About the Game
White Knuckle is a first person roguelite speed-climbing game.
Use momentum-based movement mechanics with precision, deploy a variety of tools and resources, and ascend as fast as you can.
Just don't lose your grip, there’s eternity below you.
Manage your inventory or become encumbered and fall to your death. Failure to grab what you need from your bag in time can spell disaster.
Through run-based meta-progression, you’ll discover and unlock varied augmentations.
Bolster your will to ascend.
You're not alone down here. Strange life flourishes far underground, and darker things haunt these halls. Something oozes from the depths– following you, growing angrier… and it won't let up.
Travel through different regions with unique threats and gameplay challenges during your attempted escape of the underground megastructure.
The deep dry storage of the Silos, the putrid sewers of the Pipeworks, the haunted piers of Habitation. Each area will require adaptation to new obstacles and denizens.
Screenshots
28 images
Version Information
Steam Patch Notes
Official update history
Bugfixes
Fixed a bug preventing players from entering SSL.
Fixed an issue where the mass would sometimes consume the player immediatly upon leaving the Bazaar.
Fixed some achievements not granting in steam. If this affected you, simply start the game and they should auto-fill!
Removed a debug testing trigger in the playground that forced all items to drop.
Fixed a typo in Motherly Instinct.
Fixed a typo in the Infested Hand unlock condition.
Added an extra invisible wall to the roach trader to make it harder to clip inside.
White Knuckle Beta 0.55q
Console Changes
Added aliases, which allow for defining new commands in the console.
The Delay command can now also have a frame count or second count specified.
Binds can now include space in their keychords.
Bug Fixes
Forward+: Reworked tiling algorithm to remove most instances of edges of lights not affecting edges of screen, especially on higher FOV.
Fixed regression where Ruby Roaches would fly out of recyclers too eagerly.
Fixed typos in credits tab.
Fixed mechanical barnacles bleeding organic blood.
Hopefully fixed audio offset issues.
Fixed Autotomous Skeleton's Bone Spears despawning on drop when using Piton & Beans binding.
Limited maximum rotation of Habitation Yellow's Endless Breakroom's Item Locker door.
Fixed Ladder and Cheatrooms leaderboards.
Fixed Parasite batteries not being auto-insertable via Focus Mode.
Fixed being able to grab walls in Focus Mode when under effect of Grubs.
Fixed Anomalous Bonds not storing pouch content correctly.
Fixed Item Lockers being able to remove your stored Bone Spears with Piton and Beans binding and replacing your Beans with Bandages with Survival binding.
Hopefully fixed issues around fans in Air Exchange not affecting player.
Increased damage of floor fan in Air Exchange 04.
Fixed shooting the flare gun not reducing player's encumbrance.
Fixed Employee ID trinket not disabling Delta Labs 02 laser floor.
Added SAPS warning when Delta Labs 02 laser floor activates.
Fixed Delta Labs 08 SAPS warning playing when Employee ID has disabled laser floor.
Fixed recyclers being able to infinitely recycle dropped items after reloading a save.
Fixed being unable to take items out of Recyclers.
Fixed Explosive Rebar and Grub triggering Recycler events every time an item was destroyed.
Decreased Flood speed in Training Sector - Item Mastery 04.
Fixed Rabbit DNA boost jumps not having coyote time.
White Knuckle Beta 0.55r
Bug Fixes
Fixed bug where reviving with Pouch trinket would duplicate all items that would normally carry over on death (trinkets...)
Fixed bug where after losing final life, player could still save their game and quit exactly once. Now they cannot save at 0 lives.
White Knuckle Beta 0.55o
Now, you might be wondering: "What happened to 0.55n? Well, you see I simply forgot that 0.55n was a closed beta for the forward+ renderer, and figured the next version was o. I only just now realized this but the build is live and I do not want to reupload with the version changed by one letter.
