Caves of Qud
This game is hard but in a good way. Early on, you’ll die, a lot. Basically every death will be a learning experience and oh boy is there a lot to learn (even now before full release).
Caves of Qud has incredible amount of content and replayability. It has so many amazing features that I don’t want to spoil and different ways to play each character with unique build or playstyle and so so so many secrets that you probably won’t ever find or at least not easily.
Ok now for a story time of many things that can happen in Caves of Qud. (very mild spoilers ahead)
– Real player with 248.3 hrs in game
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A masterpiece of worldbuilding, game design and procedural generation. One of the most beautiful, enticing, unique and creatively weird worlds I ever explored. Layers upon layers of content depth. The writing is absolutely gorgeous. You can share water with an ape god, multiply the pope, and get chased by your clone from the future all around the landscape of not-Israel.
It’s Dune on steroids made by furry communists over nearly a decade. Please support them.
– Real player with 203.4 hrs in game
Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate
Intro: I want to preface this by saying that I don’t think Shiren is a fair game, or that this is an amazing port of Shiren.
However as a roguelike enthusiast I personally enjoy this game a lot. And I think that this is fairly competent port. It has borderless windowed mode with the ability to resize to whatever you want or need and has multiple control options (no rebinding outside of using Steam’s controller configurator though). There’s also some hidden controls so you might want to just press keys to see what they do, for example the game doesn’t tell you that the C key can be used for quick scouting a room without needing to go through the menu.
– Real player with 92.6 hrs in game
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Shiren is not a roguelike, it’s a grinding game
I had heard good things about the serie of games “Shiren the Wanderer” in the past, and I’ve always been a fan of roguelikes, so when this newest instalment was ported on Steam, I thought it would be a good idea to try it out, and get my first taste of this “roguelike serie”.
Unfortunately, it soon became clear that the game is not at all what it says on the box.
Shiren is not a roguelike
A run of Shiren makes you starts at level 1 and you’re tasked with climbing up a randomly generated dungeon (the titular Tower of Fortune). It is played turn-by-turn, so you’re supposed to think before you act, in order to escape the various traps and monsters that you’re gonna meet, using your wits and your inventory. If you’re not good enough, you will die, be ejected from the tower, and lose everything, thus being forced to start again from the very beginning. This description, at first, would indeed seems to fit the mold of a roguelike, so very much something I would enjoy playing.
– Real player with 37.9 hrs in game
Famaze
2¢ Review
| Game Name: | Famaze |
| Original Release: | 05 May 2014 |
| My Overall Grade (#/10): | 6 |
| Demo: | No |
| Workshop: | No |
| Level Editor: | No |
| Captions: | No |
| Controller Support: | No |
| Multiplayer: | No |
– Real player with 16.9 hrs in game
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A lovely little morsel of a roguelike. You pick one character from a selection of 3 - warrior, thief, or wizard, each with a single unique gameplay mechanic - and traverse a maze in search of a key to take you to the next level. Along the way you encounter treasure and single-use items that enhance gameplay, beacons to light up the world, traps, and enemies. There is an xp collection mechanic. Levelling up increases your hitpoints by 1. For every hit you land on an enemy, they land a hit as well, so to beat them in an encounter requires you to have more hitpoints. If a beacon is activated, the surrounding zone of the maze is lit up; traps are made visible, certain types of item-giving blocks are activated, and enemies are turned into a cute collectible. Activating beacons however become a very strategic action later on when you encounter an enemy that is actually woken up rather than eliminated by light. Most levels seem to have two exits, so it adds a meta-game exploration aspect to the game (from my experience, there is no way to go back to previous levels).
– Real player with 8.8 hrs in game
Mystery Chronicle: One Way Heroics
Retro RPG featuring alternate universes.
Game lets you play as Shiren the Wanderer from the Nintendo DS and Makoto Naegi which is an Ultimate Student from Dangan Ronpa, although those classes need to be unlocked first.
Similar to 2D Zelda games and a lot of other older RPGs, which is why I call it retro despite it being a relatively new game.
The main feature of this game is a destructive barrier that chases you as you try to finish your heroic adventure.
