The Spiral

TLDR: Love the graphics and vibes, but did not like the game loop and lacking some QOL things - which makes the game too difficult. I want to give this game a review as I have not seen much reviews for this game online and here on Steam. It is hard to give a review but I will try... I only played the first few levels but decided to stop, because I found the game too difficult with some of the key QoL stuff missing and do not see myself enjoying it in the long run. Firstly, I love the whole"King's Field" aspect of the game and feel. Very old school and I love it. The rougelike aspect is also very nice as well and it adds replay. Looting, inventory management is fun but I feel there are too many chests, and the game just throws too many weapons at you... Gold is also very generous, its everywhere! Here are some constructive feedbacks, which I feel hinders the game experience: - There are no loot comparisons... there are no numbers for values - you cannot tell right away which weapon is better than which. This makes it very tiresome to check and judge which weapon does more damage based on just eyeing it... - There are no on screen health, and stamina bars. This is an issue as it seems you die very quickly especially when more than one monsters gang up on you. Health potions are also rare, so you don't want to just waste them. But who knows if you are at 60%HP and will die from 3 hits, VS 100%HP where you will die from 5 for example? The only hint they give is your screen glows red when your HP is low - even then, you have no idea if you are at 2% or like 20% HP.... - There's LOTS of things to loot... a bit too many... For the first few levels, mostly is empty rooms or rooms with 1-3 monsters.. I spent most of my time looting, picking up gold (there are sooooo many bags of gold everywhere!), and opening chests with tons of weapons. More time were spent managing my inventory than fighting monsters. - The monsters are 2D spirtes : OK, yes I love the pixelated aspect of the game and how the monsters look, but there is an issue because they're flat, 2D sprites. This means if a flying monster gets on top of you, it's very hard to see them because of the viewing angle... They're basically like a thin line. I think some patch here may be in order - at least for the flying monsters so they will always be "facing you" - Difficulty aginst more than 1 enemies: from the screenshots I thought there's some push back mechanic, and definately a stagger mechanic. However, in reality it doesn't work too well. Enemies can get staggered, but only for like 1-2 seconds max. I have not seen enemies getting pushed back by blows and they just seem to keep running at you. When 1v1, this is not a huge issue as you can kind of attack and step back, but against more than one humaniod enemies like the skeleton knights, this gets very punishing as you can and will die in about 5 hits. I had them keep on just running up to me and kicking me, draining all my stamina non-stop. This combined with no HP bar on screen makes it almost impossible to win these fights as you cannot run away. You may think ok what about taking them by range and pulling them one by one? Well for some reason, I have not seen a bow, crossbow or a magic staff yet from the time I played (but oddly, they do feed you tons of arrows and bolts?). All in all, I love the vibes of this game but I find the current loop is a bit too focused on loot management and the diffculty is too high for me. Also, I do not know "how deep the rabbit hole" goes and if its worth the money. Very little is shared on the store page and online as to how long the game is... I only see the opening area, so I do not know how many biomes there are but it seems like there is only 1 or 2 from promotional videos. But to me I feel there is definately room for imporvements but I don't feel like it's for me at this state. Some suggestions: - Have HP and Stamina on screen permanately. - Instead of having generic person picking up randomly generated wepaons, have selectable classes with weapon picks at start of each run. - I do not believe there are any perma unlocks between runs and you seem to lose everything upon death. One suggestion to give players incentive to come back is maybe have a "safe box/slot" so you can actually bring back some items and put them in your main stash upon death, for use with your next run. - You can only spend gold at NPC shops.. but maybe change the loop so you can spend gold between runs and upgrade? - A bit less loot would be cool, there's just too many gold, chests all over the place and makes finding loot more of a chore than something you look forward to.

This is a fantastic roguelike dungeon crawler with tons of replayability and potential playstyles. You get a steady drip of dopamine from finding tons of loot and weapon abilities, and even when I screwed up and died I was excited to start over and try it all again. This is going to be my new addiction for a while, and I would highly recommend it, especially for the price.

a super excellent dungeon crawler. good vibes, good combat all feels and looks really great.

Reminds me of great Dungeon Crawlers from when I was a kid, and the same kind of feast or famine occurs where I am doing fantastic until I get cocky and die. One day I will manage to escape the Spiral, probably!

she the on my spiral till i die to the warden after 8 hours of playtime after filling my entire inventory with glowstones

Great dungeon crawler! Love the tight inventory management, awesome music, and atmosphere. Crazy how much content is in the game for 10$. Can’t wait to see what else gets added! Solid 9/10!

There are some issues; the procedural generation is basic, its all the same environment and you can get lost easily. There are maps but they're not very useful as some of the floors can be quite labyrinthian, with the maps just showing a general area. Also the combat feels floaty, and the procedural generation is a bit out of whack; locked chests have frequently had worse loot than the unlocked ones. Combat is a on the basic side; you attack, you block, and you backstep, that's about it. If you love loot, then this game has a tonne of it! You'll collect rings with stacking passive buffs to help strengthen your character, as this is a game avoid of stat progression; all your power comes from the weapons and the passive buffs. No levels, no stat investment. My main complaints incl. that the bosses have way too much health; absolute bullet sponges. Would have preferred them to do more damage but have less health. The fact that Glowstones take a handslot instead of being consumed. And that finding the ladder up / down is tedious on the later, much larger levels -- doesn't help that the map item takes up a inventory slot and only works for one floor, and is abstract.

Up

Hell yes, this game has its hooks in me already. It's a wonderful Lo Fi Ultima Underworld about diving a dungeon to get enough goodies to smack down the boss at the top of the dungeon. It also has magic items, cursed items that purify into much better items, tons of weapon mods... and a great combat flow. Best $5 I've spent in ages.

This is now my favorite rogue-like dungeon crawler on Steam. This developer listened to player feedback and added in some additional graphics options to control the pixelation filter and color reduction filters. That's just OUTSTANDING support from a small dev team who really doesn't have to continue updating their game for us - but they DO. Thank you, devs! This game gets a very enthusiastic thumbs up from me, and this is a developer that 100% deserves your support! That aside, this is a really excellent, addictive dungeon crawler - and you should play it because it's a great game.