Changes
Performance
Added a new experimental setting: Forward+ light rendering, an optimization leading to better GPU utilization and reduced power usage around light sources. We recommend players with lower framerates and laptops enable it. As this is a big change to how we handle rendering, this option will remain opt-in until we have determined that there are no visual errors.
'Experimental Features' must be first enabled in the accessibility panel of the settings menu.
Disabling Post Processing now also properly disables bloom.
Accessibility
Reduce Flashing Lights option now also reduces static during nuke, electric discharges found in e.g. Electric Pier, certain strobe lights and the Flare Gun's flares.
Bugfixes
Removed Campaign win Perk Reloading unlock, as the Biomod Oversupply facility upgrade now replaces it.
Fixed Focus Mode not being able to quickly place Floppy Disks in floppy inserters.
Fixed Friends In High Places' Briefcases persisting between saves, allowing the player to cheat infinite items.
Fixed Gravity Glove having infinite reach when using holdable buttons.
Fixed Peripheral Binding counting items in pouches against the player's reduced gravity.
Fixed barrels colliding with water as though it was solid.
Fixed acid pools ceasing to hurt anything after they've killed a Grub (we don't blame them for feeling guilty).
Sped up roach<->facility credits animation.
Fixed checkpoint in Parasite not resetting player in the lift above Organism Zeta.
Fixed Rho challenge rooms not taking away the player's permanent stored double jumps (from Overwhelmed and Pulse Organ).
Fixed incorrectly rotated handhold in Waste Heap 05.
Fixed roaches drowning in the Mass if a world recentering happened in Abyss during Endless Superstructure.
Fixed Trinket Picker Score Multiplier size permanently changing after spamming a Trinket/Binding in the menu.
Fixed Hard Mode/Iron Knuckle/Competetive Mode buttons permanently changing size after spamming them.
Fixed Turrets being unable to shoot through the player's inventory items.
Fixed Worker Bloodbugs (and other denizens) disappearing if the player went too far away from their zone of origin, even when they should have followed suit.
Fixed rare Explosive Rebar sticking out of Waste Heap 03.
Fixed Floppy Disks sometimes not appearing when opening an Item Locker.
Fixed Consumptive Reflex not triggering if player's grab was broken by Vent Thing.
Fixed Cosmetics unlocking from Main Menu not updating Cosmetics window.
Fixed the player being able to grab things through floating platforms.
Fixed best time display always comparing time to best modifier-less run instead of best run with current modifiers (Hard mode, Iron Knuckle, Competetive)
Fixed player being given 50 Roaches as reward for winning in Competetive mode.
Fixed Beta Trinket's world item having incorrect outline color.
Fixed Employee Retention, Employee Motivator and Mass Damper not affecting Mass speed.
Fixed duplicate Session Flags entries in save files bricking players' saves. This could only happen as a result of haphazard save editing.
Fixed achievements (such as Too Big to Fail) not unlocking while in Main Menu.
Leaderboard details window now displays Completed At time in accordance with player's machine's date time formatting.
Fixed Perk Machine unselected Perks not greying out.
Fixed player starting with Flare Gun and Flares when playing with Piton and Beans binding.
Fixed Pitons/Autopitons despawning during use animation during extreme lag spikes.
Fixed Spear Artifact duplicating when thrown during extreme lag spikes.
Fixed Artifact Seal with Piton and Beans and Survival mode sometimes having its Beans replaced with a Bandage.
Added extra collider below Pipeworks->Silos transition levels to hopefully prevent player from falling through the floor.
Fixed Grub effect preventing the player from pulling Perk Machine lever.
White Knuckle Beta 0.55p
Bugfixes
Fixed bindings being removed when using a Rho Monolith in endless mode.
Fixed bandages sometimes replacing beans when dropping them in Survival mode.
Fixed Ruby Roaches having an incorrect home position set when dropped from your inventory.
Hopefully fixed an extremely rare issue which causes your hands to be bugged when placing pitons. (Was unable to recreate, but reverted a change that could have caused it.)
Changes
After winning Campaign runs, you now gain a bonus 50 Facility Credits.