The adventure run defaults to a mission(given to you by your kin King Konrath which for some reason is translated as father instead of kin despite that you can play as a Queen or a Lord/Duke for example) to destroy a fallen angel named Alma, but you can select replacement missions from NPCs that you can place in your starting home. Yes, every adventure will see your starting home destroyed at the beginning.
– Real player with 275.3 hrs in game
Note: As of now, I have 136 hours logged into the original OWH/OWH+. Steam will say otherwise and the rest is me passed out at my computer on the main menu. This is also written up as of version 1.00.02
tl;dr: As others before me have said, just get the original and Plus edition, especially if you’re new to One Way Heroics and you even pay slightly less if you don’t own them. If you want this one, then get it when it’s on sale and is worth less than 7USD. As of the time of this review, this game is not worth the full price. And don’t just buy it because Shiren the Wanderer or Makoto/Komaru is in it.
– Real player with 56.6 hrs in game
Dragon Fin Soup
DRAGON FIN SOUP
“A world of murders” - (2015)
Review is based on the Story Mode.
Game type: Tactical RPG with some roguelike elements (if you play in Hard Mode).
Newbies may consider the game as a hack’n’slash turn based. (trust me: don’t do this mistake, you will be frustated).
1st :issue which could potentialy ruin your experience
I absolutly discourage to play in hard mode (ie : you die once & it’s over) : If the game crashes (and it could) , savegame is potentialy corrupted and you will encounter crashes over crashes at random interval . As a result the game become unplayable (the game saves your progress NOT separatly, so you coudn’t choose a prior save point : that’s pretty stupid). Ohter reason the game is challenging.
– Real player with 243.4 hrs in game
To sum up: It looks good but feels wrong. It feels like a casual game and a bad port and something that could be fun.
I hope the devs polish this a lot. The PC release needs to play well on a PC.
Let’s start with some basic things, controls. Though the devs have stated that the pc is their primary platform, they don’t play by longstanding pc conventions. What do you expect ‘esc’ to do in a game for pc? Nothing? Oh, wait, it exits menus, but does not bring up an options menu with load and save and most importantly - quit?! How about “alt-tab'? In full screen, nothing, nada, zilch. That’s not right. In a roguelike, dungeon crawler, rpg, etc, pushing the “i” key should bring you to your inventory. And it should be customisable. These are only a few of the issues. All in all it feels like a bad port made primarily for gamepads or touchscreens. I play with mouse and keyboard and have the option of a touchscreen. Touchscreen is too tedious and not precise enough for the action. Mouse and keyboard are awkward. Moving by mouse click will have you fined your hard earned gold when you accidentally cut down city trees (Protip: some things are worth smashing in town once you have some money to pay for it). Moving by WASD and QEZC for diagonals is much better, with enter for attacking the selected target, though that requires the occasional mouse use to point your character in the right direction. For a game that require precision to survive, the controls don’t always allow it. Then there’s the camera…
– Real player with 30.2 hrs in game
Always A New Journey
Although progress was delayed significantly, work has resumed.
Always a New Journey is a very early development rpg rogue-lite.
Inspiration comes from a lot of 90’s jrpgs, and some new ones.
You’ll choose one of four characters to start, with four more that can be unlocked.
Take your chosen hero through random floors of the dungeon to unlock more companions, things to craft, and upgrades for your town hub.
Or if you get strong enough, maybe even reach the top.
Combat takes place in a side view turn battle system familiar to any final fantasy or jrpg fan.
Heavy emphasis will be put on making the battles difficult enough to require strategic thought. Just hitting “attack” over and over should hopefully be a terrible strategy after the 2nd or 3rd floors. A lot of fun mechanics are in place to give you lots of choice in battles, such as unique limited use abilities for main characters, the ability to charge up your attacks and buffs, and weakness protection that you will absolutely want to be breaking as much as you can.
Upon death, you’ll lose everything except for any saved coin. You’ll also keep any town unlocks, and if you’re a farmer there’s probably some fruit and veggies waiting for whatever new character you’ve chosen!
Beat the Clock
Humanity has ended. An abyssal monster has awakened, determined to enslave to world.
