Recent reviews by hamthony

Very challenging and extremely obscure with its lore and mechanics, but if you can look past those aspects, this game comes alive in its own way. Dying is commonplace, and the game does well to encourage you to move beyond the "run that might've been" by making every new run just as chaotic as the last. There will be times where you will die and feel like you had no control over it, but it would probably take you longer to actually get mad about it than it would to just start over and get back to where you were. This game moves at a blistering pace, and mastering it requires understanding of its wild internal logic.

That is of course the game's most obvious downside: Luck is a MAJOR factor into your run. There were times when I'd load up a new game and immediately find three or four absolutely busted wands within a minute of a playing, and there were others where it felt like I hadn't seen a collectible in hours. Sometimes an elite level enemy would just wander into the first area of the game and kill me in a single hit. On more than one occasion, the only way forward was blocked off by lava or acid, effectively soft-locking the run.

You can play around this random variation, and there are several strategies you can employ to make your adventure a lot less reliant on the world around you, but inevitably, you MUST play with what the game gives you, and sometimes it won't give you anything. But for a majority of my time playing so far, I've had an incredible time, and I always learn something new after every session that sticks with me until the next.

Ten years strong, an example that sometimes you get it right the first time.