Simple is not always good. A game needs to offer its players enough options to form strategies against whatever challenges are posed. Otherwise, you're just playing a glorified slot machine. I don't think the folks behind Hack, Slash, Loot understood this because they made a dungeon crawler that has classes with no skills and loot with no inventory.

The game dumps you straight into a cluttered, pixellated menu where you pick your class and your quest, and then get dumped into a crowded, nondescript dungeon. The perspective is a weirdly squished 2D where tiles are twice as wide as they are long, which crams the otherwise pleasant character sprites too close together. As you navigate the random floors and rooms, you'll find items like weapons, armor, potions, and scrolls laying around. Gear can only be swapped with what you already have, with the stat change shown in the corner when you mouse over items. Similarly, consumables are used the moment you pick them up, and their purpose is obfuscated in an annoyingly Nethacky way so you don't know what they'll do for sure until you use them.

These are all corner cases for those times that you're not beset by monsters. HSL is packed to the brim with things that want to kill you, while offering absolutely no tactical options for killing them back besides funnel them through a doorway. While this isn't terribly different from many old-school roguelikes, the distinct lack of healing items or reliable gear upgrades is. Everything appears to be randomized in the extreme, and with no inventory, there's no way to store potions or food until you actually need it. There's not even a guarantee any will appear, because I've definitely had runs end on the first floor because literally no healing options were offered.

Imagine playing Diablo without skills, potions, or inventory, and you get a very basic idea of how flawed HSL is. Streamlined roguelikes are an excellent idea because many of the classics go way too far in their complexity, but this completely overshoots the mark in the opposite direction. Nothing you do in this game will effect whether or not you win, and there's not even any sort of overarching progression system to make losing worthwhile. With all the clever, interesting roguelikes on Steam now, Hack, Slash, Loot is better left forgotten.

Simple is not always good. A game needs to offer its players enough options to form strategies against whatever challenges are posed. Otherwise, you're just playing a glorified slot machine. I don't think the folks behind Hack, Slash, Loot understood this because they made a dungeon crawler that has classes with no skills and loot with no inventory. The game dumps you straight into a cluttered, pixellated menu where you pick your class and your quest, and then get dumped into a crowded, nondescript dungeon. The perspective is a weirdly squished 2D where tiles are twice as wide as they are long, which crams the otherwise pleasant character sprites too close together. As you navigate the random floors and rooms, you'll find items like weapons, armor, potions, and scrolls laying around. Gear can only be swapped with what you already have, with the stat change shown in the corner when you mouse over items. Similarly, consumables are used the moment you pick them up, and their purpose is obfuscated in an annoyingly Nethacky way so you don't know what they'll do for sure until you use them. These are all corner cases for those times that you're not beset by monsters. HSL is packed to the brim with things that want to kill you, while offering absolutely no tactical options for killing them back besides funnel them through a doorway. While this isn't terribly different from many old-school roguelikes, the distinct lack of healing items or reliable gear upgrades is. Everything appears to be randomized in the extreme, and with no inventory, there's no way to store potions or food until you actually need it. There's not even a guarantee any will appear, because I've definitely had runs end on the first floor because literally no healing options were offered. Imagine playing Diablo without skills, potions, or inventory, and you get a very basic idea of how flawed HSL is. Streamlined roguelikes are an excellent idea because many of the classics go way too far in their complexity, but this completely overshoots the mark in the opposite direction. Nothing you do in this game will effect whether or not you win, and there's not even any sort of overarching progression system to make losing worthwhile. With all the clever, interesting roguelikes on Steam now, Hack, Slash, Loot is better left forgotten.