<<nobr>><<if $danger lte 0>>You are relatively safe to be around, although your sandy edges may be enough to drag in small and unwary animals.\n<<else if $danger is 1>>Aren't you the hazard - you've got a spiky bit of rock at your bottom now, and woe to anything that falls in - like that cute little rabbit thing in there! It's not doing well. You've killed it. \n<<else if $danger is 2>>Hmm. It seems that your walls are getting pretty slippery - and they break off when things try to climb out! Wow, that is really unsafe, as that deer learned. Is causing harm integral to your nature now? \n<<else if $danger is 3>>What a lot of little tunnels you've got. Very elegant, and very short on water and air! Except when there's a lot of water all at once. Still no air though. It seems several of the creatures that had wandered into you need air, and some but not too much water. Is it right to be contemptuous of creatures that are so fragile? \n<<else if $danger is 4>>Soooo... apparently your depths are full of some sort of toxic gas? Maybe it's, like, methane, or something. Because whatever that was moving about down there is not breathing well. Or at all, really. You feel nothing when you kill. \n<<else if $danger is 5>>It seems kind of unfair, but the area around your top is just riddled with sinkholes. All sorts of little things are dropping in there. Why, you swallowed up that whole little town that decided you looked hospitable! You'd barely even noticed. \n<<else if $danger is 6>>So remember I mentioned that sometimes there was a lot of water? And that there was gas? Apparently sometimes you just sort of spray boiling water all over anything nearby. And then the little fleshy parasites sort of just fall over. Disgusting things. \n<<else if $danger is 7>>You always know what kind of rocks you've got, but apparently some of the little meat poppets are very much into some of your metals. They are just climbing down in all sorts of numbers. It's an embarassment. Fortunately you still have all those poison gasses, or you'd be quite put out. \n<<else if $danger is 8>>Ok cool news - you are seriously disfiguring the local geology. So there have been rather a lot of earthquakes happening. You can feel all sorts of landslides and the like happening. You can't bring yourself to be too worried about this. \n<<else if $danger gte 9>>Magma! You found some magma! You're just so excited that you're spraying it all over the place. You're having so much fun sculpting new surfaces and rocks. The various wildlife seem to be in something of a panic, but when aren't they. \n<<endif>>\n<<endnobr>>

CHASM SIMULATOR 9000\n\nThe Ultimate Cavity Experience! \n\nLive a stunningly detailed, perfectly rendered existence as a \n\n * chasm * cave * ditch * pit * valley * gorge *\n\nOr any other type of dirt hole you can imagine!\n\n[[Begin your journey|divot]]\n\n<<set $size = 0>>\n<<set $home = 0>>\n<<set $danger = 0>>\n\n[[Credits]]

Life is interesting, as a hole. You are, as far as you know, alone; the only one of your kind. Last - or first - of the holes. Are you the earth? You think you cannot be; you cannot feel outside of yourself. Are you the air that fills you? You think not; it flows through and around you indifferent and unchanged. You are the liminal space, the shape in the earth and not its substance, you think. \n\nThis is not a bad thing to be. \n\nWhile you were pondering, an aphid fell into the hole! \n\nYou have dried out a bit since the rainstorm, and your slightly sandy ground has trapped him.\n\nCongratulations! You have devoured a living thing!\n\nI guess you should [[wait some more.]]

