Recent reviews by Leximancer

What a great looking game. Thanks for sharing the demo, I'll be buying this. Gives very good hack and slash dungeon crawler vibes, I really enjoyed the Pong challenge vs the increasingly fast skeleton in the arena to the south of the start area, and managed to score on him for three prizes - I think that's all there is, it stopped giving prizes when I beat it two more times. Really nice visuals, the combat is tight, the equipment and skills are interesting. All around fun, love seeing stuff like this. Great job.

I just want to say that this is the first game that I've encountered which really gives me the vibes I've been hoping to see come out of game dev ever since SPORE disappointed us all. The evolutionary stage was the best part, and this really seems to capture that. I absolutely loved the demo and will definitely be buying the game when it is out.

The game appears to be trying to send a message about how trivial it is to press a button and destroy lives, and also how it can feel entertaining to hold and use such power. I don't mind this, though I wish there point was made more clearly. As the game is quite simple, the message is as well, and easily missed.

I honestly don't think I liked this game. I'm not a huge fan of idles and I think I was hoping for something a little bit more strategic, rather than "buy upgrades you can afford and continue pressing buttons." That said-- this game is what it claims to be and it is a very reasonable price, so I have no complaints there.

Honestly, if I was asking myself if this game is worth it, I'd say no knowing my own tastes. But, I think for people who like clicker games this is probably just fine as a bite sized package. The interface is clean, the options are clear, everything does what it says, no bugs, it just has limited content. If you want something complex, strategic or extensive go elsewhere, but if people are just looking for what it says on the tin, I think the game delivers.

ToME4 is an excellent traditional roguelike which really shines in that it presents to the player a sort of "classic" adventure game, replete with dungeon diving, fantasy creatures, magic, monsters, dragons and many different ways to approach the game. Perhaps the greatest achievement that ToME boasts is its Talent list, which enables a huge variety of classes and builds to tweak to a theorycrafter's or optimizer's heart's content. That's me, so I fell hard many years ago. The most brilliant thing is that even after completing it and coming back over a decade later, I still find things to love about the game.

I finally bought the DLC, today, for myself as a Christmas Eve present and decided that it was about time I reviewed it. It's not my most-played game by a longshot, but it certainly is one of my fondest roguelikes, sitting near the top of the hill which is currently dominated by Qud (another excellent adventure roguelike,) Nethack and ... hell, what other games are there? Right. It's good. If you like the genre try it. If you don't like the genre but do like adventure games, DarkGod has you covered - there are friendlier modes available which don't require you treat the game as a roguelike test of wits, and you may find that you graduate to those harder difficulties once your more-casual needs are sated...

I don't even know how to write this without ruining it. It's good. It's not what it looks like. I'm still stumped by a couple things. I will be buying it.

UPDATED: The game seems good. Twists billiards a lot like Dungeon Clawler twists Claw machines. I like the different challenges, and how skillshots are most of how the player gets stronger. The character classes are distinct from one another and the different interactions on the board as you go make it a lot more interesting than hitting balls into pockets. I like the pocket customization too - letting you tailor your strategy right from the onset.

I'll give this another look at full release!

Thanks for sharing the demo. It's not currently a buy from me, but I'll keep an eye on it. Here's why:

I like that you have nonlinear progression, the tension wherein you have to explore progressively through various areas to find resources and complete missions. This was done well. The item progression isn't clear - that's good, it means there are maybe different ways to go which makes for interesting approaches.

However, there's a few things that turned me off. By far the biggest is that on two separate occasions when I went to close the game, it hung my system. Something isn't being handled well on exit, and that's unfortunate. The other big one is the lack of QoL moving items between chests. I either have to move my whole inventory all at once, or click and drag twice per item to move something between containers. A simple ctrl+click or right-click to move would have made a world of difference, but as it stands I can't smoothly interact with items. The reason this is a large issue is that a huge part of the game involves managing resources, and stocking and organizing them is an essential part of that. If it's tedious, I get bored, and then I'm not playing the game.

