I contracted, fought, and beat aplastic anemia whilst waiting for this game to be completed. That was five years ago.
To say I'm upset with the slow state of development is an understatement. At the same time, there's something about this game that I find highly enjoyable. The music, the art style, even the unique way the game works all scratch an itch that I can't find anywhere else. So much that I spent time actually writing a real review.
For a roguelite, it does rely heavily on RNG. I usually dislike this. It manages to do so in a way that is so utterly addicting, that every time I nearly ragequit, I found myself just starting a new run. There's an odd agency I don't normally feel with RNG heavy games. As you hunt achievements, you unlock new content and slowly find ways to make the unfairness feel manageable. A lot of the RNG luck isn’t even about beating the game itself so much as it is about landing some of the rarer achievements. In my head, that seems to make it a lot more acceptable to manage--I still feel genuine enjoyment when I finish a run even if I didn't achieve my goals, and there are many times I'm trying to achieve multiple in the same run. Keeping track of this is a game in and of itself, and if you enjoy games that require you to learn a lot of information to succeed, this one will please you a lot. In this, I feel it succeeds in its "roguelite" aesthetic.
It’s not TBOI, and the whole process is honestly a lot clunkier here. But the way achievement hunting works really pushes you to try things you otherwise wouldn’t. Unless you have serious issues with how the game actually plays, you can get a lot of hours out of it just trying to 100% the achievements and unlock everything. Without spoiling it, the reward for doing this is pretty awesome, and probably one of the best 100% completion rewards I've gotten from a game lol.
It's very fitting to the theme; an insurmountable task drives you into madness, and you somehow gain understanding beyond your initial comprehension. You go from having no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ clue what you are doing to beating the most obnoxious god, using the stupidest character, on the hardest difficulty. All so you can unlock a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ terrible backstory that doesn't even have an achievement attached to it (unlike others.) And it feels EUPHORIC. This game has wounded me cerebrally to the point the torture was exquisite.
I spent so many hours on this game that it would be ridiculous to not say it was worth the price I paid, even in the current state.
However, there are some pretty big cons I feel important to note:
- I listed this earlier as a positive, but it’s also a flaw. If you expect most of the content to be available right away, you’re going to be disappointed. You will sit thru some extremely enraging runs before you fully access the amount of strategy the game has. Guides will be similarly frustrating as what someone writing it may have unlocked will be different from you, unless the writer of the guide has the time to account for this. This game does not handhold, and it does it in the jankiest way possible.
- I love the cases individually, but the way they work during runs can be very ♥♥♥♥♥♥.
You have to solve five to get to the lighthouse. That's fine, right? NO. NO!!! Some cases completely isolate you from the rest of the game, which means you lose access to stores or areas you might normally rely on to manage your run. On top of that, and ESPECIALLY in some of these maps, some bosses are punishing enough that with a solid grasp of the meta it's easy to permanently write those cases off entirely. They are fun to play, don't get me wrong. But the nature of what I mentioned above makes it somewhat difficult to rectify in my head.
- I don’t want to call the game janky. I really don’t.
But some mechanics are so weirdly optimized that they actively discourage experimenting with characters, which is odd for a game that literally requires you to do so to unlock new content. Some characters have no perceivable advantage in the meta, even with highly specific strategies; the RNG dictates that often this is just not effective.
A lot of achievements can be completed much easier on a select amount of characters, and because min-maxing matters so much in an RNG heavy game there’s not much reason to use the weaker ones unless an achievement forces you to. There are some characters I have literally never played except once or twice because they are just so useless. So why are they there? It’s forgivable, but it becomes very obvious the more you play.
- The dev is notoriously bad at communication. To be fair, every time people start claiming the game is abandoned, an update eventually does happen. But the game still launched with unfinished content. Without Steam achievement integration, and seeing merch drops, even a Switch release while communication has been this sparse, I find this naturally frustrating. I genuinely feel a lot of the ire towards this dev would be lessened if he just sat down for five minutes and was earnest about the actual progress of the game, his goals, and what he realistically finds achievable. I don't believe he's trying to scam people, I just think he really misunderstood how EA should work--people expected a finished game by full release, not the almost-finished version we have and waiting games.
Telling people an update is coming March, then releasing an ANNOUNCEMENT a different March, does not do well for morale. At the same time, the game does seem like it’s nearing actual completion, so maybe this won’t matter as much in the long run.
There is a huge pro.
- You can pet the dog in the store. It's VERY important that you do this. Trust me.
