Railroads & Catacombs

I was this close to giving this game a positive review, but ultimately, I cannot. Initially I had bought this game for Steam Deck, hoping I would be able to play it like with a controller, but since I was pretty new to this, I didn't realize the game does not support standard Steam Deck controls. Either way, instead of getting a refund, I decided to give it a try on my laptop. I admit, it was fun for a while. After 11 hours of gameplay I managed to level up some of my characters, found my favorite classes, and started mauling those pesky bosses on the 5th Insane difficulty level. All was well until I hit a roadblock. The 9th boss is a monster named Defender. Every other turn he stacks more and more unbreakable Armor, which makes him incredibly hard to kill. He has a metric ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of HP, and the Armor only gets more and more unpenetrable. I tried to beat him with a couple of classes, and couldn't. They simply didn't do enough damage. The game clearly states you can beat the boss with ANY class to progress the story, but in reality only one or two classes with high enough damage output are able to beat it. This is a terrible, terrible designer choice. Essentially, if you put hours and resources to level up guys that fit your playstyle, and they are not able to dish out enough damage, you need to slog your way through a chunk of the game again to level up characters you would use seldomly or not at all, in order to beat just that one guy. Someone had a similar problem, and asked whether this (or maybe the next?) boss can actually be beaten, since it has so much HPs and stacks armor all the time. The designer himself answered of course he can be, but you need to dish out damage. He called it "strategic thinking". There's nothing strategic about leveling up that single perfect class to beat the guy. That's just bad design. For me, that a no-no.

Hard like Darkest Dungeon... but somehow worse in every way that matters. Permanently losing the soldier on what should have been a milk run for him at that point and not seeing a replacement and then having similar things happen to other characters just as they are starting to have useful skill cards, also on starter maps has revealed this to be a needlessly hard grindfest. Skill doesn't enter into random abilities and a deck system fast enough to make it worth developing the skill. Wish I hadn't spent the money or the time, and I bought it on sale.

R&C has a good foundation but unfortunately it doesn't make enough use of the ideas it introduces. Enemy variety is limited, train upgrades are just "do X for Y% less" and the skill system, while interesting, hits its limit by mid game.

Really fun indie game. It's not the smoothest ride, but dang it's fun. The game started by making me feel overwhelmed, like I was barely scraping by. Then, I got to know the mechanics better, and how some powers interacted with others in ways that were fantastic. Mechanically, it holds together pretty well, but you'll wind up discovering that combining aspects of several warpaths with each other can unlock the key to creating a godlike character who has little to fear from the hardest bosses. The art is gorgeous and I love it. The animations are great. Sometimes transitioning from one room to the next is a little abrupt, and the tilesets are largely samey, but that did little to diminish the joy I found in grinding out resources or experience points. Thematically, the game is great. It ties in the weird, repetitive things that games make you do into the narrative of the game, and I really appreciate that. The story is fun. It's more of a background piece, but it comes together really well at the end. There were a few small bugs I found, but nothing that really kept me from enjoying the game or getting 100% achievements. I'd definitely recommend this game if you like roguelikes, and especially if you liked Darkest Dungeon.

It would be a fun phone game, but I have to join the "it's grindy and tedious" team. The complexicity isn't sufficient to keep you interested, after two hours (fortunately for me actually 117 minutes) I feel like I'm getting bored. Would give neutral result, because it's not a -bad- game. But it's not a game I'd want to invest more time into.

Meh. I think the mechanics are good, but it just feels so bare bones. I don't know how to phrase it other than a lack of something.

Another promising game shot down by releasing it without controller support. "WASD" movement should stay in the past where it belongs. Mixing good modern day graphics with 90s controls is like mixing peanut butter with vinegar instead of jelly. It ruins the whole experience...especially for handicapped people. From reading the developer's remarks,..more importance is being placed on misspelled words in the game's text !! Pretty sad.

我他妈吐了，暗黑地牢好的不学，学tm不能sl，什么勾八开发九年，游戏有变好玩嘛？没有

Kudos to the creator for making this game solo! It´s fun and def. worth the cost. The gameplay loop is creative and interactive. I felt like improving alot while playing, which is always a sign of good combat design. Minion fights near the end became somewhat repetitive, but the bosses where a really tough nut to crack, esp. on the highest difficulty. A bit RNG heavy on some boss fights near the end, but most fights were really enjoyable. The classes are interesting to play and experiment with, especially once you unlock more rooms on your train. Kinda sad that most improvements for the train were not worth the resources, could be looked into for future updates. That aside, I enjoyed the challenge of having to build different classes to overcome different challenges, I couldn´t just blaze through everything with the same build. Only truly sad thing for me is the story, or, well, how little it felt like it had to do with me as the player early on. It is good to hide the whole truth behind a horror story til later, but some personal stakes early on would have been nice to keep me invested with my characters or at least the progression through the game. Maybe some narration about the bosses would have been nice too. Who are they? Why are they so good at killing me? Because they are really good at it and their design (both art and combat) is so interesting! In general, the vibes of this game are immaculate! The eerie soundtrack in the background, the *very* satisfying soundeffects in combat, the scenery and character designs, all amazing! If the creator of this game reads this, this random stranger on the internet would like to tell you: You can be damn proud of yourself! Very well done!

The art style is what drew me into buying the game. Glad I did. Game play is nice, I like it. It's a card game, which I love. I recommend this game if you're looking to get into card games. It's a straight forward one card battle game that won't take brain power.