<<nobr>>\n<<if $home lte 0>>Your insides are relatively protected from mild wind, and predators might not even look inside you. All in all, not a bad place for something to live. \n<<else if $home is 1>>Actually, it's kind of cozy in here. Some insects have actually started bringing back food and sort of - farming? - in some of your sandier walls. It's cute and doesn't really bother you.\n<<else if $home is 2>>In some of your larger surface cavities, some mammals have taken up residence. There's a den with some cute bears cuddling together for the winter, and another nook that is just jam-packed with thousands of snakes. You've made this home for them and they don't even thank you. \n<<else if $home is 3>>Some humans have moved into one of the upper cave regions. You gave them a trickle of water and shelter, and what do they do? They start drawing on your walls and starting fires. So disprespectful. \n<<else if $home is 4>>You've stretched out your upper layers into a verdant, wholesome valley. Lots of fruit, colonies of the humans, all just going about their daily business. Tilling and digging, scratching at you. At first it was kind of soothing, but they just never stop. Well, you're at least satisfied that they're doing well for themselves. Not that they thank you or anything. \n<<else if $home is 5>>You've been very kind to the humans; given them food, shelter, whatever they wanted. But this is just uncalled for - they're climbing in and scraping out the bat droppings that had been left behind! You've been collecting those forever. Unbelievably rude. \n<<else if $home is 6>>So apparently one of your lower layers has a whole old-timey cavern. It's like, full of dinosaurs and coelecanths. They've just been there this whole time, somehow without suffocating or evolving further, which really seems like they're being lazy and taking advantage of your generosity. \n<<else if $home is 7>>There are things that crawl in the deep, forgotten things that have never seen light. They call you their brood-king and reach out in the dark to caress your sides. One day they will rise. Finally someone who's gracious for your gifts. \n<<else if $home is 8>>So apparently the humans - or maybe it was you? - did something to the atmosphere. You aren't really clear on the details but the air got sort of stale and tastes a bit like calcite. Anyways, the humans are all burrowing in there like unwanted guests, sinking tunnels into your upper layers and it is just like when you started out with ants. The ants were cuter. And they keep getting in fights with the nice sightless ones. \n<<else if $home gte 9>>The Sightless Ones sing echoing choruses to you from their many mouths. They tell you of the future's gods, those hideous potentials locked in the deep, waiting. The agless stone in your core cracks and something - something you cannot see, but whose approach fills you with apprehension - stirs in the sleep before birth. The deep things rejoice, but with a quaver of fear in their voices.\n\n<<endif>>\n<<endnobr>>

The Sightless Ones cry out as a single mind, and throughout the caverns you have stretched through the fabric of the world things rise to fight. You rip open like an ulcer on the world, letting loose all of the ancient beasts that had been locked away by more merciful gods. Your chosen young swarm upwards at the head of these dread legions and make war; the mere sight of them is a contagion that flesh cannot abide and they are without pity.\n\nThe age of darkness is begun, let no thing that loves light survive. Their work done, your legions remain in the depths and sleep until some ill-starred thing again rises from the primordial ooze above, unaware of the terrors you hold. \n\nCONGRATULATIONS YOU HAVE DESTROYED MAN WITH ANCIENT HORRORS FROM BEFORE TIME AND OUTSIDE OF BELIEF. YOU ARE THE ULTIMATE CHASM. WILL MANKIND EVER EVOLVE TO ONCE AGAIN FEAR THE NIGHT, UNAWARE THAT IT IS ONLY A MIRROR OF THE DEEPER DARKNESS THAT THEY TRULY DREAD? \nFIND OUT IN SUPER CHASM SIMULATOR HD 9001\n[[START OVER?|Start]]

