Recent reviews by Streaky Haddock

genuinely very fun, and compelling.

It's good, play with me,

Got this game and DLC for about £12. I 100% it and had a lot of fun, finishing both in about 14 hours. The different mutations kept gameplay varied enough, though the loop can be repetitive- the game is short and well paced so it doesn't outstay its welcome. And when I say short, I mean by today's standards. It's exactly the pace it needed to be.

finished in 2 and a half hours, but loved every minute

Inventive, with interesting writing and quite short. My friends also enjoyed watching me lose my ♥♥♥♥.

Genuinely a very good game, and very pretty with good use of retro graphics with a more modern polish. The gameplay is varied with a good pacing for upgrades and weapons, all which have their own uses and abilities. The music is also a lot mroe diverse than you'd expect and all very good.
The cast, too, is small but all pretty recognisable with strong performances. John St John, Gianni Matragano and Patricia Summersett. I really enjoyed my time with this game, and encourage anybody to pick this up, even if its not normally their thing.

It's a fun and quick game. But yes, definitely wear headphones.

Pretty solid roguelike with emphasis on speedy playthroughs and choosing your next step, though that can be its weakness too. Its big selling points are the 30+ races and crazy class combinations which are very very satisfying to play with, as well as actual honest-to-god necromancy where you can have a zombie horde if you want. Or you could skip zombies altogether, dominate the minds of your enemies, send them at your foes, blow up their (animate or inanimate) corpses into a huge mess when they die and then revive them and your former foes as skeletons. Full crafter build is viable, and thats before we get onto races. Pretty much anything that spawns in the dungeon is something you can unlock and play pretty quickly. Only exception afaik is the slime MAN (you can be a regular slime) but I suspect that'll be implemented in time.

Downsides are you cannot save your runs if you need to quit which feels deliberate. Once you start your run, you're not stopping until you die. It puts emphasis on trying different things out (there's even a random race/class button) and adapting each time. I like it, but it's not everyone's cup of tea and it can make managing your playtime tricky.
Another /potential/ downside is that its not so much on exploring the entire dungeon, but trying to evaluate what path to take based on information. Only one lever (which can open doors) can be opened in a single room. Keys disintegrate after use. You get green exp for killing something for the first time and blue for every kill. I've never felt too frustrated by it, but I know some people REALLY like clearing the entire dungeon. So that's something to bear in mind.

One definite downside is that it's a single person's passion project on game-maker. I feel like he's got a very good grasp of game design and art direction (i was surprised to find out he uses some pre-bought assets but he edits them and incorporates them all together in a way they don't feel at all out of place) since everything looks, feels and sounds great. However, he is unable to break the constraints of the game-maker engine he's picked. It'll run poorly on laptops (it runs in slow motion. Not laggy exactly, but things do lose their fast paced impact) and Pirate-Rob seems gloomily resigned about that.

Still, I feel it's excellent value for money. If you like dungeon crawlers and freeform mashing of skills/races/classes together in interesting ways It's a good time.

It's only a pilot but it was strong enough to motivate me to writing a review. I figured it would be short, so I was prepared to write it off as a neat little stabby thing with crude humour and a rough art style. I was pleasantly surprised over the hour I played. Death comes easy but it's extremely forgiving with its checkpoints and there is zero wait time between dying and pressing 'try again'.

I actually found myself liking the characters more than I expected for what is an hour long demo, even the side-characters. They all have very strong visual design and their personalities come across nicely. I really wouldn't be surprised to see fan art cropping up already. I went into this expecting some nihilistic and morbid humour and there is that in spades for sure, but there's also some heart and sincerity to it as well. The music is a bit repetitive but what's there is really good. The cutscenes also show off the developer's actual artistic capability as well which comes together to actually make me genuinely excited to see future releases.

Very helpful and engaged community, with quite a few players and new coming in every day which I don't think I've seen with many MUDs. I didn't get slammed with an essay's worth of tutorials from the start, though it's not an easy game. I wouldn't call it punishing though, either. You can avoid pitfalls and the newbie experience scales well. Some things to note: Nomads = Warriors. You want to be a big race to get the most out of them. Ranger is always suggested because its very well rounded and can solo well. Magical Background = Riftwalker is the best newbie one since its another all-rounder that can have an entity protect them from being stabbed. Though an entity isnt as good as an actual player. Even a newbie 'tank' (read: nomad) can absorb better than most even mid-level entities. I dont know much about evil religious (though disciple/tzarrak is recommended as another newbie guild path) but good religious background has the tarmalen guild (read: class) that is a healer. Even brand new newbie tarms are quickly adopted by more experienced players because even a newbie healer makes ab ig difference to rest time. Civilised has a few pitfalls but sabres I hear is an acceptable (though a little more complex than other common newbie guilds) first guild for a new player.
You can recreate your character with no penalty while you remain under level 40 and your character is younger than 10 days.
Partying is very handy. There are people who only play solo, but you'll notice a huge increase to survivability even as a nomad just by pairing with another player. Even if that player is a fellow lowbie tank.
Give it a shot. You can get the non-steam client for free or connect through a regular mud client.