Increased bloodbug spawns in Pipeworks to be somewhere between Anniversary Update and Abyss Update in terms of rates.
Tier 2 Vendors now serve beans if Pitons and Beans is enabled.
Bone spears are now only worth one roach when recycled.
Grub worldmodel now has the proper amount of legs.
New Experimental Competitive Setting.
New Setting: Skip Death Popup.
New Setting: Skip Score Counter.
Bandages are now a vendor item in Survival mode.
The Artifact Device in Pitons & Beans now provides a choice between a Piton or a Can of Food, instead of two empty slots.
The Rho Altar in Interlude: Evacuation now properly saves it's state, so if you trade for a higher tier item/perk, it will lock out even after revives.
The 'Focus' keybind now skips props, and supports controller binding.
Getting caught in the I2 "toilet" when the door closes now speeds up the mass.
The 'Half Inventory' binding now reduces your inventory by 50% instead of by a flat 6. Same base functionality, but it will make any inventory expansion perks less effective.
Added a 'Reduce Flashing Lights' setting into accessibility, which reduces certain flashing lights in the game, eg: Lighting in Deadman's Handle, the Alarm lights in Abyss. (with more to come!)
Added a new command: face-setspeed.
Bugfixes
Fixed the 'Killed by Bloodbug' achievement.
Fixed drones bleeding.
Fixed the Scribble hands missing their low stamina color.
Fixed the color ramp on the regular low-hand stamina colors. Was making hands red earlier than it should.
(maybe?) Fixed a potential lighting issue in the Endless Habitation break room.
Fixed a bug relating to using item lockers when in Pitons and Beans letting you dupe beans forever.
Fixed (hopefully) certain regions not uploading to the leaderboard.
Piton And Beans now has it's own lockbox save data, to prevent it from overwriting non P&B items.
Fixed a bug which was eating lockbox items.
Fixed some lighting culling issues in a few places (tangled sink's lights were being culled too eagerly, leading to some spots where a light would obviously dissapear.)
Fixed getting Rho perks through sacrifices while using the No Perks binding
Fixed cheated runs saving stats and unlocks.
Fixed a bug with Piton Enthusiast that would cause pitons in your inventory to not be in the proper layer (and look like they were under your inventory)
Fixed the Hammer damage not having the correct tag, allowing you to deal way more damage to teeth with it than intended.
Fixed the Carabiner not applying it's extra jump force on pitons from a still velocity.
Fixed session saves not being cleared on death/win in some situations.
Fixed a bug involving using the console with grub sticky hands, forcing the player to wait for the grub effect to wear off until they can pull the perk lever.
Fixed endless Rho Challenges duping perks in the end run stat screen.
Fixed floating autopiton in I2-03.
Fixed the Spear Artifact being callable through pause.
Fixed the Artifact Obtained popup appearing above the pause screen.
Fixed the Mass killing grubs in your inventory.
Fixed the overencumbered sound effect playing one item too early.
Fixed pouches keeping items through revive.
Fixed Autopitons not sending player info when attacking denizens.
Candles no longer have collision in the Endless Abyss intro.
Fixed being unable to jump in some Air Exchange rooms.
Fixed bind command having outdated description.
Fixed player being frozen when pausing and jumping in the I2 elevator.
Changes
Changed the color of Bandages to brown, to help differentiate them from Cans of food.
Auto Pitons no longer spawn in T2 vendors in Competitive, and Bricks no longer spawn in T1 vendors in Competitive.
Barnacle tongues now latch onto the player on the closest point in the players bounds, making them easier to hit when grappled.
Disks are now worth double in the Recycler (5x for T1, 10 for T2, 15 for T3)
The Head Lamp no longer reduces score (in line with the Gold Nugget)
Bugfixes
Roaches and Ruby Roaches no longer crawl around in item lockers.
Fixed an additional bug which caused being grabbed by a Barnacle or Vent thing after dying and respawning to one locking the player into a permanent grapple state.
