room13 Review Summary

Fun and addictive with great weapon variety and visual style, but frustrating stair movement, repetitive grinding, and clunky controls hold it back.

Game is fun and addictive: Players consistently describe the game as fun, addictive, and highly replayable, with many noting its humor and overall appeal. The combination of simple yet challenging gameplay keeps players coming back for more.

Great variety of weapons: The game offers a vast selection of weapons and upgrades, each with distinct traits and customization options. Players enjoy experimenting with different combinations, such as shotguns that shoot arrows, and appreciate the balance where many builds are equally viable.

Good replayability value: The game's procedural elements, numerous unlocks, and variety of play styles ensure high replayability. Randomized rooms, bosses, and weapon combinations keep each run unique and engaging.

Excellent visual style: The game's distinctive black-and-white pen-and-ink art with red accents is widely praised as beautiful and appealing. Players appreciate the detailed backgrounds, creative monster designs, and overall cohesive aesthetic.

Fast-paced action gameplay: The gameplay is consistently described as fast-paced, action-packed, and heart-pumping, with constant engagement. The quick pacing suits both short sessions and extended play, keeping adrenaline high throughout.

Stair movement is frustrating: Stair navigation is widely criticized as inconsistent, unreliable, and requiring precise stick or diagonal input, often causing players to fall through or get stuck. Many deaths are attributed to stair mechanics rather than enemies.

Repetitive gameplay and grinding: The game is criticized for being repetitive and grindy, with few enemy types, limited maps, and monotonous gameplay. Unlocking features requires excessive death counts or kill counts, such as 10,000 deaths or 50,000 kills, which discourages players.

Clunky controls hinder gameplay: Multiple clusters consistently report that controls are poorly designed, clunky, and non-intuitive, especially on keyboard and gamepad. This significantly impairs player experience and makes the game hard to get into.

Multiple bugs and crashes: The game suffers from various bugs including white screen freezes, crashes on item pickups, progression issues, and random failures. Some bugs force players to quit, and the game remains in early access with significant issues after almost two years.

Unfair enemy spawning: Enemies frequently spawn out of nowhere, including from above, below, crates, and even reward chests, leading to cheap damage and deaths. Players feel damage is unavoidable and the spawning is unfair.

Room-specific traps and hazards: Each room features unique traps and environmental hazards, such as lights going out or lethal mechanisms that can harm both enemies and the player. These traps add strategic depth and can be randomly activated, increasing difficulty and requiring careful navigation.

Weapons extensively customizable: Weapon customization is deep, allowing players to combine base, barrel, stock, and magazine parts to create unique firearms. Upgrades are unlocked over time, and players can modify guns between rounds or from random drops, enhancing replayability.

Wave-based arena zombie combat: The core gameplay involves fighting waves of zombies in various rooms or arenas. Enemies pour in from multiple directions, and players use randomized weapons, melee attacks, and resource management to survive until the passage is cleared.

Roguelike progression with permadeath: The game incorporates roguelike elements, where death resets progress but unlocks masks and weapon parts as milestones. Repeated runs allow players to acquire new equipment and skills, making future attempts easier, similar to titles like The Binding of Isaac.

Masks grant unique abilities: Masks are central to gameplay, providing special abilities like health boosts, eating enemies, toxic gas, charging, or airstrikes. They can be timed or passive and are often unlocked through progression or random drops, adding variety.

Freezes after boss pickups: Multiple players report the game freezing on a white screen after picking up a boss item or during boss death scenes. This appears to be a recurring issue tied to specific boss encounters.

Numerous bugs reported: Players have reported a high volume of bugs overall, indicating that the game may feel unpolished or unstable. This broad complaint suggests a need for extensive bug fixes.

Shark head drops FPS: Using the shark head ability can halve the frame rate, significantly impacting performance during gameplay. This appears to be a performance issue specific to that ability.

Recommend game overall: Many players strongly recommend the game for its engaging gameplay and overall fun, often referring to it as an indie gem or a worthwhile purchase.

Early access development promising: Positive comments highlight active development and improvements, with some users upgrading their recommendation from not recommended to recommended due to the developer addressing issues.

Controller improves experience: A consistent theme is that using a controller provides a significantly better experience, with some stating it is necessary or at least preferable over keyboard controls.

Recommended for niche audiences: The game is often recommended for specific groups: fans of the Thing Thing series, 2D platformers, players who enjoy reflex and speed-based challenges, or those who like gory action games with humor.

Recommend wait for sale: Some users advise purchasing the game at a discount or waiting for a sale, indicating that the value is better when the price is reduced.

Community fair range: $5.00 - $15.00.

Despite initial friction from clunky controls and polish issues, most players report finding room13 addictive and fun immediately, highlighting challenging gameplay and variety.

Friction: Clunky controls; Poor tutorial with controller-keyboard mismatch; Bugs and missing polish (audio cues, enemy spawn cues); Spongy enemies with no damage indication; Little initial direction outside tutorial.

Hardcore Reflex Junkie: Reaction-based, intense, embraces death as part of learning. Motivation: Thrill of extreme challenge and reflex testing. Stance: buy.

Achievement Grinder: Goal-oriented, completionist, methodically unlocking components. Motivation: Progression through achievement-driven customization and unlockables. Stance: buy.

Disappointed Skeptic: Frustrated, expecting polish and fairness, but finds unfair surprises and poor design. Motivation: Seeking a polished and well-balanced game experience. Stance: no buy.

Extended early access period: The game has been in Steam Early Access for nearly two years, with ongoing updates and development. Reviewers note that it is still being improved and will likely evolve before full release.

Missing story mode: The game currently lacks a story mode, featuring only arcade mode, though story content is planned for future updates. Reviewers mention the absence of narrative and boss death scenes.

Comparison to Binding of Isaac: The game is frequently compared to The Binding of Isaac in terms of aesthetics, gameplay, and room transitions. Players must think before picking up items, and the mix of platforming and roguelike elements is highlighted.

Active developer communication: The developer is described as active in the community and transparent about updates, with bug fixes addressing early-access concerns. However, some feedback notes that updates have ceased.

Grindy achievement system: Achievements are numerous and can be grindy, requiring significant time and patience to unlock. This is seen as a mixed factor, adding replay value but also frustration.