It reminds me of Spelunker NES, but I think I missed some mechanic or something.
I tried multiple runs and went as deep as I could, but no matter what you do eventually the torch just runs out and you have to avoid the curse, which makes some dead ends inescapable.
Does throwing the torch help in any way, and how far away even is the bottom?
Viewing post in The Curse of Ra (Demo) jam comments
I'm sorry, the game is just that incomplete. We wanted to have some sort of end at a fixed point, and then an endless mode where the levels just keep going until you run out (which would have needed a lot more levels to be interesting). As for throwing the torch, the idea was that certain levels would force you to drop it temporarily (to go through a water section, for example), or allow you to choose between a slow path where you keep the torch and a fast path where you don't, that kind of thing, which might give birth to strategies. But again, we didn't really get time to do any of that.