The simple action of a platformer with a touch of roguelike complexity. From the mind behind Starseed Pilgrim, Probability 0 takes the straight-forward yet challenging run n' jump gameplay of platformers like VVVVVV and stirs the formula up by applying the dynamically randomized levels, skills, and enemies of the roguelite genre (Spelunky, Risk of Rain) for an end result that is infinitely replayable and impossible to master.

The challenge in P0 is refreshing, while a lot of your runs will quickly end in your swift and humiliating failure the few runs you do make it far on will feel that much more rewarding and satisfying. There are loads of powerups to play around with all located on a large and expansive skill tree that you are able to upgrade between each level you manage to surpass. Every choice will have a huge impact on how you play and every player will find their own unique path of skills on the tree to succeed by.

The game has a simple but abstract and almost horror look with a great atmosphere. There's a large variety of creepy creature designs, dark and moody colors, and a rapidly changing Probability message scrawled at the top of your screen to remind you of your impending doom. The soundtrack alines perfectly and feels dark and ominous for something so 8-bit and catchy, fitting with the mood of the game just right.

At less than ten dollars, Probability 0 is an easy buy for all fans of platforming and random roguelike elements and will be remembered by me along with the most famous of indie titles from this era.

It's almost a great game but just a handfull of petty miserly choices in its design just make me so bitter at it that I hate it even as I keep playing it. Why does fall damage need multiple upgrades to negate it when falling off the screen is always a threat anyway? Why is there an upgrade to unlock the next tier of upgrades?


It is especially irksome that the author says this

"a vast and unrestricted upgrade tree"
"
"The set of powers, on the other hand, were made to offer you a lot of choices. There are ~36 of them and contain nearly zero arbitrary prerequisites. ... There are also none that don't augment your choices in an interesting way. You're not choosing between +10% armour and +10% damage; who cares, when you could instead be choosing between immunity to every spike in the game and upgrading your punch to kill any enemy in one hit? Those aren't even top-tier powers."

Okay so most of that is complete ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, there's an upgrade that increases the distance you can fall by +20% dunno that sounds pretty-much like a+10% armour, there's a +1 to damge upgrade, the one-kill punch is like one away from top tier and has 2 prerequistes and of those 33 there's over half that have atleast one of pre-requiste (inlcuding empty "unlock the next tier" upgrades) and you only recieve another 4-5 options each level. So it's pretty restricted.



I mean the very first upgrade is choice between only 3 upgrades; the ability to shoot a star lengthwise, the ability to shoot the star straight up , and +1 damage.


From those 3 the up-star is pretty uselessly , shooting enemys from below is a good way of being unable to collect the power up. The damage +1 means very little at this stage of the game , there being only one enemy that requires 2 hits and it's a slow often stationary blimp. So the vertical star is the only real choice.


The next upgrade tier opens things up a little, giving a wall destroying punch , resist fall damage, resist stun from hits, bigger star cache, partial magnetism .

Only the wall destroy punch is offering much in the way of changing your play style.

The resist stun from hits feels like a cheap point sink, as the default stun from taking any hit is about 2 seconds long. Yep that's a long time and your character bounces irratically in that time.

It's a mechanic only put in to make you want to buy that upgrade. So that's not great.


The fall damage also feels cheap as the layout of the screen starts making more long distances until it's basically not an option to get it. It's not an immunity to fall damage, just increases the distance that you can fall. If you want completely immunity you'll need to purchase it again
The magnetic is an upgrade that requires getting it again at high level for it feel like it's even doing much.



The upgrades after this start to finally opening the game up to trying different tactics (being able to be immune to damage when still, skullstomp, a leap attack, teleport) , but note that there's a whole bunch more that require spending a point to unlock the ability to spend points on them. Including the "so crazy" immune to all spikes one. The spikes occur so often by this stage , it feels like a forced choice.

(the destroy any enemy in one punch is actually a top tier upgrade btw despite the quote)

I get an intial limiting of your options and a few prerequites to some make sense, but as it is now you spend about 4-5 upgrades before you even feel like are at the standard platformer level of ability. But by that stage the number and type of enemys , appearence of bosses, screen layout have pushed the difficulty beyond your ability to cope. And you are even more ♥♥♥♥♥♥ if you skimped on some of the most neccessary upgrades to try something unusual(ish)


Which feels like a very delibrate choice by the developer, wanting to keep you feeling like you want to earn just one more upgrade and then you'll crack the game wide open.

And dunno , I've clocked how many hours up on it now? So maybe there's something to that.
But after every game I feel bitter, pissed off. I keep deleting it to stop myself from playing it.


I still think that there is a much much stronger game potential here. The enemy design is great, their behaviours , easily identifible appearence, and the constantly changing emergent problems created by them.

A blob is an easy point but a blob with ghost above it? what about that squid? is it going to swoop on me if I go for? Constant little risk/reward choices like this make the game addicitive despite the forced-feeling hampering of the upgrade system.

