Cursemark Review Summary

Rich exploration and deep buildcrafting are held back by buggy performance and an overly easy difficulty, despite excellent audiovisual and engaging gameplay.

Rich exploration and world design: Exploration is a highlight, with many enjoying the hand-designed world, secrets, puzzles, and the integration of gameplay with world building. The atmosphere and immersive environments are frequently praised.

Excellent audiovisual presentation: The soundtrack, pixel art style, and overall visual design receive widespread acclaim. Reviewers mention fantastic audio, beautiful pixel art, and polished graphics as key strengths.

Engaging and fun gameplay: General enjoyment is a recurring theme, with many praising the game as fun, addictive, and with high playability. The 'one more run' feel and overall enjoyment are consistently noted.

Deep buildcrafting and customization: The extensive buildcrafting system, including runes, talismans, and skill combinations, is highly praised. Players love the variety and depth of creating unique and powerful builds.

Balanced difficulty and progression: The difficulty curve is well-received, offering a fair challenge that scales with player skill. Progression systems with permanent upgrades and rewarding exploration are cited as satisfying.

Buggy and unstable: Multiple bugs exist, including a game-breaking fire walk + ice trail combo causing PC stutter, freeze from too many effects, and framerate crashes requiring restarts. Some happen repeatedly ruining runs.

Game too easy: The game is too easy from the start, with enemies locked behind fences making attack reads impossible. With few runes, players take zero damage, and bosses die in seconds. Unlocking makes it even easier.

Early access content lacking: Only 3 biomes are available, leading to a short 6-hour completion time. Locked doors cause confusion, mistaken for puzzles.

Combat mechanics need polish: Attack selection and rune usage feel unpolished, and the dodge mechanic is crappy but balanced. Boss mechanics are hard to see due to visual noise from the player.

Buildcrafting mediocre: Buildcrafting is mediocre and relies heavily on random buffs; balance is questionable, with the rot build being especially weak.

Hades-like roguelite with soulslike influences: The game blends roguelite mechanics (progression resets, meta progression) with soulslike combat (dodge-focused, enemy pattern recognition) and dark fantasy aesthetic. This hybrid approach creates a unique gameplay loop that combines strategic buildcrafting with high-stakes action.

Non-procedural hand-designed worlds: Unlike typical roguelikes, the game uses fixed maps, multiple paths, and persistent worlds with exploration, puzzles, and secrets. This design emphasizes planning and rewards thorough exploration without procedural generation.

Rune and talisman customization: The game features a deep rune system similar to FF7's materia, Path of Exile's skill gems, and Noita's spells, allowing players to slot runes into weapons, wards, and ultimate slots. This provides extensive buildcrafting options with elemental choices and customizable abilities.

Buildcrafting with diverse loadouts: Players can create unique builds by combining skills, runes, talismans, starting equipment, and spells. The variety of loadouts and build options allows for high replayability, though it depends on in-run drops.

Meta progression with permanent upgrades: Players can earn permanent upgrades and shortcuts that persist across runs, with progression tied to world upgrades and a camp-based system. This reduces the impact of permadeath and encourages experimentation.

Performance issues on screen: Players report that the game freezes or crashes to 2 FPS when too many effects appear on screen, often requiring a restart. This is a significant technical problem that disrupts gameplay.

Good compatibility with Proton: The game runs well on Linux using Proton, indicating solid compatibility for Linux users. This is a positive note for platform support.

Strong overall recommendation: Multiple reviews express strong, general recommendations for the game, using phrases like 'Recommended', 'Highly recommend', and 'Go get it'.

Recommended for action RPG/roguelike players: The game is particularly recommended for fans of action roguelikes, action RPGs, and games inspired by Diablo, suggesting a blend of genres.

Appeals to Dark Souls fans: Several reviews highlight the game as suitable for fans of Dark Souls-style dark fantasy and hardcore action games, indicating a specific target audience.

Appeals to exploration and strategy fans: A review recommends the game for players who enjoy exploring secrets and strategic planning, highlighting a specific gameplay strength.

Try the demo first: One review encourages trying the demo if interested, suggesting a cautious approach for potential buyers.

Session length: 1.0h.

Fun builds as players unlock skills and progression opens up the buildcrafting, but early meta progression can feel tedious and later areas may become monotonous.

Friction: tedious meta progression at camp; samey three-option choices; boring areas; monotonous gameplay.

Unlock drivers: unlocking more skills; satisfying progression; intuitive buildcrafting; clever roguelite elements.

Diablo-Roguelike Hybrid Fan: Casual to moderate play through runs, experimenting with builds and progression unlocks. Motivation: Enjoying the fusion of ARPG loot and roguelike runs with solid meta progression. Stance: buy.

Depth-Seeking Build-Crafter: Methodical, exploratory, and optimizing. Focuses on unlocking secrets, upgrading forges, and experimenting with rune combinations across many runs. Motivation: Mastering the interconnected systems of routes, upgrades, and ability combinations to create powerful, synergistic builds. Stance: buy.

Linux and Proton: Based on the two user reviews, the game runs 'well' on Linux with Proton and 'perfectly' on Steam Deck. There is no evidence of launch failures, crashes, performance issues, anti-cheat blockers, or required tweaks. The consensus is strongly positive.