Ludus Mortis

I will be refunding this game. Obviously you can see from my playtime that I didn't give the game a lot of my time, because I could tell from pretty early on that it was going to make unreasonable expectations of mine. To start, the amount of XP required to advance a character's skills is absurd; several thousand to level one skill while a combat barely awards 100. Said combats will, at the start, take half your party's resources to get through, with it being very possible on a bad series of rolls to get a character killed before you can even act. Running into a single trap guarantees a character death, and reviving a character requires a trip back to town. The insta-death traps are, apparently, an intended design choice. The dev was fairly active in the community discussions a while back I saw as I looked through them., and their reasoning was it was a way to get players to pay attention to the dungeon and not the minimap. While that is a fair thing to ask of the player, it is not fair to punish them with INSTANT DEATH in the first level of the first dungeon on normal difficulty. So, to reiterate, this is a game that will punish you for daring to play it like it is a game and a…

Ludus Mortis, developed and published by 68k Studios, is a dungeon crawler that deliberately looks backward rather than forward, drawing heavily from the traditions of classic grid-based RPGs while framing its experience within a dark reimagining of ancient Rome. It doesn’t attempt to streamline or modernize its core ideas for mass appeal; instead, it commits to a slower, more methodical style of play that emphasizes planning, resource management, and tactical decision-making. This approach immediately sets expectations: this is a game built for players who enjoy systems-driven progression and are willing to engage with mechanics that demand patience and attention. The setting is one of the game’s more distinctive qualities. Instead of the usual medieval fantasy backdrop, Ludus Mortis takes place in a decaying Roman world overtaken by necromancy and supernatural forces. The Senate’s desperate attempt to cling to power through forbidden means has unleashed horrors that now infest the city’s underground, creating a grim, oppressive atmosphere that permeates every dungeon. You are not cast as a singular chosen hero, but rather as the manager of a gladiatorial school, training and dep…

Really loving this game, serios old school vibe. I played The Bards Tale back in teh 90s and then smashed the recent re release. Ludus reminds me a lot of that. Simple gameplay, just batttle and level up to get stronger and take on more challengers. When you unlock a new skill it feels highly rewarding and thats what it is all about.

A surprisingly competent little dungon crawler that doesn't overstay it's welcome. It might seem to be very hard at first but once you realize that the game is designed to be grinded a little bit (stay in the dungeon until food runs out and grind enemies. the xp and gold boni keep stacking for every consecutive fight) it becomes a breeze.

I love the amount of customization you are able to have with each character you create. You decide how to level up each attribute, skill, passive, items, etc. The only "con" is that you have to grind quite a bit to get the xp to go further into the game, so you replay a previous dungeon to level up your skills and then do the next one, etc.

Incredibly addicting classic wizardry-lite has some issues, but the addictive gameplay loop overrules those issues