I think the developer should of had more faith in the fun created by players pushing against their own skill ceiling and not just gone for the more (fake) difficulty= more fun route



I mean there's other petty cruelnesses and a slight wonk to walk movements that mean you walk straight into an critter you are approachng to punch, far far far too often but the forementioned upgrade garbage is what is the tipping point for me.


Everytime I play this game I catch myself thinking "Hey I nearly had fun then" and then play it again

Probability 0 is an elegantly designed little roguelike platformer. It puts you in the shoes of an unnamed dungeon delver who has absolutely no chance of surviving the adventure, as you might have surmised from the game's title. Instead, the focus of the game is simply to delay your inevitable death for as long as possible.

There's no traditional life bar, but you can roughly tell how much health you have left by two things. One is the "probability number" near the middle of the screen, which constantly fluctuates between various encouraging statistics such as the "chance in a million that you will ever see your family again". The second way to tell how close you are to death is that the music becomes increasingly intense, and a siren can be heard in the distance. Is it the song of the valkyrie coming to take you to Valhalla, perhaps, or the grating sound of Hell's gates swinging wide in front of you? The same siren can be heard when a boss monster appears. Coincidentally, that is also the moment where you are most likely to die.

With its branching skill tree and randomized levels, the game has much replay value. Thankfully so, because each run through the game is extremely short. Progress is measured in minutes rather than hours, and a newbie might simply perish by falling off the platform they started on. You may begin to feel burned out after dying many times in a row, so I think this game is best suited for coffee breaks, or as a filler played in between other activities. What I find most enjoyable is to simply play two or three runs each session, and then stop for a while to let the lessons learned from those runs sink into my mind.

In short: If you're looking for a platformer that challenges you without wasting your time, Probability 0 is an excellent choice. It generally takes only a few minutes for your character to die, but it leaves you with the feeling of wanting to try again and to do better next time. To exact vengeance upon your killer. To see your family again... well, the probability of that happening is zero, but it's worth trying.

Probability 0 is an amazing, well executed piece of game design.
But not only of game design, but also on life in general.
I, for myself, found a philosophical depth and meaning in the game
that I hardly found elsewhere. (The free-to-play game "The Plan" comes to my mind)

Your mission in Probability 0 is to reach the bottom.
The screen is automatically scrolling downwards and you are not allowed (neither on top, nor on bottom) to exit the screen.
Your probability to ever reach the bottom of this pit is ZERO.

On your way down you are confronted with obstacles, "enemies", experience and choices.
It is up to you to:
-decide how to approach these things
-how to evolve yourself
-how to find a strategy to go further and further down.

The environment is procedually generated, but the choices, obstacles and enemies evolve in a linear fashion.
It is in many aspects akin to the roguelike genre regarding permanent death.
And pretty much the only thing you will carry on to your next playthrough will be your personal experiences from the past games and especially your "mistakes" from which you will hopefully learn, and by that, improve your strategy for the next playthrough.

It is a game where you have to make constant risk/reward decisions.
Will you be bold, or cautious?
Maybe both?

I can already tell you what the ending screen of your playthrough will look like,
you will end up dead. But what matters is:

HOW WAS YOUR JOURNEY?

It's not a bad game by any means, it just gets very repetitive.

The upgrades are fixed and you'll generally find yourself sticking with one set upgrade path each run because it's the only one that ever really works. The enemies move randomly and are very difficult to hit, and since the progression - at least of Beginner Mode - is done by how many enemies defeated it makes the game pretty frustrating. Also, the controls are fiddly, meaning you'll slip off platforms, walk into enemies and generally not do what you want to do. Also also, there's fall damage and a lot of the time it's unavoidable.

Altogether it plays more like a budget flash game. Try it if you've got some spare change and it's on sale.

This Game is the One of the Most Polished, and AWESOME Games I've ever Played.

Makes me Wonder why this Game isn't on the Featured Items Page...

I have to warn you though: This is Pretty Hardcore. Even Beginner Mode is tough.
And Expert...Yikes.

The game, like the store page says: Involves the Player to traverse increasingly difficult depths
stuffed full of Monsters who want you DEAD.
Everytime you kill a Monster: you can grab it's 'bubble' which gets you to level up.
When you level up, there are really cool upgrade trees that are instantaneously put into play.
And you start from scratch every time you die.
And you Die every time, as this game doesn't have an end.
So the Replay value of this game seems practically Infinite.

And That's Only the Beginner and Expert Modes!
There is also the Karma Mode which let's you instantly get a limited number of upgrades to start with.
But that's all you get.
Then you are thrown into a Horde of enemies.
Have Fun.
Note: Karma Mode Levels('Karma XX') build up as you play the Beginner and Expert Modes.
Note 2:When you Start the Game, it may throw you STRAIGHT into Karma Mode. And Use a Level, so don't start opening and closing the Program unless you need to.
---
If you aren't in to fast paced platforming where you WILL die. Then don't buy it. (But Please give it a try anyway.)
But else, BUY IT.

