Labyrinth Trailblazer

Can't Say im a huge fan of a grid-based crawlers in the form of a short roguelike run, since that kind of defeats the purpose of filling out a map. That said, this game still has made my list of travel games that i'll just load up and do a run when i have an hour to spare. Kind of wished runs where a bit longer though, or at least have the choice to go longer, but this does fill my yearning to explore grid-based maps none the less. Runs are simple, it starts by throwing you on floor 1 after you pick 2 classes to bring (though they are both in the front line so remember to move thm around), then you just explore around. Battles are not random, but trash mobs are invisible until encountered. The screen will have a red outline when an encounter is 2 squares away regardless of walls or open rooms. There are elite monsters roaming in a line that are visible and are much stronger then anything else on the floor by a lot, but they are often by healing points and you generally level up a lot if you win with items or weapons to follow. To that point, you do not heal between battles, just after the boss blocking the stairs on each floor (meaning you can go full tilt and anyone downed in those fights will just come back). Fireplaces are your in between healing points (50%), which is also where you can sometimes recruit another class, gain/upgrade a skill (pick 3), though you often see the same skills popping up, you might not always want to grab the same ones. So you need to pick and choose if you want to grab those early or save for heals after nasty encounters. Some things to note: - the battle UI is a bit wonky, can work with controllers but the mouse is visible and if its hovering over something then it will take precedent over d-pad controls, you can make it invisible in the options but it doesnt actually take it's interferance out, it's just more annoying since you no longer can see it lol. - The menus also aren't detached in fights, so when you have the option to select atk/def/skill for an ally using a controller, you can also move over to look at your allies, enemies, or menu/settings button at the bottom, then move back to the atk menu. This can cause issues where you think you are selecting for an atk but you didnt actually pick anything to use, or you might miss click and attack an ally thinking you are looking at them. - Sometimes you lose track of where it's targetting since it can dissapear when you are trying to pick certain enemies that are staggard in fights. - The enemy atk intent isnt all that useful either since a lot of them have aoes, so you might have 1 or 2 enemies targetting certain allies then you have 1-2 doing an aoe and its intent line is on all of them. These get jumbled and its hard to tell who you need to protect at times, though it does show how much the atk group will take off an hp bar so this is what i pay attention to instead. - Though this is where i want to play it, it seems to not want to work on Droiddeck and freezes at the Godot screen (which is just the steamframe setup for arm on android) These aside, the game is streamlined nicely between exploration, events, battles, boss fights, and enough ability randomless to not be annoying. for me to consider doing runs on downtime if or when i can get it to work on my prefered device attests to that since im a one and done kind of person. If you like team-based grid crawlers then you might think so as well.

Game is a good mix between Roguelikes and Dungeon Crawler. It's a clear love letter to games like Etrian Odyssey. Overall, the game is pretty, for now i find it well balanced too. The build variety in the game is quite large, thus you can always innovate. I highly suggest to give the game a try. The demo is good, but isn't on par with the current full game build. Full game is more polished and has more available, even on what the demo offers.

Don't give up Chris! All it takes is some small time youtuber or other social media influencer to mention your game and it will grow over time. I only went in once but it was enough to realize that this is a special game. A lot of itch scratching going on here.