Recent reviews by Henry

The dev has to be pullin' our legs or something. Most of the achievements that got added with the recent update are tough but fair. There's only one in particular, and that's to reach the 21st island. The scoring system as it is now makes it so that reaching the 21st island will be a Herculean effort by way of getting the proper RNG. According to the dev, this should only take 3 hours. Wow, only 3 hours of doing everything as best I can just to be crushed by RNG when the map is three separate tiny islands and none of the best metas for earning points? Yeah, I'm going to pass on that. Everyone in the forums is in agreement too, that the dev is off their rocker with this 3 hour comment they made.

If you want to just play a game for 20 minutes and never touch it again, this game is great for that. So give it a whirl. It does have some fun aspects, and it is mostly relaxed for just a casual play.
If you have any desire to complete the game, and tackle the challenges set forth by the dev: I hope you like resetting and pounding your head against a wall for the inevitable bad RNG that ends your runs at island 15+. There's no reward for playing well on previous islands is the real problem. It just matters how the islands generate.

Editing for 6.0 Update

Overall, I really do love this update. There's tons of new stuff that is fantastic.

However:

I can't in good conscience recommend people jump in to this game. There are achievements in-game and on steam that require something like 135 days of active play time - not 135 days of log ins or an hour a day. But quite literally, 135 days of actively leaving the game open. That's ridiculous, even for an idle game. I actually think I'm low-balling this number, also. I think it's quite a bit more than that.

The amber costs, the wait time for base building, all things you can earn over time by playing in spurts here or there.

Dev, I know you're good with feedback - so I'm sure you're planning to address this. However, I have to leave this as a do not recommend until something is done.

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Editing as of 12-25:

Thankfully, the dev listened to their community and decided that there was a change needed. This is very positive and reassuring! With this in mind, I think there's definitely a positive direction to head into as more and more content is released, new things come out, new events, etc. Looking forward to seeing what the future has to hold for the game!

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Gotta say, it's disappointing to see it go from pretty damn good to annoyingly awful. The developer has ceased caring about the community and only pays attention to the less than 0.6% group of the player base. The ones who spend money in droves. I get it, a developer needs to make some money with a game. That's not a problem. But when rewards are only stashed away for those who dish out the dev's monthly salary, it really loses luster.

Creating challenges and events that only an insanely tiny fraction of the player-base can complete is what kills games. Keeping things on a level where all players can at least have a chance to complete events is where you retain player numbers and even bring in new people for the exciting events. That's not the case here.

I can guarantee I won't be recommending this to anyone.

Updating with Heaven and Hell release/playtime:

Over time, my opinion has changed. I think what this update suffered from the most was just the absolute size of the overhaul. For me, it was way too much change in one go from what the game was to what it is now. After playing quite a fair few runs, it does feel great. It didn't feel bad before, it just overwhelmed you with all the new things when the game was super simple before. I almost think they're 2 different games entirely, if I'm being honest.

While I still don't like equipment weight too much, it's possible to play around it. I still don't think it fits well in this specific game, but it is what it is.

There is one thing that's killing me: Stop pausing the game for new debuffs. I think 99.99% of players can figure out what's going on when they step on a spider web. Don't pause in the middle of the room. Great, you gave us 3 seconds to gather our thoughts before starting the game again. You've interrupted the flow of the action. You've already ruined the rhythm of my play. Stop pausing the game on debuff.

Overall, though. Havin' fun, game seems to be in a good place. And I'm looking forward to future updates.

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I'm still very much early in my experience with this game, but I am LOVING it. Very simple mechanics that are intuitive and easy to parse. The graphics have an option whether you love CRT or not, so if it's jarring you can turn it off. If you love it, it stays.

The game isn't overly difficult, while also having some meta progression to utilize to make it a tad easier if you find certain parts tough. With 10 floors to the game, there's 2 bosses per floor (to my knowledge) and i'm assuming they're going to add more down the line. So variety in that sense might be just a tad low, but the amount of variety room to room is insane. So many different rewards to choose from. Shops, buffs, bonuses, items, gear. It's all there.

The game borrows mechanics from other games quite well, meshing them all together in one big pot of soup known as Tiny Rogues.

Base game was tons of fun. Island is just a worse version of the slog that plagues the mainland. It's a cheap game. You can numb your mind for a few hours and do it, but why? You could play another game and actually enjoy your time with it rather than plop down the same cards with a different name over and over again. Just kinda disappointed with the expansion. It's good it was free, and not a paid DLC. Just can't recommend it.

Solid little idle game. Feels like a great amount of content for the price point. There seems to be plenty of build variety as well. I haven't noticed any skills or types of builds being insanely outclassed by another on it's own. I've noticed certain synergies between classes and loadouts that make things strong, which feels intended and like a reward.

The dev is great in that they listen to their community and take feedback in stride, making changes as new things pop up.

All in all, a great game I'm still grinding my way through (hopefully going to go for 100% achievements in time) and definitely recommend if you love a good idle game!

