You can also use a 'water bath' process to achieve compaction. Here, you alternately place the negative in the developer for a short time, with agitation, then move it to a tray of water, where you let it sit. If you do this back and forth, because the highlights -- where there was more exposure -- will exhaust the developer more rapidly, you can build up proportionally more density in the shadows.
The risk is that you may get uneven development and/or what is known as 'bromide drag.'