Fixed the timepiece showing the incorrect time.
Fixed Gold Nuggets not having an associated empty perk used for leaderboard entry logging.
Fixed the Gold Nugget adding score multiplier when having other trinkets selected.
Potentially fixed a bug which would erase Locker items.
Changes
New Denizen hands palette (Midnight)
Bug Fixes
Hopefully fixed Barnacles, Vent Things and Spear Barnacles putting the player into a permanent crouch/slowdown state
Removed spinning floating rebar in Storage 17
In Survival Mode, Fractured Leg damage can no longer kill the player (to be in line with Burned injury)
Added death message for drowning
Fixed being unable to select new Trinkets and Bindings when restarting from a run with cheats
Removed stray floating pixels in Work gloves
White Knuckle Beta 0.55e
Bug Fixes
Fixed rebar getting stuck in your hands rarely.
Added death text to the recycler.
Tweaked collision on the upgrade computer.
White Knuckle Beta 0.55f
Bug Fixes
Item Lockers now properly store item metadata.
The Artifact Spear can no longer knock you out of a computer.
Moved some floating items in Interlude 02-03
Fixed Chimney pitons not using the ornament model.
Added missing subtitles for recycler.
Autotomous Skeleton should now work properly with stamina reduction perks.
Trinkets perks should no longer be removed when entering Rho Challenges
Ration Vendors now properly save their state on save/load.
Recycler and Portable Bank properly track score in runs.
Fixed ATM's being unusable in Competitive mode.
Added missing ATM to the endless abyss breakroom.
Hands are no longer so big when interacting with computers.
Fixed the bounds for endless silos break room (No more fast mass when hanging at the computer)
Fixed recycle worth for all artifacts.
Massively increased the recycle worth for the Hand Scanner.
Fixed typo in Roach Run description.
White Knuckle Beta 0.55g
Bug Fixes
Fixed missing texture on Face (sorry!)
- Fixed a bug in hardmode which caused it to not save out credits properly.
- The elevator in I2 will automatically raise when you climb to the third stage, to avoid the button not working properly.
- Fixed the recycle cost for Carabiner and Moon Rocks being too high.
- Fixed loading into a run and having it not properly apply the correct run settings.
- Competitive mode now offers a choice between one free perk and two paid perks from the competiive pool.
- Fixed competitive mode not setting it's locker contents properly.
- Fixed Lockers not storing correctly on some saves.
- Fixed floating rebar and injector in i2-03
- Removed broken perk machine in the playground
Fixed a bug where when saving roaches aren't being properly converted to credits at the end of the run.
Fixed rho altars not letting you take your item back when using the no shops binding.
Added new audio to the forlorn gateway breaker sequence.
Tweaked breeder ambient audio.
Fixed headlamp crashing the game on save load.
Fixed issue when swapping hands with gloves.
- Hopefully fixed the black line issue affecting some on AMD GPUs.
- Fixed the scaling issue for the gamemode screen on narrower aspect ratios.
hey gamers i found something cool please rate my video (anyone heard of this game?!?!? xD)
uhhh i heard that there would be other cool stuff this month 2 thx for playing <3
(Happy April 1st! -Dark Machine Games)
--
POST APRIL FOOLS NOTE
Even though the April Fools event has ended, you can still play the elevator by opting into the 'AprilFools2026' branch on steam. Happy April <3
-Holly
Current Release
23920489
Uploaded Jun 26, 2026
System Requirements
How to Install
White Knuckle.exe to play
Troubleshooting tips
• Run Redist/_CommonRedist installers if game won't start
• Add folder to Windows Defender exclusions
• Run as administrator
Download
Direct link available
3.0 GB
23920489
99B36EE4
d81074f7c18708e9b5392cc3cc40ee7215f174c5d9dbf871e189b6d24eb13516
You May Also Like
View All
Download White Knuckle for PC with a direct link or via torrent. Get the full version of White Knuckle for free. White Knuckle is a Early Access released by Dark Machine Games.