<<nobr>>\n<<if $size lte 0>>You are 6 mm deep. You are big enough to drink out of if filled with water, and probably won't collapse of your own accord, any more than anything else will.\n<<else if $size is 1>>You are 2 cm deep! You could envelop small pebbles without fearing annihilation. Is annihilation not the end state of a chasm that becomes filled? Or is there some transcendence that might await you when you succumb? You are unsure. \n<<else if $size is 2>>Well well, look at you. You are 30 cm deep! You're growing so fast. And so broad! You're almost 200 times the volume you were just the other day. And yet you don't feel that different. Can any change you make ever make you feel differently about yourself? Are you doomed to a sort of continuity in self-perception?\n<<else if $size is 3>>It's leaps and bounds with you. You are now 1 meter deep, and almost as big across! You can feel yourself changing - your lower depths are grittier, and instead of the smooth, lush dirt, you find a mess of pebbles and stone. Will you ever be the same as you were before? Can anything be?\n<<else if $size is 4>>This is just getting out of hand. You are 5 meters deep! You've collapsed into and overtaken a small cavern that was below you and incorporated it's smooth limestone walls into yourself. Did it have a consciousness? You felt no loss of life when you siezed its terrain. Perhaps another larger hole will feel the same about you soon.\n<<else if $size is 5>>A river ran through you for a while, or perhaps there was some sort of wall collapse - but you realise with shock you are now almost 50 meters deep and very wide. Time passes us by and we rarely see it scarring us until it is gone. \n<<else if $size is 6>>Wow! You're 200 meters deep! You've punched straight through layers of clay, boulders, some limestone, and now right through the bedrock! You keep growing, but is it your choice? Does anyone choose the path their life continues down? Could you be shallower if you tried?\n<<else if $size is 7>> Hoo boy. You are a whole kilometer deep now, and two kilometers wide. It's - it's pretty hot down here. You must be doing a ton of work. You feel exhausted all the time, and moments of your life pass with you barely noticing them. \n<<else if $size is 8>> My goodness. You are 7 kilometers deep, and no signs of slowing! You aren't getting any wider, though. Still just 2 km. You can feel the stone changing below you. It's harder, impermeable, crushed under such weight. Are you growing to meet it, or are you merely the rocks' own chance to escape? Can anything else even tell you exist? If not, do you?\n<<else if $size gte 9>> You've made it to 30 kilometers deep! You can feel the whole earth flexing around you. You're pretty sure there's nothing as deep as you anywhere else. Is this an accomplishment to make you proud, or one that merely shows your solitude? You try not to think of your depths, for that and for the discomfort of the heat. \n\n<<endif>>\n<<endnobr>>

.passage { max-width:60%; }

You are not the air, but the rapidly dessicating aphid is in the air - and is in you. It is part of you now, is it not? Does that make you greater, somehow? Even though it has partially filled you in, you can feel that you are definitely greater. But how can you feel this? You are feeling it, that is a certainty, but unlike this aphid, you have no antennae; you have no carapace riddled with sensory nerves. You have no eyes! \n\nAnd yet you can see clearly as some miniscule mites emerge from eggs on the carapace of the aphid. As they chew on the dying cells of the tiny insect and lay another round of their eggs on its surface, you feel a sense of protectiveness about the little guys. They've decided to live inside you! \n\nIt just fills you with a very mild joy to be able to help them out. \n\nTime to wait a [[little bit longer!]]

<<set $size = $size + 1>> \n<<if $size lt 5>>\nYou flex and stretch and find yourself getting even bigger! [[Yay!|game]]\n<<else if $size gte 5 and $size lte 9>>You just keep on growing, through the years and geologic forces. [[Yay!|game]]\n<<else if $size gte 10>> This growth seems increasingly abrupt and borderline catastrophic? [[Let's rethink this.|game]] or [[No man, let's do it!|sizeend]]\n<<endif>>

Thank you to everyone who made Twine. Even I can work it!\n\nThank you to [[Porpentine|http://aliendovecote.com]] and [[Leon Arnott|https://twitter.com/webbedspace]] who said something I half-remembered to one another on twitter some time ago that gave me this idea.\n\nThank you to the coffee shop I sit in. \n\nThank you to Becca and Ephraim and Misha for playing it first. \n\nThank you for reading this.\n\nBack to [[Start]]

Chasm Simulator 9000

\nYou are a divot. Barely a crack. In this morning's rainfall, you were underneath a leaf that funneled water onto a spot in the soil, creating you. \n\nYou are not ambulatory and cannot interact with the world!\n\n[[I guess you have to wait!]]

