§1

You are the Spark, not the body

Confirmed

You are a Living Spark: an artificial light inhabiting a wooden body that splinters, collapses and catches fire. The body is consumable. The Spark is not — at least not immediately. That distinction is the reason The Descent's HUD table matters here: the Eject prompt bound to R is the key that turns a vessel from a body you are wearing into a body you are choosing to leave.

A broken vessel does not remove you from the run. The Spark stays in the level, can guide the rest of the team through the dark, and has to force its way into another host before it fades out. The new host carries a different ability set, so a bad death hands you a different role rather than a spectator camera. Spark abilities are themselves new in 1.0 — the demo Spark, by the developers' own comparison on Demo vs 1.0, could only search for a host and had no ability set of its own.

The official gameplay clip embedded below is the only first-party footage of this exact moment: it shows a Spark leaving a broken vessel and forcing its way into three different hosts in sequence, which is the clearest evidence available for what "a different ability set" actually looks like in motion, since no ability list has been published in writing.

None of this is framed by the developers as a death penalty in the usual sense. The store description treats losing a vessel as a state change rather than a failure state: you are still a crew member, you can still act, and the run is only actually over for you once the Spark itself fades out without finding a new host. That framing is also why this sheet is filed separately from the run-loop steps on The Descent rather than folded into them — possession is a system with its own rules, not a footnote on dying.

Cutscene frame of two wooden vessels standing in a sunlit doorway of a ruined building, the smaller one showing a green chest core, under the English subtitle line “We could always use an extra set of hands.”
Store frame 7 — two vessels in the Outpost doorwayThe green chest light is the Spark inside the body. The subtitle line reads "We could always use an extra set of hands."
Official gameplay clip — Spark possessionA publisher-authored looping clip from the official about_the_game block: a Spark leaves a broken vessel and enters three different hosts in turn.

Source — Steam appdetails about_the_game.

§2

Griefing is on the feature list

Confirmed

Most co-op games treat this as abuse. Beck & Branch Games list it as a mechanic: dropkick enemies, launch an ally's Spark clean out of its vessel, block a teammate in a monster-filled corridor, or leave them in the crossfire. Physics carries all of it, which is why furniture that can be thrown is furniture that can be thrown at a friend — the same tactical-carpentry pillar that makes the Grinder economy work doubles as a way to end a friendship.

The practical consequence is that Eject on R is a two-way key and a crew of four is a negotiation. It also explains the review sample: the funniest first-day reports and the angriest ones describe the same interaction, which is a pattern the developers appear to have anticipated rather than one they are patching out. Nothing in the 21-item 1.0 scope list reduces or removes it; the list adds systems on top of it instead, such as player leveling and the second Outpost floor.

Read next to the Hall of Resolve screenshot on The Outpost, the incentive structure becomes clearer still: room modifiers reward furniture placement, and placement is easiest with more hands free to carry it, which means a crew has a real reason to stay together even though the physics lets any one of them turn on the others at any moment. Whether that tension is deliberate game design or an emergent side effect of the physics system is not something the developers have stated either way.

Source — Steam appdetails about_the_game.

§3

What a host looks like

2 official frames

The store frames confirm a goat-headed vessel and a many-legged insect vessel standing with the crew in the official clip above, which is as far as the confirmed host list goes in writing. The two frames below are official screenshots that show what a party of possessed vessels looks like once a run has already gone wrong — one where the party is intact, and one where two of the four are already reduced to bare Sparks.

A party in a ruined stone room: the vessel EMOTIONALLYAFK with a lit magenta chest core in the foreground, DAVE with a green core at a workbench and BUGCOLLECTOR further right, each under a nameplate, with the player’s weapon and a four-slot hotbar at the bottom of the frame.

Frame 1 of 2 — Party of vessels, store frame 5A party in a ruined stone room: the vessel EMOTIONALLYAFK with a lit magenta chest core in the foreground, DAVE with a green core at a workbench and BUGCOLLECTOR further right, each under a nameplate. Chest-core colour is how players tell vessels apart at a glance.

01

02

Read together, the two frames are the entire published visual record of possession: a body with a lit core is a player, a coloured wisp with no body is the same player mid-search for a new one, and the broken limbs on the floor are what is left of whichever vessel gave out first.

Source — Steam store screenshots; the official gameplay clip for the three named hosts.