So many roguelikes, so little time. Pass (★★☆☆☆)
I was charmed by Have a Nice Death’s art style and theme, but I think the game is quite weak, especially since there’s a million action roguelites now and they’re demanding games. The developers clearly tried to channel Hades and Dead Cells. I don’t think it worked that well.
IMO, they make three major roguelite mistakes:
Item pool dilution – Unlocks are just piled on top of one another, making the item pool bigger and bigger. Most weapons feel pretty useless, so unlocking stuff is actually making the game harder, since you’re less likely to find what you need. It also makes the actual act of unlocking tedious when it should be that one thing that gives you a little shot of dopamine. In a roguelike, that’s truly a crime.
Boss rush – Basically, the only thing that matters is beating the bosses. The levels are boring and mazelike. Regular mooks are usually pathetically weak. On the other hand, bosses tend to have much more aggressive attack patterns and deal five times more damage. Anything that isn’t useful during a boss fight is a wasted opportunity, so that means even more useless perks and weapons. Some people complain it takes a minute to run back to a boss in Dark Souls, imagine a great 30 minute-run pulverized in ten seconds by a boss! Seriously, this game is hard, Dead Cells hard, with the same piling up of difficulty levels.
Wiki Mania – Some games are just explained so poorly that you need a wiki to even understand what’s going on. The game is trying to be cute by mixing corporate jargon with the usual roguelite lexicon. That part is okay. Technically, the game tutorializes its stuff pretty well, but a lot of the details are muddy. The curse (skill) tree is confusing: curses are good perks, but penalties are bad perks, get it? There’s curse rarity, but also curse tiers levels and some floors upgrade curses, but the game doesn’t make it clear how. Can you not dodge through some attacks? I have no idea. Did I say the game is hard? It’s extremely tedious to risk an entire 30+ minute run on an item whose mechanics are unclear. So now you have a look at the wiki to figure out what’s what, but that’s basically cheating. Figuring out strategies is half the fun in a rogulike. Anyway, so I looked up the wiki… great, so it really does turn out that most of the items are garbage and that some are not only much better, they are absolutely broken, as in “gives you infinite HP and attack” broken.
It’s the kind of stuff that makes you wonder why make a roguelike in the first place. The devs went through the effort of creating hundreds of weapons and perks, but why? I probably would have liked the game better as a normal “old-school” platformer. Forget the unlocks, just combine the weapons into a few good movesets and give those to me. But I understand that you can’t just “sell” a game like that anymore. So now I have to run through weak random levels and sift through garbage perks just to fight the bosses, which are pretty darn good. If only I could practice them without the massive time sink!
Theme-wise, roguelikes need a way to give meaning to the sisyphean ordeal. Hades did it by framing it as escape attempts and focusing on the familial aspects of the gods. They were divine, but very relatable. It’s hard to relate with anything in the “death as a business” concept here: the stakes are unclear, nothing you do changes anything and the characters are cheap office clichés. Going Under did a better “business roguelike” in that regard.
If you have the patience for it, the game is fine, a lot of work went into it. Not to sound too pretentious, but I’ve played my share of roguelites and soulslikes, and my patience has to be deserved. As I said, roguelites are demanding games and I don’t think I’m willing to give this game the time and effort it’s asking for.
Idle Thoughts 