The wind whistles through your passages and sings horrid prayers, and the earth it self screams its submission to you. You are the self-born god, the endless might that has become itself at last. The humans and the Sightless ones lie in supplication and you spare them; are you not magnanimous? You shall hold them tight to yourself for a million million generations. \n\nCONGRATULATIONS YOU ARE THE ETERNAL HEIRARCH OF THE PIT, THE GOD THAT DREAMS ITSELF, THE ULTIMATE CHASM. YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THE VOID. WILL DEATH ITSELF DIE AT YOUR TOUCH? FIND OUT IN SUPER CHASM SIMULATOR HD 9001\n\n[[START OVER?|Start]]\n

You stretch out a little deeper, and - ooh! You found the bottom! \nYou crack through a layer of stone and, much to your surprise, find a huge open space. It seems there was a whole hollow earth this whole time! Yep, just had to go down about a hundred kilometers and there it was. Lit by a crystal globe and luminous fungus, there are whole civilizations in here! Looks like there's a race of hyper-evolved lizard people - maybe they snuck down from the dinosaur layer? And there are some sentient geodes that are excellent conversationalists! And the Sightless Ones from your depths are getting along just great with everybody, and the lizard people have instituted a monarchy that's keeping the humans in line. That's nice. \n\nAnd it seems that now you've connected with it, you are the single motivating awareness of the entire cavity and all of the endless caves that stretch beneath the earth. Every space one of your veins, each thinking being a single nerve cell in your endless body. \n\nCONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE BECOME THE HOLLOW EARTH WHERE ANCIENT ASCENDENT BEINGS LIVE IN PEACE. WILL MANKIND EVER THROW OFF THEIR LIZARD UNDERLORDS' YOKE? DO THE GEODESICS REALLY NEED TO BE SO WORRIED ABOUT THE WHISPERS FROM THE CRYSTAL AT THE HEART OF THE MOON? FIND OUT IN SUPER CHASM SIMULATOR HD 9001\n\n[[START OVER?|Start]]

<<display size>>\n\n<<display danger>>\n\n<<display home>>\n\n\n<<if $size lte 4 and $danger gte 3>> You've got to get a bit [[bigger!|upsize]]\n<<else if $size lte 4 and $home gte 3>> You've got to get a bit [[bigger!|upsize]]\n<<else>> You can become: [[Larger|upsize]] --- [[Deadlier|updanger]] --- [[Cozier|uphome]]\n<<endif>>\n<<if $size gte 9 and $danger gte 9>>time to [[complete your growth!|dangersize]]\n<<endif>>\n<<if $size gte 9 and $home gte 9>>time to [[crack the sky!|sizehome]]\n<<endif>>\n<<if $danger gte 9 and $home gte 9>>time to [[boil from the deep!|dangerhome]]\n<<endif>>

Did you know there are super-volcanos? Now you do. You feel the ground rumbling in your depths, and you erupt, spraying literally thousands of square kilometers of ash and magma around the entire world. You've blanketed the entire sky in an impenetrable cloud, and collapsed hundreds of surrounding kilometers into your huge lava inferno. Congratulations! You've almost wiped out the surface parasites. For now... \n\nCONGRATULATIONS YOU HAVE BECOME THE ULTIMATE CHASM AND WIPED OUT MOST SURFACE LIFE. WILL IT GROW BACK IN THE SULFUROUS WASTES? HAVE YOU SMOTHERED IT FOREVER? FIND OUT IN SUPER CHASM SIMULATOR HD 9001\n\n[[START OVER?|Start]]

You just keep on swallowing up things, don't you? More and more mass just keeps falling into you. But you don't seem to be getting any bigger. Hmm. Actually, you're getting a lot smaller. But heavier? Oh, that's what it is. You've packed enough of the earth's mass close enough together that you've collapsed into a black hole! \n\nThat's pretty neat!\n\nFor the first time in your existence, you are free. Untethered to the mere matter that has always surrounded you, you plunge through the core of the earth, soaking up all the stuff you pass. You set up a really nice orbit beneath the crust of the earth, as you and the planet swing around each other in increasingly violent gyrations. Soon everything's just collapsing into you, except the parts that you slingshot outwards or are blasted free by radiation pressure. Soon you've swallowed everything in reach, but remain in orbit around the sun, basking in the light and proving a baffling anomaly to extraterrestrial astronomers unfamiliar with the power of pits.\n\nCONGRATULATIONS, YOU HAVE COLLAPSED INTO A BLACK HOLE. YOUR BOUNDARY NOW CONTAINS ALL OF THE INFORMATION THAT WAS IN YOUR MASS, MAKING YOU THE ULTIMATE CHASM. \nWILL YOU SWALLOW MORE PLANETS OR EVENTUALLY DECAY IN A CATACLYSMIC BURST OF RADIATION? FIND OUT IN SUPER CHASM SIMULATOR HD 9001\n\n[[START OVER?|Start]]

