Hieroglyphika

This game is on the verge of being good. If you are a person who has a lot of patience, or at least a lot time to sink into a smaller game like this, then it may still be worth picking up. The reason it's a no for me is that the game has two major characteristics and they are counter to each other. Characteristic #1: There are no words in the whole game. Technically there is perfect information in the pictograms but it's very much an iterative process to figure out what everything means. Understanding how enemies and the environment work is also a thing that one must learn as they go. #2: The game is incredibly slow. In most turn based games like this you take your turn and all of the enemies take their turns instantly. In this game you take your turn, then every enemy unit individually takes it's turn, then the environment takes its turn. Granted, there's something to be said about actually seeing what the enemies are doing (it works in CIV games, for example) BUT When the game is only learned by doing and the doing is so slow.. it's just not an enjoyable experience to get your sea legs. In my best run I died instantly from full health and am not sure why. The fact that I …

Chess inspired, it's named hieroglyphika, your supposed to make a little effort to understand what's happening here, the game is not forgiving but as you progress so as your knowledge on the various enemies and danger across levels... Nothing impossible here, play on the weakness of your foes hope for the best and try a bit played less than ten hours to beat the game, was on the edges to beat it several times before that... It's charming, smart and simple at the same time, loved it, the pace is perfect for learning what's happening at wich moment and in wich order, little luck on the loot and certain aspects like the spirits, but the turned based insure a lot of control, so if you mess that up, it's mostly on you, that's honestly a stellar point in a landscape of swarming scrappy sketchy fast paced roguelites with action combat. Here you also need to learn the paterns, you also need to learn the gameplay but it's not in a reflex action way.

I've seen many comments complaining about the slowness of this game, as one of the key complaints. However, i'm sure the dev has heard that so many times now. I really hope it hasn't burnt him/her out on developing games. I want to actually appreciate this game for what it can do. I was hunting for that elusive "win hard" achievement over the weekend and by god was it truly brutally difficult. But I DID it! And you know what? That sense of satisfaction after quite a bit of "suffering" was TOTALLY worth it, and gave me something other games may lack, a sense of pride of achievement and also enjoyment at being able to master this games mechanics. I'm a big fan of hard challenges and at first I thought "this game is really unfair". But actually it IS fair. To an extent. There are still moments where luck really screws you over. But this game plays a little like chess. You have to stop and consider every piece on the board. You have to consider that your next move could be your last, even if you have been destroying everything in your path. Even if you have 99 hp. There are clear chain reactions in your actions. Every time I got to a new floor, I thought I was on top of the wor…

Cute trad roguelike with bitesize runs. Uses symbols to explain what the items/spells do. In many games would be a flaw (just tell me what XYZ does!), but in this game is part of the charm. You're an adventurer digging up an ancient's culture's artefacts , after all. (You'll get them soon enough, tho ;-)). You see a lot of complaining about slow enemy turns. While there is some validity to this, I suspect those reviews were before an update that sped things up. Especially in the beginning the speed is fine. You'll be busy enough trying to figure out what's going on. Another small minus is that the game is mouse only.

This game has so much potential but it's too slow to play, and balancing isn't quite right. I wish it would get updated even if it seems abandoned for good. Still had fun finishing my first run after many tries.

Brutal rouge-like, turn based, dungeon crawler with perma-death. Learning curve starts way above player's head. Whole game is super brutal and frustrating, but that's the charm of it, but the more you learn, the better it gets. It's like dark souls on nightmare difficulty, but actually hard, on steroids, and set up against player. And it's normal mode in this game, there's also hard one, but it demands 5D brain to be played. My smooth ball-brain barely makes it possible to reach level 5. Gameplay is heavily inspired by Legend of Zelda - forced top-down-like perspective, turn based move, traps, environment to interact with and to use against enemies. RNG makes each run interesting, and you can't just memorise layouts. As for the enemies, on the right-side of the main screen there is a hint list, showing what each enemy does. At first, items are a mystery. You start just like british and german grave robbers of the XVIII-XIX century, decoding on the go, what your gear and enemies actually do. To be honest, I hate this game because how hard and unpredictable it is, but also, it's a clear 9/10 tittle. My only negative is for the slightly bugged or convoluted move/action menu, but o…