Kaamos: Puzzle Roguelike

I think the bones are all there for a really interesting game, but the combat so frequently devolves to doing 1 damage per round because the enemies gain defense, armor, dodge, and also attack almost every turn. Just a game of who gets whittled down first, which quickly becomes a slog.

Kaamos is a cool idea with poor implementation. Fights are long and tedious, gameplay is almost identical between runs, and it never innovates upon the base gameplay loop it built. Beating one run took me 2.5 hours, but for the life of me I cannot tell you one interesting moment from any of those just over two hours, because there were none. I wish I could say more about it, but I don't think it even has enough substance for to criticize it further. If I hadn't gotten this in a bundle, I'd feel upset at having paid for this, and as much as I feel bad for saying that: It's the truth.

I tried so hard to enjoy this but I hated this game. Limited agency, no way to improve your guy between runs, limited gear options (all of which are underwhelming or just bad), heavily RNG based (at its core), steep difficulty curve after the 1st boss which severely limits the already near-zero amount of viable strategies. Some of these reviews are saying they beat his game on the first run and I have no idea how. Frustratingly difficult and tedious.