- Swing from hold to hold through every waymark and out of the gallery.
- How it ends
- A run is won when the runner passes through the way out; it is lost in the river below, on the fault teeth, or after two minutes. Run again at once.
- Record
- The fastest run and the fewest hooks for each gallery; every run counts.
- Press and hold on an iron ring to throw your line to it; lift your finger (or the mouse button) to let go. A press anywhere else throws to the marked ring, the one with bright corners. With a keyboard, hold Space to throw to the marked ring and let it go to let go; Left and Right move the mark. The line reaches about a quarter of the gallery's width, and only to rings with no rock in the way: rings in reach glow.
- Let go as the swing rises toward where you want to go, and throw again before you fall. Hold Reel in (Up or W) to shorten the line and Pay out (Down or S) to lengthen it; reeling in through the bottom of a swing makes it faster and higher. A line thrown from a ledge leaps you off it, and rock only turns you aside.
- Pass every numbered waymark in order, then the lit mouth on the far side. The river below and the violet fault teeth end a run, amber pendants tear after a moment of holding you, rock curtains cut a line drawn through them, and warm drafts lift you. The clock starts with your first throw; R runs the gallery again at once.
Controls
| Press and hold on the gallery | Throw the line (to the ring pressed, or the marked ring) |
|---|---|
| Lift the finger or button | Let go |
| Reel in · Pay out (held) | Shorten or lengthen the line |
| Space (held) | Throw to the marked ring; let go when released |
| ← → · A D | Move the mark between rings in reach |
| ↑ ↓ · W S (held) | Reel in, pay out |
| R | Run again |
| Escape | Pause (the run's time then no longer counts for a record) |
The painted gallery behind the play, the rock texture and the sounds come from the Morass warehouse; the rock shapes, the holds, the teeth, the drafts, the waymarks, the line and the runner are drawn by the game. A run is sent as its moves alone, and the records worker plays it again with the same core before it ranks the result. Your progress stays in this browser under morass.grapple-delve.v1. No ads or analytics run inside the game.
About Grapple Delve
A rope-swinging time trial in the deep galleries of the Korthen keeps, where amber pendants glow on the ceilings and a dark river runs below. You are a keep's rope-runner with a line of pale stone-cord: throw it to an iron ring, swing under it, let go as the swing rises and fly, then throw again before you fall. Run each gallery from the start ledge to the lit mouth on the far side as fast as you can.
You choose every hold: press on a ring and the line flies to that ring, or press anywhere and it flies to the marked one, drawn with bright corners before you press. Reel in through the bottom of a swing and it grows, the way a real pendulum does; pay out to swing low under the rock. Rock never breaks the runner: it bounces off, and a line thrown from a ledge leaps it off again. The swing is exact, the same to the last bit in every browser, so a gallery can be learned.
There are 120 galleries on eight shelves, each bringing one new thing: high ways out that need reeling, violet fault teeth, amber pendants that tear when held too long, numbered waymarks to pass in order, warm drafts that lift you, and rock curtains that cut a line drawn through them. Every gallery was run by ten human-paced hands before it shipped. Each keeps a Top 10 for the fastest run and one for the fewest hooks, and the site re-plays every run before it keeps a place.
