He is Coming

At first I was hesitant - I love the art style, music is great, and the game play seemed familiar - yet something felt very different about this. I was worried that it was going to be a passive kind of game with little interaction... But, then I gave it a shot - and my god, this has become one of my favorite games of 2026. A rougelike filled with so much content and tactics that every run feels like a true adventure, a challenge. What I love most about this game is that it really harkens back to an age where your imagination would take center stage; the game doesn't use overly complex or stylized animations, but that's a FEATURE. It's quite beautiful in its simplicity, with a great deal of depth to each run. What I also love about this game is that there's always something new to discover - if one game mode begins feeling a little stale, the next game mode will pose a different and wonderful challenge too. And kingmaker mode, what a truly wonderful idea!!! See, you play a run with your select subsection of items, and instead of a pre-made boss, you play builds other players had previously used at that point in the game! It's like playing a PvP, but without the stress or toxicity of it, and with a greater personal challenge. This game also really utilizes the "fail fast" philosophy, if a run isn't going well? You lose early and can instantly restart and learn and try again. You can go into each run with a strategy for a build you want to go for, and find it changes along the way as you encounter different items and enemies. There are games somewhat similar to this - but none quite like this one. From its style to its game play, it forges a new genre of a roguelike adventure dungeon crawler that I simply can't get enough of. If you're hesitating at all on buying this game, stop it; its worth every penny and more. I can't recommend this game enough, it really scratches that itch for a good roguelike / adventure game, that's lose stress yet challenging and exciting! The perfect game to play after a long day of work that excites the mind without draining you further. I'll be playing this for a long, long time to come.

This is an actual roguelike by the definition of it, with turn based permadeath and randomize loot and all that. It leans a lot more into autobattler territory as the primary method you interact with enemies is automated, and your ‘job’ is to navigate and manage resources and equipment. If you’ve played Loop Hero, the basic gameplay is like that, but with way more agency. Graphics and music and sound are all about as minimal as they need to be to do their job. I’m not usually a fan of the pixel aesthetic but it doesn’t come off as lazy here and everything important is communicated via color so it’s actually a step above most of these ‘retro’ vibe games you see. There’s a surprising amount of content, I played this casually on my Steam Deck and runs are short enough and varied enough I didn’t find myself getting bored. In fact there might be a bit too much hidden content since the game tries to be minimize explanations. I don’t think combos should be locked and require you to discover them first, for example, and you’d probably be better suited just looking up all the ‘secrets’ since the harder difficulties almost require that you use them to succeed. However almost all other information is freely available to you- if you wanted to, you could even calculate out whether you'll beat bosses, since you're given all that information ahead of time. Of course occasionally you'll run into the 'I didn't get the item I needed to finish my build' problem, but I'll say even after having beaten most the content on harder difficulties, I often ended up winning with suboptimal builds, so you don't have to thread the needle there to be successful. Overall, very fun game. If you get the chance to play the demo I’d say it captures a lot of what makes the game good. There’s even asynchronous multiplayer, though I didn’t touch it. I’d say this game represents how important design and thought is when it comes to game design, because it feels very fine tuned and not sloppy like how some roguelikes/roguelites think they can just throw ‘deckbuilder’ into their description and be successful.

Would definitely get this if you're even 20% interested in it, amazing game. Really interesting autobattler with a variety of gamemodes. I like exploring the different synergies available between the items, and the artstyle and theming of the game is really charming. Having a set boss to face off against is a really clever way to encourage you to explore different builds since most bosses directly counter a specific playstyle. I got it pretty early in early access, and it's clear the devs are intent on actually finishing it, because the amount of content they have added the past few months is very impressive. Very minor detail, but for the devs: If there was one thing I'd change about the game, I'd make it more obvious to the player which items have synergies. I really like the synergies mechanic, but I don't want to go wiki-diving to find out which combos of items to pick up to unlock them, it feels very tedious to actually unlock all combos, and I don't like having to tab-out mid run to do research. Show me up front, so that I know if I'm picking up an item which could be part of a synergy or not. The way it behaves once it's actually unlocked is perfect, I know to hunt for a specific combo item once I'm holding one.

Love it! Retro, simple to get into. Difficult to master.

This game has filled the exact void of what I've been craving for a long time. The combination of the art style and mechanics is absolutely magical. Although, I fear this will be a case of missed potential - saying that based on dev comments that they will release Darklands as 1.0 and they want to move on to other projects. This game could go so much further... Something I wish was implemented is more leaderboard type stuff. Even just for singleplayer to increase replayability, so you could try and beat your own records of e.g. how fast you can kill all bosses or something like that, or and endless gauntlet mode with increasing difficulty but also gear power, play over and over to see how far you can get. I'm sure I will still spend many more hours on the game but seeing the pace and playstyle I feel it will be a "enjoy your 20 hours and leave forever" type of deal unless they take feedback like this and don't give up on the game. This is such rich soil, and I will be heartbroken to see only a fraction of it used.

This game isn't bad, it's short. I've got about 3 hours of gameplay and seen all I could do in the pre-release. Mayble once the game fully release it'll be worthwhile but not at the moment. Overall it's got no more than a couple hours of gameplay.

This game is insane, brutal, difficult, and fun as hell. There's a lot of variety in the roguelike randomization you get in a given run, and that allows for a lot of personal flair and experimentation. It's a game that rewards experimentation and encourages discovery, with bosses that are made trivial if you are able to get the right combo...but are still beatable if your stubborn build is strong enough! I absolutely love it and I don't know who wouldn't. So excited for the full release.