Its a really simple little realtime Roguelike. Think The Binding of Isaac with pixels and a fantasy theme. AFAIK, there's no story beyond "KILL THE MONSTERS, LOOT THE DUNGEON". Start a game, youre in a random dungeon, with a random layout and random mobs and loot. Theres a seed number in the corner of the pause menu and a start option to enter a seed number, so if you find a layout you like, you can replay it.
The game itself is fast paced, lots of enemies and projectiles zipping around. Enemy types vary, and they change between level types (as you go deeper the levels change look and mobs). Art is pixel style. Nothing too spectacular. You can tell what everything is you see though, although for some reason your weapon isnt actually held by your char but arcs out in a half circle around him. Musics pretty good, and the sound effects are what you'd expect from a game like this.
The map is set up like the dungeon levels of the Legend of Zelda, each screen is a room with doors leading out. Some rooms require you to kill the mobs to proceed, some are dead ends. Some are stores where you can buy a random selection of items for gold or rarely permanent health loss. Eventually you will find a boss room, with a giant monster that you hae to kill. It usually drops a permanent health power up. In the room with the boss is a trapdoor. Go down that and youre in the next level. Rinse, repeat. There are *plenty* of cool random items and weapons. You have a weapon slot, and an item/magic slot. You can carry only one of each, and picking up an item or weapon drops the most recently carried one. There are also bombs and keys in their own slots. Items take mana to use, the amount of which is shown by a number in the corner of the item box.
Controls are OK, but not great. Its easy to get hung up on dngeon objects and you get damaged on enemy collision, so its easy to accidentally bump into something since some enemies seem to have large collision boxes. Its not a game breaking issue, but I wish the controls were smoother. Controller support is fully implemented and decent, but only the keyboard is remappable (a big pet peeve of mine due to my disabled hand- I really appreciate the controller, but please make it mappable).
Its simple, its fun for a run or two, runs can last anywhere from 26 seconds to hours depending on your reflexes and desire to clear every screen, and also the RNG not dumping a ton of tough mobs on the first screen you enter (why I had a 26 second run).
My one big complaint is there is no save. In an arcade/permadeath-style game like this, I dont expect to be able to save to avoid dying but a "one-time emergency drop-out and pick it back up where you left off" save should be implemented. Most other games have one time saves, even arcades or Roguelikes. Thats a major issue, and should really be added.
The game also seems to be lacking in permanent unlockables, so each run doesn't add to an overall sense of accomplishment. Unlockables such as new classes, better starting gear, more health on start and so forth add a lot to a permadeath game, and the fact that Faron's Fate doesn't have them kind of lowers it in my eyes.
Overall, its a decent little game, but not great. $7 is an OK price, but I think $5 would be a bit more fair considering how simple the game is and the lack of emergency saves and unlockables. Its pretty fun though, one of those "kick back, and run frantically around a dungeon slaying monsters and looting" games.
