10mg: HANDMADEDEATHLABYRINTH issue 0

I purchased the full 10 Minute Game Collection and am going to play them in the order they appear in my library. That means this is #4 of 10. Know in advance what you are getting. As the collection title suggests, a ten minute game is not a triple A title. It is a short game-jam-esque proof of concept / working prototype / execution of an idea. At least that's what I'm going to infer from first impressions. So far the quality of these little 10 minute games has been superb. Let me say this from the outset; this game is a mini masterpiece. We play a dreamer, charged with beating four evil wizards so that he might awaken from his slumber and ultimately save the denizens of the dream world. When our hero dies, he is brought back to the starting dream where a dungeon master character answers some of his questions and buffs his health. Explore, die, explore, die repeat. It's a distilled rogue like. Graphics are tiny but evocative. The world is foreboding and gloomy in a style that calls to mind Dark Souls, Zelda, Shadow of the Colossus and just about everything in between. Quite remarkable for a 160x144 resolution display. Characters have a surprising amount of personality for such small sprites. Dungeons are spooky, courtyards are mysterious; golems are solemn and undead creatures are freakish. There are a number of nice background music tracks that add bucket loads of atmosphere. I purchased the soundtrack on Bandcamp as I really did dig the tunes. The ticking clock beat of MARCH adds a sense of immediacy and drive. CHIME is haunting and melancholic, but definitely creates a spirit of adventure. When it comes to WIZARDRY, there is a playful vibe which belies the difficulty in facing down the magical adversaries. Finally we have SLIME which has an unsettling hum of evil deep within the quirky discordant main track. Gameplay is simple but subversive. That is not to say the game is easy, rather the opposite, but I mean it is simple to understand what is expected of the player. This is a single stick shooter if such a thing exists. It can be difficult to get used to aiming and moving with the same keys or control stick, but once you get used to the system, more complexities reveal themselves. Deflecting projectiles and angling attacks off walls soon become second nature. Aside from the combat, there are also some puzzle elements to overcome. Immovable creatures which must be moved. Undefeatable foes which must be defeated. Each tiny bit of progress feels monumental. It is easy to forget while playing, that this is a TEN MINUTE GAME. In fact, I played for an hour and was beguiled the whole time. It's a real microcosm of a game. It is minuscule and yet expands so far beyond it's own boundaries as to become huge. There is so much potential in this game, and I am excited to see what the developers dream up for Issue 1. I would very much like to see a whole volume of stories appear over time. In the comic book world, an issue zero of a given title is usually a precursor to the main narrative. It contains background on characters or events that will become central to the ongoing plot. Sometimes it is a promotional comic designed to garner greater interest in the ongoing series, and very often it becomes a much sought after collectable. I'm going to bag and board HANDMADEDEATHLABYRINTH Issue 0 for now, but will likely return to it before I play Issue 1. I wish the creative team all the best for the future.

HANDMADEDEATHLABYRINTH issue 0 seeks to answer the question: "If you strip procedural generation from the rogue-like genre, what remains?" It turns out the answer is, actually, "quite alot." By focusing on and exploring the lesser tenants of the genre, HMDL is able capture a sense of exploration and discovery, and allows the player to poke at the world and learn it's secrets. For a game billed as a 10 minute experience, as a player, I felt that there was a lot of gravitas to the experience. It's a clever and endearing experience and it's a world I hope to spend more time in some day. I will say, I wish there was more movement opportunity for the player, there are several cramped rooms and I found myself wishing I had some kind of dodge or roll. That being said, I have a feeling the small rooms were intentional, in part to mitigate this lack of freedom in the player's movement. This took me closer to 30 minutes to reach the credits. And i enjoyed the entire experience. Definitely worth checking out.

[h1]10mg: Ten Ten-Minute Games![/h1] This 10mg instalment is a challenging adventure RPG dungeon crawler and top-down shooter that likens itself to Dark Souls (if Dark Souls was ten minutes long)! HANDMADE DEATHLABYRINTH issue 0 has an unusual but well-implemented style and makes use of simple pixel art in glorious 160x144 resolution and a limited colour palette to represent the dark, cavernous locations and wizardly foes. This game certainly presents a challenge and even a tad frustrating at times with failure resulting in a return to the beginning, this does, however, make success highly satisfying! [b]WANT TO KNOW MORE?[/b] My full review, covering all ten 10mg games is available at [url=https://indie-hive.com/10mg/]Indie Hive[/url].

nobody should spent 3 dollars to play a barebones demo. only how the combat is handled was a highlight, i know the point of this game and thereby the title was the fact that everything was handmade, but if this game had actual procedural levels and maybe more movement features, this would be an addictive, great game. of course if you change everything else because it is all a handicap to an otherwise great idea. i just like that you have to spin around to attack an enemy youre running away from. too quirky for me

Excellent and intriguing. Worth playing through to the end.

The controls for this are god awful. Just completely terrible. Clunky and entirely unintuitive. Why can you only aim via moving towards the direction you want to throw? There is only one good fight in the game. But the tactic is just circle enemy while trying to shoot a weakspot. The story is basically a paragraph dragged out to be longer. The "ending" is cliche and overall just kinda bad. A minor bug thing I managed to get stuck in a wall near the start once. Fairly certain it wasn't intended. The Dev did one livestream explaining the mechanics on steam but didn't archive it so you can't even watch it. This came as part of a 10mg game bundle. 3rd one so far and only 1 of them has been enjoyable. The game seems like something you would see on newgrounds not on steam. Just not worth paying for. Save your money for a good game. Once I have played all the 10mg bundle il edit this.

Removing the procedurally generated aspect from the beloved roguelite seems like a risk, and it is – but with careful game design, Handmadedeathlabyrinth delivers: through incisively selected data that carries over across runs, and a dungeon that goes by faster and faster as you learn its inner workings, a convincing argument is made that procedural generation isn't necessarily integral to the roguelite feeling. And [i]learning[/i] is indeed the name of the game here: studying how traps and enemies work – trying new methods of handling what's thrown at you – is a delightful journey of discovery. From start to finish, barring extra content, the game is only 30 (not quite 10!) minutes or so. The game does get a bit frustrating and confusing if you decide to go for said extra content, however. Specifically, [spoiler]the rewards hinted at for defeating the Wizard of the Slime Pit are a red herring, and there is in fact no reward or further content, which was neither interesting nor enjoyable to me after 2½ hours of trying – 5× as long as I spent playing the main game[/spoiler]. Depending on how you fare, this may defeat the “10-minute game” aspect a bit – it did for me. In the end, though, I can't say it sours the experience overall – in a compact package, you get a lot of game design to think about and enjoy! Get it! (And really, the whole 10mg pack!)

Short, fun and with a clever ending. It takes the feeling of a dungeon-crawling roguelike and condenses it into a small dose of simple gameplay. It was a bit harder than I expected so it took me longer than ten minutes to beat, but I see that as a good thing. I have beaten it a second time and now I believe it is definitely well balanced. All in all, a good little game. I can't wait to see what comes next.

A lot of droqen's games capture a really fascinating atmosphere -- they always make you feel like a really small part of something larger and mysterious, where you're not just learning a game but learning a world. This game is an intentionally short experience, but it still manages to cram that wonderful feeling into a teeny tiny little game. Definitely worth a shot.

Seems pretty run-of-the-mill at first, but contains an original atmosphere, an engaging storyline, and a number of secrets that reveal themselves over the course of the play session.