Rogue Labyrinth

Reasonably fun smash-em-up roguelite. Things bouncing everywhere is a kind of fun mechanic, and having the choice to focus on that or weapons, and heavy attacks or light attacks, is a decent thing to keep it interesting, though it feels like the spell-focused path is kind of crummy because you have to do weapon attacks to recharge the ability to cast spells, at which point you might as well have just focused on weapons in the first place. (Unless you go mana-increasing early *and* get the one powerup that quadruples your mana, recharges it every room, but makes it non-rechargable - with that much casting in a burst you win most fights without having to stop casting anyway.) I found it pretty easy except for the final boss, and, early on (before you've unlocked many starting powerups), the dragon boss is a little rough too. But nothing wrong with an easy game occasionally, it's more fun than just being difficult for frustration's sake.

Its serviceable but nothing spectacular. You are in these small rooms and just spam attack. There is a dodge, and a throwing ability, and a learned ability gotten through fighting mini bosses, as well as a dodge. That's the combat and it never evolves and isn't super deep. The game does use this unique variable of bounceback, being able to reflect every projectile and object with an attack to hit enemies, which provides a fresh wrinkle. There visuals are kind of an ugly hand drawn kid aesthetic, and not especially memorable. This is one of those games where theres a ton happening on screen and a ton of visual noise from attacks and projectiles and effects, and so many time you spam attack and you will randomly be hurt and have no idea why because you couldn't tell something was coming. Theres a lot of dialogue and supposedly a story, but I didn't really care. Theres 1 character, and a few weapons, both in main and throwing variety. The problem is that in all my time playing prior to beating the game a second time and quitting, including beating the game once before and many failed attempts, I only ever unlocked 1 weapon. This is because weapons require way too much to unlock, and this is made worse because you have to spend that currency on unlocking more spots for permanent upgrades you still need to buy with a different currency, a pretty stupid system in the first place. This means theres somewhat minimal variety, as most of the upgrades are just "chance to do this one you dodge/throw an object/deflect object". This means most of the upgrades are just stat boosts and health increases. Theres some stupid resistance to limit upgrades I guess because if you lose too much your max health decreases..... who knows its dumb. That's pretty much the game. You beat the game to unlock another act to then beat the game again and then there isn't much new things left to do besides grind the same stuff on harder difficulties to get "more followers". Overall the game is pretty light on content. But again it's not terrible. 7/10.

Super overlooked for a game with less than 100 reviews! I’d call it a ‘Hades-like’, in that you’re running into a dungeon with multiple levels, finding blessings to enhance your character’s skillset, and chatting to your various enemies and other characters each time you die. It does all of these things competently enough to be a really fun and addictive time, and also throws into the mix an arena that encourages destroying all of the objects within and bouncing them around for maximum chaos. It’s a little buggy (specifically some Act 2 dungeons generate with a path that’s impossible to go down) and in my opinion there’s a couple too many buttons to keep track of, but absolutely worthwhile for fans of Hades or other roguelites.