Caves of Qud
Last updated: 2025-03-09
- Immersive worldbuilding and unique lore.
- Deep mechanics with a rewarding learning curve.
- Emergent storytelling creates unique experiences.
- Unparalleled freedom in character customization.
- Unforgiving difficulty and steep learning curve.
- Clunky UI and controls hinder gameplay.
Verdict
Mostly positive
Summary
Positive 91% · Negative 9%. Score: 9 / 100
Positives:
- The game features a captivating and unique world with deep lore, stunning visuals, and excellent writing. Procedural generation ensures varied experiences, while a compelling main quest provides grounding. Character customization is extensive, and the world feels alive with diverse cultures and emergent stories.
- The game features complex mechanics and systems that reward player investment. The UI, while initially overwhelming, becomes intuitive with practice, and controller support is well-implemented. The game gradually introduces complexity, making it accessible to newcomers while still offering depth for experienced players.
- The game excels at emergent storytelling, creating unique and memorable experiences through its randomized elements and player actions. The game encourages experimentation and creative problem-solving, leading to absurd and hilarious situations. The world is weird and quirky, offering a refreshing departure from typical game narratives.
- The game offers unparalleled freedom in character customization, allowing players to create diverse and unconventional builds with mutations, cybernetics, and psychic powers. Players can become anything from a four-armed mutant with a flamethrower to a sentient door, leading to hilarious and unbalanced situations.
- The game is addictive and has a strong "just one more turn" vibe. The game is worth the purchase price and is endlessly replayable. The game induces a wide range of emotions, including joy, excitement, panic, dread, victory, and defeat.
Negatives:
- The game is frequently criticized for its high difficulty, steep learning curve, and unforgiving nature. Players report dying often, sometimes instantly and unexpectedly, due to traps, strong enemies, and unclear game mechanics. This can lead to frustration, lost progress, and a sense of being overwhelmed, especially for new players.
- The game's UI and controls are frequently described as clunky, unintuitive, and overwhelming. Players struggle with complex keybindings, archaic interfaces, and a lack of clear explanations for game mechanics. This can lead to frustration and a reliance on external resources like wikis.
- Many reviewers found the game to be repetitive and lacking in meaningful content. Procedural generation often results in similar environments, quests, and encounters, leading to a 'Groundhog's Day' scenario. The grind to recover after death is frustrating, and the world feels empty despite its vastness.
- The game's procedurally generated lore and dialogue are often criticized for being nonsensical, poorly written, and difficult to understand. NPCs offer limited interaction, and the story feels generic and uninspired. This detracts from the game's atmosphere and overall enjoyment.
- The game's save system and permadeath mechanics are often criticized for being punishing and frustrating. Players can lose significant progress due to unexpected deaths, glitches, or design choices like only being able to save in towns. This can lead to save-scumming and a reluctance to experiment.
Gameplay:
- The game blends roguelike and RPG elements, featuring turn-based combat, procedural generation, and permadeath (optional). It offers multiple game modes, including options to save progress and customize the difficulty, appealing to both traditional roguelike fans and those seeking a more forgiving experience.
- The game features a vast, procedurally generated open world with dungeons, quests, and a main storyline. Exploration is a key element, with players delving into caves, interacting with NPCs, and uncovering the world's secrets.
- The reviewer's experiences highlight the diverse character builds and challenges encountered in the game. Examples include a mutant scholar with burrowing claws, a Chimera mutant with 20 limbs, and encounters with dangerous robots.
- The game features deep mechanics that can be exploited, allowing players to trivialize challenges. While this may appeal to some, it can also lead to optimizing the fun out of the experience.
- The game features factions and reputation mechanics that affect player interactions with regions and enemies. Players can build relationships with different factions, such as Templars, Apes, Fishes, and Birds, influencing their gameplay experience.
Performance:
- The game is generally well-suited for the Steam Deck, offering good performance and controls, though some players may need to tweak the default controller layout. The Steam Deck battery lasts around 4 hours during gameplay.
- While many players report stable performance, some have encountered bugs, including progress-blocking issues and performance drops during specific scripted encounters with explosions. These issues may require retrying or workarounds.
- The game is optimized to run smoothly on a wide range of hardware, including older machines and laptops. This broad compatibility ensures accessibility for players with varying system specifications.
- The developers actively address performance issues and bugs through weekly updates and a beta branch. This indicates a commitment to ongoing improvement and responsiveness to player feedback.
- Some players have reported minor issues such as the color-coded damage display not functioning correctly and enemies not attacking. These issues do not appear to be widespread.
Recommendations:
- The game receives overwhelmingly positive recommendations, with many reviewers considering it a masterpiece, a genre leader, or even one of the best games ever made. Reviewers highlight its depth, replayability, engaging content, and the unique experiences it offers, often urging players to overlook the dated graphics and initial learning curve. Many recommend the game even at full price, anticipating hundreds of hours of playtime and considering it a worthwhile investment.
- Many reviewers suggest starting the game in Roleplay mode or with checkpoints enabled, especially for new players. This allows players to learn the game mechanics and explore the world without the frustration of permadeath and significant progress loss. This approach helps ease the learning curve and makes the game more accessible to newcomers.
- The game is recommended for fans of specific genres and settings, including traditional roguelikes, RPGs, science-fantasy, and post-apocalyptic worlds. Reviewers often draw comparisons to other popular games and tabletop RPGs to help players determine if the game aligns with their interests. The game's unique blend of elements makes it appealing to a niche audience seeking a particular type of experience.
- The game excels at emergent storytelling, rewarding player curiosity, creativity, and resilience. It's recommended for those who enjoy games that require active imagination and offer deep, strategic gameplay. The focus is on creating unique experiences rather than relying on realistic graphics.
- The game is known for its high difficulty and frequent character death, so players should avoid getting too invested in any single character. Reviewers recommend reading descriptions and details carefully to avoid unexpected deaths. Blind playthroughs are best suited for Roleplay mode, where the consequences of death are less severe.
Miscellaneous:
- The game features significant complexity and obscurity, making external resources like the official wiki almost essential for understanding mechanics and progressing. New players may find it beneficial to consult guides and resources to mitigate the initial difficulty and fully appreciate the game's depth.
- The game features a distinctive art style that blends old-school pixel graphics with abstract tilesets to create a mysterious and visually appealing world. While the graphics may not appeal to all players, they contribute to the game's unique atmosphere and charm.
- The game has been in development for a very long time, with some reviewers following its progress for years. The developers are congratulated for finally reaching the 1.0 release after such a long development cycle.
- The game world blends contrasting elements, such as beauty and grotesqueness, brutality and tenderness, creating a unique and thought-provoking experience. The game also offers an inclusive character creation experience.
- Steam achievement statistics suggest that a very small percentage of players have actually completed the game. This could be due to the game's difficulty, complexity, or length.
