- Deep, addictive, and replayable strategic puzzle roguelike
- Extensive progression and customization options
- Overwhelming and unfair difficulty for many
- Poor explanations and language barrier issues
- Missing quality-of-life features
- Clunky and unintuitive user interface
Emotions
Players feel satisfied due to the game's unique blend of roguelike and puzzle elements, offering deep strategic gameplay, high replayability, and rewarding progression. The game's challenging yet fair difficulty, combined with its suitability for short play sessions, contributes to a sense of accomplishment and long-term enjoyment. Its overall quality, content, and value for money also consistently meet or exceed player expectations.
Frustration primarily stems from the game's excessive reliance on RNG, which can lead to unavoidable failures and a feeling of unfairness. Players also experience frustration due to a steep learning curve, poor tutorials, unintuitive UI, and technical issues like the lack of cloud saves. The high difficulty, especially in later stages, and the demanding nature of calculations contribute to a sense of being stuck or punished.
Excitement is driven by the game's addictive core gameplay loop, strategic depth, and high replayability. The unpredictable nature of dungeons and the constant discovery of new content keep players engaged and eager for more. The game's overall brilliant design and the prospect of competing with friends also contribute to a thrilling experience.
Disappointment arises when the game doesn't meet player expectations, particularly regarding its genre and progression. Issues like a lack of a 'getting stronger' feeling, excessive grind, and perceived low value for money contribute to this emotion. Players also express disappointment with the game's strict playstyle requirements, changes in graphics, and the absence of features like controller support or Russian localization.
Players appreciate the game's aesthetic qualities, including its classic art style, charming retro visuals, and pleasant soundtrack. The game's unique design, simple controls, and the thoughtful way content is presented in 'bite-sized pieces' are also highly valued. The game's ability to offer a good kind of difficulty that fosters a craving for challenge is also a source of appreciation.
Verdict
Mixed
Summary
Positive 70% · Negative 30%. Score: 30 / 100
Positives:
- Players consistently praise the game's unique blend of roguelike, puzzle, and strategy elements, highlighting its depth, replayability, and engaging content. The game offers a challenging yet rewarding experience, suitable for both short sessions and extended play, with a charming aesthetic and well-designed mechanics.
Negatives:
- Players consistently report that the game's difficulty is excessively high and often feels unfair, stemming from a combination of steep learning curves, unforgiving RNG, and a lack of clear progression or power-ups. This leads to frustration, repetitive grinding, and a feeling of being stuck or unable to progress, especially in mid-to-late game dungeons and against bosses.
- The game's explanations and tutorials are often insufficient, making it hard for new players to understand mechanics. Additionally, the use of complex English vocabulary in flavor text and general game information creates a language barrier for non-native speakers and slows down gameplay for everyone.
- The game lacks essential quality-of-life features such as cloud save functionality, leading to lost progress. There are also reports of problematic window sizing, missing language support (e.g., Russian), and a general lack of plot or meaningful player decisions.
- The user interface is frequently described as clunky, unintuitive, and prone to accidental touches, particularly on mobile. Hidden descriptive text and a generally cheap feel contribute to a frustrating user experience.
- Recent updates, specifically the 'Rewind' version, have introduced performance issues like lag and reduced readability. Additionally, a change from pixel-tile to cartoonish graphics has been negatively received by some players.
Gameplay:
- The game is primarily a turn-based puzzle game with strong roguelike and RPG elements. It emphasizes strategic thinking, resource management, and careful planning over luck, with deterministic combat and short, self-contained dungeon runs. Players must optimize their actions to defeat bosses and manage limited resources like health and mana, which are often recovered by exploring new tiles.
- The game offers significant replayability and progression through a wide variety of unlockable races, classes, items, and gods. Players develop a kingdom outside of dungeons, using earned gold to unlock new content and customize their gameplay experience, which in turn influences dungeon strategies and challenges.
Performance:
- The game demonstrates strong technical performance on Linux, with users reporting stable frame rates and low resource demands. Achievements are also obtainable, though a specific Proton version is required.
- Players appreciate the automatic save feature, which ensures progress is consistently recorded without manual intervention. This contributes to a seamless and worry-free gameplay experience.
Recommendations:
- Overall, player sentiment is highly positive, with many recommending the game, especially to fans of roguelikes, turn-based RPGs, strategy, and puzzle genres. Some reviewers specifically highlight its challenging nature and unique blend of elements as reasons for recommendation.
- Many players suggest trying the free alpha or prototype version of the game first to determine if the core gameplay aligns with their preferences before purchasing the full retail version. This approach helps manage expectations and ensures satisfaction.
- Several players advise waiting for a sale, suggesting that the current full price might be too high. They recommend purchasing the game when it's discounted, ideally by at least 30%.
- Players recommend buying the base game first and only considering the DLC if they thoroughly enjoy the core experience. This suggests the DLC might not be essential for initial enjoyment or could be an additional investment.
- A notable point of feedback is the game's difficulty, with some players specifically mentioning difficulty spikes. This suggests potential challenges for new players or those not accustomed to high difficulty.
Miscellaneous:
- Many players obtained the game for free, either through promotions or by playing its original free alpha/beta versions. This history of free availability significantly influenced player perception regarding its value as a paid product.
- The game offers official Chinese localization, which is well-received for its humor and relatability. However, other languages like Japanese rely on fan-made patches, and the mobile version currently lacks Chinese localization. Some puzzle hints may still require English proficiency.
- The game was developed by QCF Design, a South African studio, and has received notable accolades, including IGF Awards for Game Design. It was originally released in 2013.
- The game supports cloud saving by linking a Steam account to an official website account, making it highly portable. However, the Steam store page's media can be misleading about the game type, and the community resources are somewhat limited.
- The game is considered reasonably priced and suitable for quick gaming sessions, even on low-spec PCs. Its simplistic graphics, though dated, do not detract from the overall enjoyment.
