While I would love to recommend it: hold off for now.
Identifile: Desktop Dungeon
is a love letter to Pokemon Ranger for the Nintendo DS, where you draw circles around Pokemon on a screen to neutralize them, in the form of a Roguelike Bullet Hell using a cursor to draw circles instead of a stylus. As a fan of the trilogy of games and style of combat, I decided to give this a shot.
And while I did enjoy the combat for the first handful of rounds, figuring out enemy patterns and items, it quickly grew monotonous and effectively 'solved' as a form of combat.
I don't want to give this a Negative review, because that would just hurt the games review rating (and I would like to see this game succeed), but this is a very strong sideways thumb.
I cannot stress this enough:
These are the bones to a great game so far.Many of my problems and nitpicks can be easily solved through updates, the game is only somewhat fundamentally confused about itself, mostly through items, stats, and power scaling.
The Positives
I really gotta hand it to whoever did the music: It's probably the best thing about this game. Each floor, battle, and boss has their own leitmotif that really separates them from each other. The main menu music is probably my favorite of them all, as the entire game is almost synced to the bounce of the cursor and is just a joy to sit on as you watch your collectibles bounce around to the beat.
Each cursors gameplay is drastically different from one another, making them feel like entirely new games altogether. Not every cursor is about drawing circles and breaking your wrist in the process. During my time, I had a comfortable pool of cursors that felt strong and steady to play. If you are put off by the circle gimmick, I suggest you give it another look into.
There is a lot of charm and personality being put into this game. A bit too much if you ask me, definitely some inside jokes I don't get, but still with its weird charm. (Why does only the blue box fart when you drop it? Are all these little collectible guys Devs or Kickstarter Backers? Did the fake screensaver really need 5 achievements tied to it? So many quirks!)
Special mention to Shiny Virus's that have a 1/2000 spawn chance that do nothing but you can keep them on your main menu to show off. That's the kind of quirky charm I like to see.
Unfortunately there's enough grit that makes this unpleasant to play. Not too much, but just enough to where I wouldn't recommend it yet.
The Negatives
I really have to start with itemization. There are a lot of smaller gimmicks here that just do not cater well to the items, and when you begin to look at them as a whole, it's just not pleasant. When your "Pick 3" Game devolves into a flowchart, your choices start to lose meaning.
For every attack that you deal, it builds a combo meter, that incrementally increases your attack by +1 for every x your combo is. 1 damage, 2, 3, 4, ramping up the more circles you draw, up to a cap, of say, 5.
Why in the world would I pick +1 Combo Cap over +1 Attack in general? Why is that a thing in the same Common pool!? You're telling me I have to circle 6 times (without dropping combo!) to get that 1 damage at the end, but the +1 Attack applying to every attack (Now making it a 2, 3, 4, 5!) is the same rarity? The combo system is neat on paper, but is horribly confused with itself. It sounds worth it for low combo counts, sure, but imagine having to circle 99 times to get your 100 combo cap +1 damage bonus. Unrealistic, but you can clearly see the value drop off a cliff.
So many items devolve into the same archetypes of themself. Poison All Enemies on Spawn, All enemies spawn with -20% hp, and All enemies get Executed under 20%.
You can't fool me, that's just all different flavors of -20% hp!Active Items are also insanely weak and have too little uses compared to nearly every other direct damage upgrade, that most runs I find myself not using any Actives to begin with if they don't provide an immediate or substantial benefit.
Collecting items for the database is also a giant pain when 40% of them share the same art and icon! The database shows all of your missing items as black silhouettes as a hint, but most of them are just black circles and squares, and backing out to the main menu forfeits the run! No going back to check if that 7 pixel black circle is the one you're missing.
Terminology in this game is also just kind of whacky. It wants to be clever with so many file and computer terms, but so many of those terms circle around to being other things in the game, making it just blatantly confusing to talk about, here's an example that actually happened:
While talking about the rewards.exe's (the chests of the game), someone got confused that I was actually talking about EXE's (the Active Items of the game).
See where this can get confusing? I want to give the game respect, but not break the immersion with just calling them chests, and doors, and rooms.
Other Nitpicks and stuff I would like to see
- This just goes back to the terminology thing. The Database is not only used for the collection of items and enemies, but also the Achievements too. When I didn't unlock the "100% Database" Achievement for collecting every item and enemy, I got confused a tiny bit, but had to eventually find out that it meant 100% Achievements instead. Did I not have to collect every item? Who knows!
- The game did crash on me once. Just once in 22 hours.
- Skip Boss Intro for the love of god. The game is super fast paced if you want it to be, since it's all dictated by your clicks, but these intros break all pacing.
- Some cursors are a blatantly awful slog to play and are generally not worth picking whatsoever. Looking at the Horse one. This is maybe a case of wanting to get your idea on paper first before balancing it.
- Why are the little collectible guys called Secrets? What's so secret about them, they're right there!
- Needs a lot more meta progression stuff you can unlock using Data Fragments. Currently they're ONLY for unlocking cosmetics and "Secret" little guys, but maybe they can be used for unlocking Database items too? So I dont have to play through 6 hours to find the Gambling Cursor Card?
There's so many more little things that bug me, but the game is honestly much more playable than I make it sounds.
With a couple more additions...
This game can really shine, especially for $10.
More floors, more bosses, maybe boss alternates to break the monotony. Some item reworks? More cursors and junk, you know, all the stuff you can expect out of a Roguelike in Early Access.