But hope exists : if today that monstrous threat cannot be vanquished anymore, there were once a time when this creature was still vulnerable. Friedrich F, a genius chronomancer, plans to send the greatest heroes of all times in our past, at the moment when the invasion could still be stopped.
Fonctionnalités
• Form a team of 4 heroes amongst about 20 availables
• Explore a map composed of random events
• Face your foes in a unique turn-by-turn fight system
• Enhance your heroes' capacities using capsules found on the way
Sent the greatest heroes back in time to save Humanity
At each new game, form a team of 4 legendary heroes amongst the 20 availables. Each hero has his own set of 3 skills and 2 passives to fullfil their role. Also, they all have an ultimate attack that can be unlocked during fights!
Run, no time to waste
As soon as arrived in the past, you’ll have to choose a path and explore a succession of random events : treasures, merchants, multiple choice dialogs,… and obviously difficult fights.
Unique turn by turn fights
In Beat the Clock, the turn order defines the position of the heroes. The rightest hero will be the first to play, and will automatically be replaced behind after his action. Enemies are doing the same rotation, adding an interesting anticipation aspect to the strategy of the game.
Beat the Clock is currently in Alpha and provides :
8/20 Heroes - With a set of 3 active skills, 2 passives skills and a gradual ultimate skill.
9/30 Capsules - Essential components to upgrade your heroes during a game.
1/4 Biomes - Environments with their own identity, monsters and events.
5/20 Monsters - You like tentacles? So do we!
1/8 Mini-bosses - Created to harm you.
0/4 Bosses - They will be there soon enough.
4/40 Dialog events - Each providing 4 choices according to your team composition.
Blessings of No-more
So first off this game is a challenge! Expecting anything less would be stupid. While it may be challenging it still quite fun, its got a pokemon-esque combat system and some cool builds you can make with the blessings. I really enjoyed the character design and the art! If your up for a bit of a grind and a challenge its definitely worth the 99 cents. Pro tip, you decide to get the game make sure you equip your first blessing right away!
– Real player with 8.0 hrs in game
As someone who has seen this game evolve from its ‘RPG combat’ prototype form to that game that it is now, I can confirm it has since come a long way. It’s become its own game by now, with all kinds of neat features and gimmicks. It’s a nice homeage to classic JRPG combat within a more western style roguelike RPG.
You start out with next to nothing in an unkown realm, and you’ll have to fight your way to the exit. You’ll have to find blessings and fight monsters to grow in power and up your stats in order to survive the quickly growing power of the enemies. Every area is guarded by some form of boss monster which you’ll have to get through, but to get to him you’ll have to fight your way through monsters and mini bosses. For those confident in their platforming skills there’s also hidden areas where loot and powerups can be found through jumping puzzles. However, die once, inside or outside of combat, and you’ll have to start over.
– Real player with 0.7 hrs in game
Dungeon Rankers
Fun!
– Real player with 70.6 hrs in game
Really nice little roguelike game. The objective is to kill or outlast 98 other NPC players, with a quest item being available beyond that, if you want to get some extra bonus points. There’s nothing complex about it, not too many different items and no classes, but you are able to heavily configure the type of character you are based upon the items you find and which ones you decide to use.
Sometimes the RNG will screw you - you’ll pop up on a new level and be surrounded by monsters that you can’t handle. But each game is so fast, you won’t get the sensation that you’ve been cheated out of anything.
– Real player with 13.1 hrs in game
Fatal Labyrinth™
Fatal Labyrinth is a top-down somewhat turn-based action-RPG thing. And it’s rougelike. Albeit maybe not fully. But compared to everything that was on Genesis, yep, rougelike. It was made by Sega of Japan for their modem thing for Sega Mega Drive in Japan, which probably had space limitations and thus only could be used for smaller game. Thus it’s 1 Megabit in size, while Phantasy Star was 6 Megabit and Sword of Vermillion is 5 Megabit. Yep, not much.
And Sega also decided to bring it into West outside of modem in 1991, with awesome cover art for once. I am pretty sure that it dissapointed many traditional jRPG fans who expected something more along the games that I mentioned previously and didn’t care about randomization. Nope, no in-game saving in this one.
– Real player with 0.2 hrs in game
– Real player with 0.1 hrs in game