Crown of Pain

Quick match-3 RPG, what's not to like?

Классная инди-поделка, что вы дизлайкаете, клоуны?!

Beautiful art style and mood!

[b]˗ˏˋ 2.8 out of 5★ ˎˊ˗[/b] [table] [tr] [td]Played On:[/td] [td]Steam Deck[/td][/tr] [tr] [td]Story:[/td] [td]Not much of one[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Graphics:[/td][td]Average[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Gameplay:[/td] [td]Fine[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Sound:[/td] [td]Okay[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Technical Performance:[/td] [td]Loads in slow[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Game Length:[/td] [td]4 - 5 hours [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Options:[/td] [td]Very barebones[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Originality:[/td] [td]Haven't played enough of the genre to know if it's original[/td] [/tr] [/table] [b]Summary[/b]: If only Steam had a neutral option. It's a RPG card matching game that let's your characters attack when you get a matching triple. It's a decent time killer. Once you beat it, you start all the way over from the beginning but you keep whatever stats or skills gained along the way. There's no new game plus and the developers don't plan on adding any. Replaying is just for getting the last bit of achievements which are grindy.

Прикольно, но коротенько, на момент написания прошел.

Honestly, I have no idea why and how the developer/publisher released this game in it's current state. It's not even early access, more like a proof of concept, or vertical slice (after being on the market for 1.5+ years). There is a seed of a decent game here, but it's just... too barebone. The first 20-30 minutes is a slugfest with a single character, then it gets rolling, as soon as you have a party of 3 or 4. Then after around ~90 minutes of overall game time, you realize that there is almost nothing here. You find the optimal party, unlock all skills in the matter of a single hour and basically you play while being at the mercy of RNJesus. Maybe you bump up an ability once in a while, but really nothing else to do here. There are only a handful of characters here to unlock, no extra like artefacts, trinkets or whatnot. Then I got the idea to experiment with other builds, but basic quality of life is painfully missing. If you want to revamp the equipped skills, you have no chance to overview the current ones (including their effects) and the unlocked ones. Price tag is low for sure and has the vibe of labor of love, but to be honest, if that's all the progress the developer made during 21 (22?) months, then... yeah, I don't think that this game will become a full fledged one in that decade.

A wonderful blend of tactical gameplay and simple match-3 mechanic. The game is old-school and does not hold your hand, getting quite difficult at times, which is great.

Like the concept. Way too difficult.

If you like match-3, this is a fun little romp. Only took a couple hours to beat, and frankly, there's nothing left to do once you've finished, but I had my fun. Protips: focus your extra abilities on healing and stun, and focus all your matches in the lower middle quadrant to maximize snowball cascades.

I'm short into the game and I like it. Pixel art, how not to like it, anyway? If the dev will look at my comment, I'll drop my two cents: - THIS IS A MUCH NEEDED "SECURITY" FEATURE. There's no confirmation request on the "New Game" button: I accidentally clicked it, and lost my current game. Bad, bad, BAD. Set the "New Game" button as smaller one, perhaps near the "Continue" one, and add a confirmation window after it gets clicked ON TAVERN/HIRING PAGE: - having the available/unavailable heroes differentiated someway would be nice. Since they're all grey, though, I wouldn't know what to suggest. Perhaps a darker shade of gray for not hired ones? - when hiring a hero, would be nice to have a sneak-peek at their skill, just to don't waste... Faith ponts? MAP - when questiong on Part II of the map, it keeps getting back to Part I on each new expedition PRE-BATTLE SET-UP WINDOW: - allow to see the description and combos of the skills used so a player can perform a better evaluation of the skills, since characters, for some reason can't use all the skills they've learned (which makes learning some skills useless, as well as investing on more than four characters) - dividing the available skills per-character, using different lines, wouldn't be bad ON THE BATTLE WINDOW: - list the active skills on the left, where now the combos are stored, with the highlight of the part of the skill that has been charged: that'll make easier to see which combos are 'bout to get fired, and to manage in a better way the tiles arrangement. Havin' the charged stack of combos still listed below could be still nice to see how many are left before depleting the stack - since healing can't heal Heroes over their max HP, a display as (example) 27/27 in the HP window may prove useful - set an in-game button for quick-access to volume menu: I found myself playing with a volume too high, and had to quit the battle to lower it MISCELLANEOUS: - Allow player to re-arrange the heroes' symbols: my mind relates the red-drop as the Rogue, but it matches the back-rank while now my Rogue is on front-line along with the warrior. Same way, the blue item is on front-low row, while my mind associates it with the Wizard (top-left, back rank, my mind associates with Cleric) TYPOS: - Zulan's 3rd skill "Lightening": should be "Lightning", I guess? - Hope's 4th skill, "Divine Intervention": perhaps it removes one NEGATIVE effect, and not a positive one? - "Bjorg" mob description is flawed, code is showing - "Sellsword" mob description is flawed, code is showing SUGGESTIONS: - change "damage" and "true damage" with "physical damage"/"magical damage". Is kinda conventional that "(physical) damage" hits the armour (shield), while "magical damage" bypasses it