This review contains spoilers
I am thankful that this game was a free monthly game through PlayStation as I had never heard of this game and assuming I had heard of it, I would never have paid money for it. I’m not the biggest roguelike fan so I almost didn’t play this even though it was free. The only roguelike I’ve ever loved was Hades and outside of that I liked Dead Cells and Enter the Gungeon. I needed something to play after finishing Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Personal 3 back to back and as much as I absolutely loved those games I needed a game that wouldn’t take me 70-100 hours to beat. So the timing of this being a free game was perfect. I just randomly said “whatever it’s free I’ll try it out” and I’m so glad I did.
This game is more wonderful than I ever dreamed it could have been. The gameplay is simple but the difficulty is demanding making the game addictive and leaving you wanting one more run because you know you can do better. The moment it clicks and you go from a dying scrub to an unstoppable force is so satisfying as you continually get slightly better each run. With around 100 different skulls (playable character types) the game play never gets dull even though it doesn’t massively change between skulls. It’s so fun to try completely different builds once you get comfortable enough with the gameplay loop. You can tell they took a lot of ideas from Dead Cells in the levels and leveling of your character as well as from Hollow Knight in the boss department. You can tell they love video games as there are so many Easter Eggs to other games and pop culture. For instance the warrior skull looks like Kratos, the prisoner/king is Dead Cells main character, Biker is Ghost Rider, Genie is the Genie for Aladdin, one’s boss screams Leeroy Jenkins when charging to attack you, the Nun bosses when healing says Hero’s never die from Overwatch, and there are many more instances of these sorts of things that I appreciated.
The story is surprisingly decent as well though I would hardly call it great. Much like the gameplay I would say it’s at the base level simple, but has layers. The pixel art is pretty good and easy on the eyes. The music has some pretty good tracks throughout the game.
I’m so glad I randomly decided to give this great game a try and I strongly recommend you give it a shot as well. Even after beating it now I just want to compete it with all the skulls. This will be a game I play for a long time.
My 2024 game rankings:
https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/games-i-played-in-2024-ranked-1/
It barely snuck in to my top 100
https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/my-favorite-100-video-game-of-all-time/
This game is more wonderful than I ever dreamed it could have been. The gameplay is simple but the difficulty is demanding making the game addictive and leaving you wanting one more run because you know you can do better. The moment it clicks and you go from a dying scrub to an unstoppable force is so satisfying as you continually get slightly better each run. With around 100 different skulls (playable character types) the game play never gets dull even though it doesn’t massively change between skulls. It’s so fun to try completely different builds once you get comfortable enough with the gameplay loop. You can tell they took a lot of ideas from Dead Cells in the levels and leveling of your character as well as from Hollow Knight in the boss department. You can tell they love video games as there are so many Easter Eggs to other games and pop culture. For instance the warrior skull looks like Kratos, the prisoner/king is Dead Cells main character, Biker is Ghost Rider, Genie is the Genie for Aladdin, one’s boss screams Leeroy Jenkins when charging to attack you, the Nun bosses when healing says Hero’s never die from Overwatch, and there are many more instances of these sorts of things that I appreciated.
The story is surprisingly decent as well though I would hardly call it great. Much like the gameplay I would say it’s at the base level simple, but has layers. The pixel art is pretty good and easy on the eyes. The music has some pretty good tracks throughout the game.
I’m so glad I randomly decided to give this great game a try and I strongly recommend you give it a shot as well. Even after beating it now I just want to compete it with all the skulls. This will be a game I play for a long time.
My 2024 game rankings:
https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/games-i-played-in-2024-ranked-1/
It barely snuck in to my top 100
https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/my-favorite-100-video-game-of-all-time/