Don't be Discouraged that this game doesn't run on Linux though, It runs PERFECTLY on Wine(Wine Is Not an Emulator, which is a Open Source Compatability Layer that trys to get Windows Programs to Run on Linux; it isn't perfect, but it's still great.)

I think personally that Valve should team up with the Wine Development Team to Help make Wine better and get more steam games to run on Linux without requiring developers to rewrite/port their games to Linux. UPDATE: STEAM PROTON F YEAH!!!!!!!

My Suggestions for the Game are:
--Add a Local Multiplayer Mode: It would be Really Fun to have Either a Co-Op/Competitive Mode where 2 or more players would be trying to share the resources/trying to kill each other while simultaneously dealing with the
terrain and enemies!
--Make an infinite mode: This one is optional, but I would like to have a 'God-Mode' where I could play around and see what it would be like to have ALL THE ABILITIES AT ONCE! :)

I Definitly Recommend this Game!!!

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Appendum 2021:

I wrote this all the way back in 2014, one of the first steam reviews I ever wrote. Shows how much I knew about capitalization. BUT I CALLED IT. Valve, you should hire me for correctly predicting how you would contribute to WINE and help bring gaming to linux in a better way; better then it ever was before.

I was unaware that Downwell had any competition in the "low-res roguelike platform descent" genre until my friend put me onto Probability 0. I honestly don't think Downwell needs any competition, but it is always nice to see new spins on ideas. The presentation of Probability 0 makes most of the case for its existence, and the unique challenges of the descent and your powers round out this clever offering. It's not quite as gripping as its competitors, but it certainly has a place.

There's less of a setup and more of a high-concept motif here, with your silhouetted pixel man descending into a never-ending pit of darkness and battling strange monsters along the way. You start out only punching and slinging stars downward, but defeating enemies levels you up and allows you to select from dozens of new abilities across several tiers. There's space for some actual builds here, such as ones heavy on punching, or stars, or defense, or contact damage, and so on.

Despite the advancement options, there's not much variety of gameplay to use them on. You'll encounter more and stranger monsters the further down you go but the basic structure of the pit doesn't change from assortments of blocks and spikes. It's not necessarily a bad thing, it just strays closer to an infinite runner than, well, Downwell. The fixed scrolling also means your pace is mostly dictated by the game, making Probability 0 feel the more measured and technical of the two.

The title refers to the game's most unique aspect, the probabilities that constantly flash across the upper center of the screen. This is essentially your health, as the random probabilities decrease as you get hit, from six digits all the way down to singles. It's a clever touch that really supports the surreal, striking feel of the game you get from the stark graphics and steady, low-fi soundtrack. There's two difficulties to tackle plus a mode where you can get a head-start based on your previous records, but again, not a lot of variety between runs aside from your builds. As long as you're okay with that, though, there's a pretty good chance you'll enjoy this one.



Did you enjoy this review? I certainly hope so, and I certainly hope you'll check out more of them at https://goldplatedgames.com/ or on my curation page!

There is no point to this game but the challenge. No achievements, no online, multiplayer, co-op, or leaderboards. No saves. Nothing to unlock. No steam cards. None of that.
What yu DO get is two difficulties, Beginner and Expert. Beginner is hard enough. You get your own personal high score. Not scoreboard, just score. Then you get one other mode called Karma, where you get to test your skills with preloaded abilities, but no leveling up at all. If you ever played Fall Down on the TI83/83+/84+ calculator, it's a bit like a twisted version of that.
Don't get me wrong, this is not an awful game, but it is a matter of preference. There is no incentive to playing this game other than your own satisfaction in the challenge and testing your skills.

10/10 would die again.

Probability 0 is the basic concept behind roguelikes boiled down to a very few key aspects, and mixed with some clever design elements. It's pure, accessible, deep, and has an eerie, mysterious vibe to it. The platforming and combat both start out really simple, and are continuously expanded upon through new abilities (like firing your ranged projectile in new directions, being able to stomp your enemies, smash otherwise solid blocks, just to name a few). It's worth mentioning that the skill tree is extremely refined and well-designed. It feels balanced, interesting, and allows for an astounding amount of customization and experimentation at the same time.

Enemies start off really simple, but as you get deeper, the spawn pool gets mixed up with very interesting critters that drastically differ in their movement, attack pattern and other behaviour. Since each enemy and environmental hazard is extremely easy to grasp and learn, death is rather caused by multiple of these elements driving you into situations you didn't calculate. Each death, even if they are very frequent, feels more than deserved - an aspect lacking in quite a number of other games.

I would definitely recommend Probability 0 to everyone who likes a good challenge. It can be frustrating, but in the most positive way a game can be. It's pure in its design, fun to play and very rewarding.

If you're into your roguelike-likes (you know, games like Spelunky and Binding of Isaac), Probability 0 is a must-play. You venture downwards, killing enemies to progress and collecting powers that help you beat the more difficult baddies down in the nether regions. Ironically there's a huge amount of depth to this game, and much like with Spelunky, it's only after several hours (and dozens of deaths) that you truly begin to see its full worth. You can watch my playthrough here: http://youtu.be/CwsuuR2F32o