Recent reviews by Soph

A truly wonderful adventure through the lens of childhood magic, the melancholy of nostalgia and the power of imagination to shape the world around us. Though incomplete, even the tale as told through to Chapter 4 is a masterpiece of an adventure game wrapped in a warm blanket of RPG action.

Worth every fraction of every currency you can buy it in. Play it.

Let me start by saying that I 100% recommend this game.

This is a very specific kind of game for a very specific kind of person who is a very specific kind of insane. I, like the creator, am very evidently afflicted by this particular brand of insanity. This game appeals to the sort of person who can have as much fun looking at data charts for a game as they do actually playing the game. This game appeals to the sort of person who wants to have no idea what they're doing because they enjoy the thrill of learning rather than simply being given the means to succeed.

Calling this game a roguelite is certainly accurate, but I think that it may be missing the forest for the trees. This game is a vehicle for character build concepts and party compositions that have been derived from every facet of the RPG genre and its associated sub-genres. I would personally compare it more to a dungeon crawler if the actual dungeon crawling has been stripped away and instead replaced by having to make choices to proceed that simulate the attrition of the classic dungeon crawler genre.

Each run through the dungeon is five rooms. Five encounters. Five moments of decision and tension. A distillation of the experience of diving into a dungeon and returning either triumphant, barely successful, or simply licking your wounds in defeat. Each room provides a battle, each victory a choice: Do you accept a Max HP penalty in exchange for a benefit? Do you let the enemies become vastly stronger in lieu of weakening your own characters? Countless different effects that the different doors you use to descend deeper imbue upon your party.

Your party itself is chosen from an absolutely insanely sized pool of different class and race combinations. But the game doesn't provide the full breadth of it's depth from the word go. While it certainly could do that and still be appealing, by limiting the options it provides the player a chance to learn the game. Each combination is a character with their own short story to tell, unlocked bit by bit through leveling the character up and taking on a memory quest, which is a sort of pre-built party challenge that serves both to test the player's understanding of the character in question and also to teach the player about other classes. As new memory quests are completed, additional classes will appear to be available to use, new characters to discover.

Visually the game is quite distinct compared to most contemporary indie RPGs. The sprites evoke the simplicity of the consoles of eld such as the Atari 2600 or the Colecovision, but with the more complex visual presentation of something akin to the ZX Spectrum. Fractured silhouettes that challenge the mind to create their own interpretation of the phantom adventurers that grace the screen. The theming of the game certainly helps to tie the visuals together. While not for everyone, this minimalist approach simply adds to the game in my opinion.

The game's music is absolutely fantastic. A forlorn chimera of RPG styled battle music fused with atmospheric horror, a sense of melancholic nostalgia interrupted by a literal shepard's tone, an eternal sense that something is familiar and just not quite right. Combined with the minimalist visuals, the game's OST absolutely delivers an atmosphere that I don't think that I'll soon forget.

And at its core, Purgatory Dungeoneer is a game just as much about trying to master a game system as much as it is to decipher the arcane logic of a madman and their machinations. Perhaps along the way you'll untangle some that nasty trauma of being an adventurer, or perhaps you'll simply ignore it in favor of good old number crunching. For fans of classical party based RPGs with a focus more on their mechanics, there's a lot to love here. The game's balance isn't perfect, nor is the game's structure, but personally I prefer my games to feel like they share the same soul as the chaotic confluence of events that lead to their creation.

Purgatory Dungeoneer is 100% that sort of game. Give this game a chance and I think you'll be in for quite a treat.

There's a dedicated bleat button.

Genuinely one of the most fun roguelites I've touched in a long time. If you're someone who enjoys randomly generated dungeon crawling and town management in equal measure then you will undoubtedly have a lot of fun!

Praise be to the lamb.

Played a deck from 10 years ago and got to gold because no one reads cards, then had to become a meta slave 10/10 real YGO experience