I really enjoy roguelikes, so when I saw The Wizard's Lair I was hoping that the basic presentation meant that the developer(s) spent that time on gameplay, bringing new and fun elements to the genre. Unfortunately, the basic presentation honestly conveys what you get, shallow even by 1980's standards. While The Wizard's Lair has monsters, potions, armor, weapons, scrolls, and food there are no classes, abilities, or skills. Leveling up just increases your hitpoints as far as I can tell. You can fight in corridors to limit how many monsters can attack you at once, but beyond that there are no tactics. This is a game anyone could have written in a few weekends with an RPG generator.

For a basic roguelike get Dungeons of Dredmor instead - it is around the same price, relatively easy to get into, but still has depth and fun gameplay. Or for something deeper but also inexpensive, Tales of Maj'Eyal has a mixture of random and predetermined maps, quests, good graphics for a roguelike, lots of classes and skills, and a helpful online community.

Not bad. Could use some background music. This game takes me back to my early days of gaming and first discovering Rogue-Likes (though I didn't know that name yet) by playing Fatal Labyrinth on the Sega Genesis (with annoying background music, so it could be worse!). I fell in love with the formula of random dungeons with random items, random layouts, etc. One playthrough you might get lucky on good items. Or you might die after only a few floors.

There have been a lot of Rogue-likes over the years, and some people are picky about what aspects they like and don't like. So let's take a look and see if this game fits your Rogue-like bill.

1. Random floor layouts (square rooms with corridors and sometimes dead ends)
2. Fog of War (Everything is black except a small area around you. The floor lights up as you walk and stays lit.)
3. Need to find Food (as you take your steps through the dungeon floors your food level drops and you get hungry. Find food items and eat them to regain your food level)
4. HP replenishes automatically by walking (Yay! But don't waste too much time getting your health back because you might get hungry!)
5. Turn-Based (Nothing happens until you take a step, or you can skip a step if you need a monster to approach so you get first hit instead of it. Monsters won't move until you move. I don't know if using an item takes a move or not.)
6. You can save your game and return later! Very cool.
7. Nice graphics for 2D pixel style game.
8. Sounds effects, but no background music (so far)
9. Permadeath? I'm assuming, but have not died yet.
10. Keyboard or Gamepad (I used keyboard, so don't know how good the gamepad controls are)
11. ??? Something I missed or can't remember? Let me know!

My verdict (so far): I love the old-school look. All the points above hit my buttons, so I'm very happy. Looking forward to more playing and will update if I learn something interesting.

*** Update ***

There are traps on the ground. Sometimes you can see the outline of them. There is a spell scroll that will reveal them. Ones I have encountered: Damage traps (fire, etc.), Teleport Trap (moves you to random location on same floor, Healing Trap (it heals you!), and I think there was one that dropped me down a few floors.

Lots of different enemy types: Undead (skeleton, lich); Fire (fire snake, cloaked fire guy); Ice (Blue Cloaked Guy--sorry I can't remember the name); Slimes; Minotaur; Rival Adventurers (loot their gear!); Frog; Thing with Eyeballs; and Dragons! That's all I can remember of the top of my head. I should really write this stuff down!

It seemed easy at first but I didn't make it to the bottom. I ran out of food and died! :-( Save your food, people!

Oh, and limited Inventory. You can you have 6 items, in addition to your weapon and armor. That's it, just 6! Decide wisely what to carry and what to leave.

Monster Room! Just before I died I encountered a different sort of floor. Just a small room filled with monsters, and tons of great loot in a room beyond.

This game is EXACTLY what I was looking for.

1. Roguelike (in the purest form)
2. Relatively simple
3. Controller support.

A decent enough little game that I could recommend on a sale; but the content here isn’t fleshed-out enough to validate anything beyond a dollar.
The lack of any sound whatsoever is really off-putting. Even some royalty free sound effects alongside a basic ambient background track could go a long way in setting an atmosphere.
There’s some additional minor critiques I had, but beyond aesthetics, the game functions as it should; and controller support is a plus.
I hope you can fix these things and add some more stuff in the future; If you do I could easily recommend the game to others. You’re headed in the right direction and with a few refinements, I think this could be a really additive rouge-like.

This recommendation comes with a big caveat: as other reviews have pointed out, there's no "rest" command, so the only way to get your health back if you don't have any potions is by repeatedly mashing the "wait" button or walking back and forth, which would take several minutes and make the game unbearably tedious in the later levels when you have a ton of health.

I used the free program JoyToKey to map one of the buttons on my controller to press the "wait" button 30 times a second, and this allows you to get health back at a reasonable rate. This function should be in the game, but I'm glad I was able to find a way around this problem, because other than that, I really like it.

