Minerva Labyrinth

If you like a different game that emphasizes substance over flash, thoughtful engagement over reflex, and complex progressive character development, this little gem may be for you. This game is amazing in one respect, according to other reviewers, it is totally from one person's mind. Coding, graphics, music, storyline, and combat mechanics were created by one individual developer, and what a smart, engaging, thought-provoking game emerged. "bent's" review of this game (first review) persuaded me to give this a try, and I'm glad I did. A deliciously complex and challenging game for fans of crawlers -- a retro graphics style reminiscent of the SNES; game play design and combat influenced by RPGs; a sense of humor i.e. "Chocolate Kisses" weapons or "Land of Infusion Tea Shop"; and very nice labyrinth design and room function. This is not an easy game. Combat becomes challenging with success relying on your ability to build successful character aspects (nothing new here) but it is based on many interconnected factors. It is especially so if you choose to build your characters from scratch, (an option at the beginning of the game). Character development can be compl…

I've played a bit of this game, and I played the demo before release: I'm planning to play more soon when I get time. Overall it's a solid indie game, I think. The lore is interesting, and the art and music are a sort of charming retro-pixel-dungeon-horror vibe. I think the pacing is generally good, and the enemies are interesting too. I like the mix of simplicity and tactics that goes into the combat, though there are some elements I think I'm still definitely yet to master. If I had critiques, they'd be that I'd have liked a slightly higher density of discoveries in the labyrinths, and that in general I'm not the world's biggest fan of "you get to tailor your whole party, but they don't have personalities in story terms" as a setup (but a lot of very good games do that, it's just a personal thing preference). If you like party-tactical dungeon crawling and you like the pitch of the game, it's a solid purchase.

I haven't really played a lot of dungeon crawlers before so I wasn't sure if this would hook me, but it definitely did. It's very easy to pick up and play if you know anything about RPGs in general, and the mechanics feel very well-balanced (at least on a single full playthrough). You can scrape by underleveled with good team synergy, which is how I prefer to play, but it didn't seem it would be too grindy to get some extra levels if needed either. In particular I really love the stat system, where you set everyone's base stats at the beginning, and that determines what tiers of weapons/armor/etc they can use, among other things. There are recommended defaults for each "class" to align with their skills/spells, but you can totally take a squishy healer class and make them a frontline tank, or make them even squishier but give them good ranged physical damage, etc. That plus the variety of "classes" makes for a very fun time customizing a party, and the game is short enough (20-25 hours maybe?) and snappy enough that even if a wacky customized party doesn't work out that well, the two options of plowing through anyway or restarting from scratch both don't feel very punishing. Easy…

Solid turn-based dungeon crawling, you build a party of 5 from dozen or so different classes with different passives and stat allocations allowing for even further customization, you battle in fairly standard and remarkably well balanced wizardry-like turn-based battles as you play through the dungeons, the dungeons themselves are the game's strongest point, they're intricately designed, rewarding to explore and make great use of confounding gimmicks like spinny tiles, dark rooms and teleporters and the game has a strong dark horror-adjacent vibe going on through, in spite of the magical girl theming this game definitely does not go for the cutesy appeal. The basic gameplay loop of trying to make your way through the dungeon, looking for secrets, battling enemies to power up and gathering loot and then making your way back to heal and spend your hard earned cash is satisfying and the dungeons themselves are solidly designed in that you're in most every case always going to be right back where you left ready for another go. It's a relatively bite sized adventure for the genre with 4 major dungeons with several floors and an optional tutorial dungeon, took me just shy of 20 hou…

Wizardry collides with Sailor Moon, or something! If you like old-school first person dungeon crawlers from the 1980s, this one is pretty fun and the setting is different. *edit* Runs great on Steam Deck with Xbox controller. Create 5 badass women in tiaras for some reason, with a lot of class choices and some additional customization (choose a passive), then explore a labyrinth, get smashed by baddies, suffocate from poison gas, and other fun activities!

Played the demo, and it got me hooked. Solid dungeon crawler/JRPG style game. Will update the review if my opinion changes, but right now this is a recommend for me.