One last minor point is that while there aren't necessarily clear choices when it comes to item progression, it does seem like I'm just going for big numbers and that the next tier obsoletes the previous tier. This isn't strictly a problem, but that's mostly why I said above that 'maybe' there's different ways to go. From what we can see, it's really not much of a choice. You have four accessory slots and they're all pretty much going to be taken up by the highest tier drops you've seen, you'll want the best weapon - melee seems strictly better than ranged - and then there's just no real options here. Yes, there are some tradeoffs between attack and def, crit and HP, but in practice these don't seem to matter all that much. Maybe I missed something - it's possible, but I think I gave it a fair shot.

This is on my watch list. It definitely has potential. I like that you can tame animals and put them to work. I like the familiar system (though gene editing is a bit of a pain and feels a little underdeveloped, I think that's something that could be expanded on. Give me more unique abilities to give them and let me specialize them for certain tasks. From the demo it doesn't seem to matter too much whether I make it a boar or a sheep or a demon, just big numbers and they all do most tasks equally with similar investment.) It's most of the way to being a good game, and I hope it makes it the rest of the way there.

Thanks again for sharing the demo. I hope this doesn't read too harsh. The reality is there's a billion games at every price point and I think this one has potential, but hasn't quite sold me yet. Hope it does in the end!

I'm really not a fan of the keyboard controls. They are all over the place and its very difficult for me to line up a shot and maneuver the camera. The game *does* have customizable keybinds, but several things are hardcoded so it's not possible to alleviate the problem within the menu. This is the single biggest pain point for me and it was almost enough to tip this review in the negative.

That's unfortunate, but the game is good. I enjoyed the demo and there was a 70% off bundle where I already owned the other game, so I got this dirt cheap. I'm not sure I'll go all the way through it, but the mechanics are unique and interesting, so I will recommend it for that reason alone.

Dev...... I would play a lot more of this if I didn't have to attempt to play a 12 finger piano solo every time I interacted with the main unique game component: (photos)

It has taken me this long (454 hours at this time) to write this review because I approached the game completely blind and have been learning as I go. I only just now am feeling like I may know enough to progress to the very end game, and I've loved every single minute of it. This game has so much character, so much flavor, and it's so deep, that it has caught me off guard constantly over the hundreds of hours I've been playing.

At its core, it is an adventure RPG in the trad. roguelike format. The things that make it blow me away though have nothing to do with genre. The writing is incredible. The random stuff I can take or leave but everything in the game has a description and I have learned more new words in the year or so I've been playing this than I have at any other point since I was an infant. And what amazes me is that it's all very appropriate and fitting. This is a sapiophile's roguelike. But it's more than that.

The game is hard, you're gated by player knowledge only. Fans of the genre will know this, but what's really excellent about this is that it rewards you for learning. You actually get to play and see the things you know helping you out as you continue. I'm building a library of game knowledge in my head every time I run the game, and the more I learn the better I fare.

The game has a ton of really great stuff to discover. Relics, locations, enemies, abilities, cybernetics, mutations - you can have 20 heads and shoot lazer beems out of your eyes or you can play a tincan Praetorian in the mode of the old Roman legionairres, or you can divebomb your enemies from afar. Everything you do is reflected in game. Everywhere I go seems interesting. Even the more empty spaces are significant in that emptiness, as its rare to find an area that doesn't demand and reward your attention.

I could say so much about this game, but what I'd like to say most is that the only thing I've ever heard from people who have tried Qud who don't just absolutely love it, is that it's hard to get into. And that's fair. So... check your hotkeys. Find the ones that let you move to points of interest and autoexplore. Hit autoexplore, hit points of interest when its done, and go talk to everyone and read the dialogues. You will have a guided experience through the game if you use the tools the game gives you. You *don't* have to guess at what is worth doing next, and as you die and rebuild you will learn what you need to know to prepare to defeat the things that have killed you before.

This isn't just my game of the year. It might, currently, be my favorite game of all time. That's crazy. I love it. Do the thing I said if you're on the fence, and play it for two hours and refund if you don't like it. I bet you will keep it.

Unfortunately I can't reach the content which may have been added after the demo because I keep encountering a game-stopping bug where enemy units overlap the same tile. I went looking on the steam forums and I don't see others posting about it, but I also do see a sort of dead forum where there's no activity on what's going on with the game, so it looks like I buffaloed myself into buying a game that is half-baked. That's on me, but you don't have to repeat my error.