It's a short-ish minimalistic roguelike - I finished it in 8 hours (5 hours on Steam, 3 hours with the itch.io version, which is identical but doesn't have those hot cheevos) which for the asking price is totally fine. It's pretty chill, and there's not a lot to the combat, but I found exploring the levels, discovering things and figuring out strategies consistently rewarding. The game I'd most compare it to is Fatal Labyrinth on the Genesis, which is my favorite roguelike, but this game's even more streamlined - there aren't even any ranged combat options, no rings to equip, no magic wands. Combat is essentially just math - the enemies have almost no variation other than their damage numbers, so it just comes down to whether you have the equipment and stats to deal with them, and if not, whether you have scrolls and potions that can help. It's about as basic as an RPG can get.

Despite this, I found it a pleasant experience. It's a good game to kick back and play while you relax and listen to some podcasts. If you're looking for a minimal roguelike RPG you can play with a controller, and you're willing to install JoyToKey, and you like games you can play with a podcast or stream on in the background, this is well worth the $3 asking price.

Update: JoyToKey is no longer required since the Steam controller map tool now allows you to set a turbo button.

The Wizard's Lair is a roguelike game with simple graphics and gameplay. I've only gotten about halfway through the dungeon so far, but I have to say this is a little better than I expected.

Some other roguelikes on Steam I played were a little underwhelming. Randomness was so wide in its range of benefits it seemed like all chance instead strategy. Enemies were so basic that it was really repetitive, and some games even don't have any enemy movement, so they just sit there and wait for you to bump into them. Whether you attack or not seems more puzzle-like than roguelike, and not attacking is kind of boring because you can't do anything else. There are a number of ways to make roguelikes uninteresting.

But the Wizard's Lair is different. It doesn't have a huge number of enemies, but the ones it does have are at least up and moving around. After a while the levels are different. So far I've run into a labyrinth and a level that is all about teleporting around, and I imagine there has to be a few more. Not super thrilling (yet anyway), but something differnt to break up the monotony.

One thing I don't like is in its attempt to be more user friendly than a typical roguelike game with 30 or more keyboard commands it maybe went too far the other way. For example, a common situation is that your inventory is full and you want to eat a mushroom or ration that you ran across. There doesn't seem to be an eat option right away. So instead you move one step away, hit "?" for the special screen, hit space for the inventory, select something you want to temporarily drop, choose drop, move back to the food, hit space to pick it up, hit "?" and then inventory, select the food and hit eat, and then move back to the item you dropped and pick it back up. I really hope there's an easier way I'm just not getting, because that's kind of silly.

The graphics are kind of basic. They are retro-pixelly in a kind of a bland way instead of an artsy way. You know what I mean. But they work for what they are representing, anyway.

All in all this is a shortish basic roguelike that might be a fun diversion for a bit or to learn how the style of games work. It's not to the level of some other roguelikes and roguelike-inspired games on Steam, but then it's cheaper, and certainly a lot better than other games that are the same price or even slightly more expensive. Steam doesn't have a rating system with number of stars from really bad to meh to OK to good to great. It's either thumbs up or thumbs down. Thumbs up then, because it's more on that side than the other one.

It's not a bad game but it really could use a basic tutorial from the start.
Otherwise its not that bad but i will say it is like dark souls in 2d since
if you are careful you can get overwelmed. But other than that is is a good game
i'm going to try and beat it.

update

okay i beat the game and i have to say it is pretty good could use some music otherwise
its not that bad. there is still some hidden achievements i still need to get otherwise the only annoying thing is the void monsters that teleport you when you get hit. Otherwise fun game i have nothing to complain about.

- also thank you to you know who you are for gifting me this game.

also this is not a joke review since its april first.

All fun this game could give you is killed by few absolutely idiotic and time wasting labyrinth levels.

Received via the Steam Curator option for the Rogue-likes group.

And I can say quite clearly - this Traditional Rogue-like is severely lacking.

Perhaps there is more to it further into the game, but just going through the early floors it feels very much like the developer cobbled together so code and threw it onto the Steam Store. On top of that I wonder how much the the developer played his game as just within 20 minutes of play I found a teleport trap on the only path to an exit for the floor - needless to say that isn't good level design.

Even if more was added to the game though, I'm not sure it would be enough to make it distinct from other rogue-likes. You have the likes or Cardinal Quest 2 or Dungeons of Dredmor for example to complete against, and The Wizardl's Lair certainly doesn't match up.

Not recommended. Simple as that.

Very enjoyable!