Classic Frankenstein game combining building/management, hack & slash dungeon crawling, and soft roguelike elements, creating a dense web of overlapping and complimentary systems which is very satisfying and compelling to get into. Combine this with a great visual style and a wicked sense of humour and initially I felt like this was a genuine 2022 Game of the Year contender.
And then the other shoe dropped. I would say, once you really get into it, each individual aspect of the game is quite shallow & the payoff for progress and mastery is rarely satisfying. I got all the way to the end and the brutally hard final boss fight, I felt, made some pretty wild assumptions about how much fun the player would still be having with the combat. Despite not being a truly massive game, you do feel the playtime by the end & there’s pretty much only just enough quality content to justify the length.
Combined with a design desperately in need of some quality of life improvements, overall I can only give a soft recommendation. And I absolutely couldn’t recommend it over more focused roguelites like Hades or management sims like Stardew Valley.
And then the other shoe dropped. I would say, once you really get into it, each individual aspect of the game is quite shallow & the payoff for progress and mastery is rarely satisfying. I got all the way to the end and the brutally hard final boss fight, I felt, made some pretty wild assumptions about how much fun the player would still be having with the combat. Despite not being a truly massive game, you do feel the playtime by the end & there’s pretty much only just enough quality content to justify the length.
Combined with a design desperately in need of some quality of life improvements, overall I can only give a soft recommendation. And I absolutely couldn’t recommend it over more focused roguelites like Hades or management sims like Stardew Valley.