This isn't a full negative review, more of a mixed one. I think this game is [i]good enough[/i], just not really worth its price. I bought this at ~€9,50ish, and I regret that purchase a little. It's more of what I would consider a €5 game. And considering that the base price is €15,50, that's a bit disappointing.
The main problem I have with it, is that it's a reaaaaaaaaaaally [i]long[/i] autobattler. Like, my entire playtime was just one run. An hour and a half for a single run. But you don't actually do anything in that run. I don't mind longer roguelike runs, I loved Darkest Dungeon II, for instance, and that game's runs can easily take twice the time. But I'm actually making decisions there.
The problem here is that you have to do so. many. fights. I think I did like 106 fights in this run? But most of these are just absolute filler. There's no meaningful difference between Round 36, where my dudes have to fight 102 toddlers, or Round 42, where my dudes have to fight 123 toddlers. The numbers are made up, but I think you get the point. The game really wants to pretend like every fight is a step up in difficulty, and theoretically, it might be, but in practice, you don't feel anything.
Hell, in practice, I found that there was no good argument to not just choose the more difficult fight each time, because, well, if you can't beat it, you weren't going to beat the exact same fight showing up 10 rounds later. Even running a build heavily indexed into taunts, there wasn't an adequate reason to not choose the more rewarding Honey Badger fight, who ignored 80% of my taunts. In part, that was because my Warlock Dudes were considerably broken, since the more I got of them, the better each individual Warlock Dude was, so they were just unkillable, but also because, if I was struggling against these guys, I wasn't going to do any better later.
The amount of rounds really had to be condensed to maybe a fifth of what it is now. The rounds would actually become noticeably different from one another, being able to skip out on rounds that might screw you over would become a worthwhile boon, and most importantly, you wouldn't have so many back to back fights without any interesting rewards. Because, holy hell, there are stretches of time where you just watch your Dudes do the exact same thing over and over and over again.
Another problem was the balance design. By which I mean, I feel like you're not really incentivised to branch out at all. If, like me, you had a build focused around Warlock Dudes, there was no reason to ever pick up a different Dude above a Warlock Dude, or a different relic above a Warlock Dude relic. And while, yes, Warlock Dudes were probably better at self-synergy than average, since they had a relic that spread out the damage they took over [i]all[/i] Warlock Dudes, thus every new Warlock Dude made every existing one that much stronger, in the other relics and units I saw, I couldn't see any Dude that promoted a playstyle other than just stacking your strongest Dude type as much as you could.
Ranger Dudes, Druid Dudes, Vampire Dudes, etc... if you're going to build around any of them, it seems strongest to just pick up as many of them as possible, at any cost. And since you're stacking them, that makes any relics you might pick up for them even stronger, as they'll affect more units than other relics, which then means that you're more incentivised to stack them, which means that future relics for them are even stronger, et cetera. Even units that feel like they would synergise - like the Paladin Dudes, who can absorb some damage going onto weaker units - fall flat in that aspect. Only putting in one Paladin Dude isn't going to make any difference, so you're going to want multiple. But if you have multiple, you're going to want their relics, and if you have their relics, then every new Paladin Dude you pick up is going to be that much more valuable than other Dudes, and you're back to stacking.
It's been a while since I've seen a game with decent potential squander it in such a weird way, because every problem this game has - that I noticed - boils down to "there are too many rounds," and I can't figure out why they had this many to begin with. The only thing I can see is that they really wanted to reach the number 100? But it's just ridiculous. If the runs were 30% as long, I would have probably played 5 times the amount of runs at least. But now, the game is asking me to commit an hour and a half to a new run, that won't be meaningfully different than my first one. I don't have any inclination to try out different Dudes, because I know it'll take way too long and be way too repetitive.
There are some good aspects to the game too. I like the artstyle, and I especially think some quality of life features are to be praised. The game telling you just how many enemies (or Dudes) are in an AoE for an item is a godsend. Automatically pausing when you select an item is great too. The UI having a distinction between Dudes who have died in this fight, and Dudes who were knocked out in a previous fight but are still recovering is something that I wouldn't have thought about, but is so good to have.
But I think you can also notice the problem in that. If the best thing I have to bring up about the game is its quality of life, that's not exactly a great sign. It's not a feature that should be ignored, but it's also not the core mechanics of the game.
All in all, I can see why people like this game. It's not a terrible one by any means. But I was hoping to be able to sink my teeth into it more, and I could not at all. And I think if you're like me, and you're constantly on the lookout for more strategic roguelikes, you could probably skip out of How Many Dudes for now. Maybe give it a try if it goes on a deep sale at some point.
