The Sealed Ampoule

I'm really enjoying the game. The graphical style is unique, the music/sfx non-obtrusive, and the story is light but the mystery is interesting enough to make me want to learn more.

As far as gameplay, it's the type of dungeon crawler where every time you enter you start at the 1st floor of the dungeon, each floor randomly generated (except for some special floors). You collect resources laying around as well as from defeated monsters, using the resources to level your skills or to level the floors of the dungeon. The latter meaning that the once you level up a dungeon floor it will have more resources spawned on it and the floors appear to get "simpler". So even though you have to start each run at the 1st floor, you quickly zip through those initial floors as you get stronger and the floors get "simpler", yet you get many more resources. Death is just an inconvenience as you're returned from the dungeon but with some lost resources, but if you start to get too deep, you can just choose to return to your home without any loss of resources.

So in summary it's a typical rogue-lite grindy dungeon crawler, with the unique twist that you spend your resources to level both you and the floors of the dungeon, which really helps alleviates the grind and provide an evolving experience with each run through the dungeon.

Cavy House is back with "The Sealed Ampoule", their latest strange and unusual adventure. This is a good thing.

It plays as a "mystery dungeon", where you delve down random levels, get out alive, hopefully, and do it again. It is super repetitive, but as with Forget Me Not: My Organic Garden, also by Cavy House, it is the price you pay to unlock the story. Well, aside from buying the game anyway.

The sameness of the dungeon is, however, punctuated by special floors that have some sort of event, letting you in on a bit more of the story, and introducing the characters that live there. Additionally, progress does get faster as you level up and get more skills, allowing you to survive deeper floors. There is also a neat mechanic that lets you use materials to level up the dungeon itself, with the goal of turning each floor into a farm, allowing you to harvest the materials, while skipping those floors completely.

One thing worth mentioning is that Cavy House does tend to have an unusual graphic style, but thankfully, The Sealed Ampoule isn't as crazy looking as The Midnight Sanctuary, for example, so don't worry about your eyes falling out.

I didn't hesitate to get The Sealed Ampoule when I saw it was out, because I know Cavy House is going to deliver something interesting and strange, but if you're on the fence about it, whether it be chain link, picket, wrought iron, or even the classic split rail, don't worry, sleep on it, tomorrow is another day, and you will be another person, replaced by aliens in the night.

A mechanically simple, relaxing dungeon crawler with a couple roguelite elements. If you die, you lose a random smattering items but retain your level. Dungeon crawl to get items that you upgrade the dungeon floors' drops with, upgrade your skills, go deeper, repeat. Really cute aesthetic, light challenge, addictive gameplay, definitely recommended.

The first boss was basically a DPS/heal check, the game definitely requires a healthy amount of grinding to progress. Granular progression on making the floors simpler makes this pretty satisfying though.