I knew I was going to like this from the demo, so it was an instant buy for me.

This is a retro pixel roguelite game that has you doing dungeon runs with a party rather than as a single character. Each party member is under your full control, and they act independently. Recruitment is from a randomized pool, so sometimes you get lucky and sometimes not. Note that not all recruits are created equal... you may get a sorceror with 16 intelligence or you might get one with 14 intelligence and 14 strength. Sometimes you just need to wait and see who is available after the next run. That said, I've been pretty happy with most of my recruits except the first assassin I rolled who had low dex, so I'm leaving him in the pool to refresh after my next run.

Runs work in a similar fashion to many other roguelikes where you have a screen with multiple paths toward a final encounter, and you select the next one you want on the path you decide to take. You may get rooms with extra chests or extra xp, or perhaps something with elite monsters. Each location has an xp limit, which is pretty cool because you can make your party how you want. For example, if you have a location that has an xp limit of 4, you could bring four level 1 characters (total 4xp), or you could bring two level 2 characters, or you could bring one level 2 and two level 1's. It's kind of up to you, but you do need to have them in your roster. Roster is pretty good, you start with 12 slots but you can expand that.

Combat is real time with pause, which should be familiar to most. I have always preferred turn based myself, but honestly the real time with pause actually does work well in this game and I've had a lot of fun with it. Much more so than I did in some other games. Part of the reason is that they flex pause a bit. All of your activated abilities happen immediately when triggered, even if paused. So if you are fighting, you can pause and case a fireball or something and that will hit and deal its damage without forcing you to unpause. This gives you a lot of control over your ability triggers, and I think this was a really great way to go. You get a lot more predictability around AoE effects especially.

Loot is a lot of fun, I've gotten cool stuff from chests each run so it stays exciting. Not always the loot you wanted... sometimes you get nothing but medium armor when all you wanted was light and heavy... but it is fun to pick stuff up. Inventory space is party based, so everybody shares from the same pool. Lots of throwables as well.

Between runs you return to a homebase. There are structures you build there and improvements you make at each one, but this is by no means a "base building" experience. It's more like activating your various tools as they are unlocked. You farm special resources on the runs that you can use back at base to upgrade your structures. For example your recruitment generator can be upgraded to provide more recruits, or your shop building can be upgraded to improve the rarity of items that show up.

Leveling characters allows you to select new abilities, and then you also get to spend special resources to boost the abilities, so you really can take your party in all kinds of directions.

The UI is a little rough to get used to... it can be hard to understand what information is being provided where. After a few runs, I think I have a handle on it but it was most certainly not immediately obvious. There is not a lot of hand holding here.

I'm having a blast with this one and will be playing lots more for sure.

If you love old school roguelikes, you're going to really love this one. Tons of content to unpack in this very tight knit tactical roguelike dungeoncrawler.

https://youtu.be/-_vIzE6kL_g

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