<<set $home = $home + 1>> \n<<if $home lte 3>>\nYou are growing all sorts of new features to make you a better place to call home. [[Yay!|game]]\n<<else if $home gte 4 and $home lt 7>> You have some mixed feelings about your little inhabitants, but who wouldn't? [[Hmm.|game]]\n<<else if $home gte 7 and $home lte 9>> Now we're getting somewhere. [[At last.|game]]\n<<else if $home gte 10>> Let them weep in the dark places and rejoice. [[uuuuuuuuuuuuuuu comes the sound from the deep|homeend]] or [[uh actually maybe not|game]]\n<<endif>>

<<set $danger = $danger +1>>\n<<if $danger lte 3>> You are going to be the toughest hole there is. [[Yay!|game]]\n<<else if $danger gte 4 and $danger lte 7>> You've had it up to here with all the fleshy parasites that keep climbing around. [[destroy.|game]]\n<<else if $danger gte 8 and $danger lt 10>> At this stage describing the havoc seems superfluous. [[And distasteful!|game]]\n<<else if $danger gte 10>> The ultimate destructive power... in your grasp. [[at long last.|dangerend]] or [[No, let's reconsider.|game]]\n<<endif>>

Everything has brought you to this point, your first choice. You feel yourself brimming with both potential and damp insect corpses. From this moment, you will be able to become whatever kind of pit you can dream of. It is the first step of your journey. \nHow would you like to grow? \n<<silently>>\n<<set $size = 0>>\n<<set $danger = 0>>\n<<set $home = 0>>\n<<endsilently>>\nYou can become [[Larger|upsize]]\n\nYou can become [[Deadlier|updanger]]\n\nYou can become [[Cozier|uphome]]\n\n

My goodness! You've made it right to the middle. The whole earth just splits right in two around you, and cracks ripple out through its surface. Sure, you crumble a little bit around the top, but you spread ever wider as you do. There doesn't seem to be anything on the hemisphere now that isn't really a part of you, as more terrain sloughs off into your depths. This raises some important questions about the nature of being a chasm. If you are more than merely the space between the walls and the things it contains, what are you? Have you ever known? Does anyone? As you evert across the surface of the world, do you remain what you were, or are you something you cannot yet accept?\n\nCONGRATULATIONS YOU HAVE BECOME THE ULTIMATE CHASM. WILL YOU COME TO TERMS WITH THE INEXORABLE PASSAGE OF TIME? DO YOU EVEN RECOGNIZE YOURSELF ANYMORE? FIND OUT IN SUPER CHASM SIMULATOR HD 9001\n\n[[START OVER?|Start]]

[[Hoverpope|https://twitter.com/hoverpope]]

You feel pretty good. Things are going ok. You can feel your two experience points just bubbling with potential in there, and your little mite buddies are doing better all the time. They are just chewing away on that old aphid and recently found it's sap reservoir. Delicious, you assume!\n\nYou are a little worried about your depths, though. It's been a little while since the rain and you are drying up something fierce. Your sandy bottom has been creaking a little bit and you don't know what to make of it. You are very proud of your bottom; sandy with an excellent texture. Almost 3mm down from the surface level, which seems nice but not showy. But - oh no! Some of your sand is slipping!\n\nYou brace for an imminent shock but instead, you feel flush with something as you realise you have grown! You have opened up onto another tiny hole that was underground, and now it is a part of you as well. \n\nCongratulations! You're getting bigger! [[What does it all mean?|mainstart]]