Editing to say you should go check out Hexrogues instead of this steaming pile. Hexrogues is a million times better, and you'll enjoy it for a cheaper price, as well.



Editing after the "Third and final update" on 6-15-23:

Dev still doesn't care. Just keeps adding more crap that no one asked for. Refuses to address anything that's actually wrong with the game. Just sad.

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The dev keeps updating the game...but he keeps making it worse. Adding in nothing any player has ever asked for, ramping the difficulty to impossible realms with mobs that make no sense. Nerfing things that never needed a nerf. I don't know what his goal is, to make a game that makes no sense? I mean, we're at the point where the April Fools patch is more balanced than the actual game is.

The dev lost sight of the end-goal, and I think is just doing stuff because he thinks it's funny. Sad because the game was pretty decent after the first post-launch patch.

Editing for clarity in response to the developer being kind enough to reach out:

Let's assume you win every single run of this game that you play. You never lose, you always make it to KotH.

First run of the game: You're learning the game and figuring out cool combos and unlocking mutations. You squeak out a win to KotH and woah, you snagged two victories. Great! 2/100.

You do it again, with newfound confidence and stronger mutagens and a more efficient strategy. You make it to the end, but your build wasn't meta, so you still squeaked out only 2 wins. 4/100.

You try the meta build that you saw everyone else in KotH running. This time you racked up a cool 5 wins! 9/100.

But running meta gets old after the third time in a singular season so you stop at 19/100.

You wait for a new season, and you come back only to find the balance is completely different and the game has been essentially upended from the previous meta. Rinse and repeat above approximately 6 times in total to receive your 100 wins. Each run, in my experience, takes close to 45 minutes to an hour. Let's just say 45 minutes consistently for simple math. 5 runs a season across 6 seasons to reach 100 wins in total, for 30 total runs at 45 minutes totaling 1350 minutes or about 23 hours. That's a decent time.

Here's the thing: No one is consistently winning every run. Yeah ok there's mr pro gamer who does it, 1 guy out of thousands. The game has to not only balance PvP but also PvE. There are certain monsters that just rip your team instantly (lookin' at you dual cerberus) if you don't have just the right composition, or just the right mutations, or just the right levels. It's the nature of a rogue-like to have RNG and require different builds and different parameters based on the situation. But when you try to mix it up and add some variety to your runs because it's boring running fencer, healer, gunner every single run for a victory, you're punished for it. Have you seen the state throwers are in? Whatever starting group has the thrower and shielder, it's instant death if you don't end up in a shop on your first node. If you have to do more than a singular battle, you instantly die. No exceptions. Where's the fun in that?

The main problem is, your average player ends up getting no more than 10 wins in a season because this game just sucks to play after you win one or two runs. There's no wiggle room for variety in how you play the PvE aspect because some classes just blatantly suck or offer no start at all. And then when you get to PvP, as far as I'm aware the meta is still horde all the weapons for your desired build until you win using the usual cookie cutter builds to get there, then spam your units out for your desired build. I just don't find that fun.

KotH should've been a thing where the team that beats the final boss, whoevers left alive, jumps straight in, no prep time or jerry-rigging your teams into a meta. Instead, it's this weird meta-verse where you snake a few wins with a specific build that's unfun to run more than twice.

Hopefully this explanation helps you understand why I hold an issue with 100 wins in KotH. At maximum, it's 100 runs won where you eek out 1 victory in KotH after. In reality, it's probably something like 40 victories where you average 3 wins after PvE. But that's not counting all the failed runs you'll do because you lost do to a mistake or bad RNG or you didn't find the one mutation that would seal your victory. (Note: Losing due to RNG or not finding the piece of the puzzle is not what makes this bad.) I don't want to run the same Meta build every single time. That's boring. The premise of the game and the functional mechanics of the game are lovely. But the balance is atrocious, and the layout of how you get from point A to point B is incredibly stale. You can't run half the classes as a serious build because they're just bad.

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Win 100 KotH battles is an insane ask. Be reasonable.

A game that cares for all it's players.

This game is incredible with it's features. First, it gives us variable difficulty. You want to just achievement hunt and not have to slog out a super difficult experience? There's a mode for that.
You want to enjoy the game at the basic difficulty and experience moderate challenge? There's a mode for that.
You want extra difficulty to test your builds and achieve a greater sense of satisfaction in your victory? There's a mode for that.

On top of the different difficulties, there's also the ability to alter your pool of heroes you choose from. It lets you decide how you want the random generation to go. In the shop you only see 3 potential heroes at a time, out of I think it's a mandatory pool of 12. So there's a lot of wiggle room that you might not see the hero you want until you reroll a handfull of times. Or maybe you decide you want to run every single hero in the game currently, what is it, like 18 or so? You can do that too! It helps you create a build for yourself while keeping the RNG of a rogue-like present. It also lets you adapt it how you'd like it, whether you want a slim pool or a huge pool. A brilliant feature that I hope more games adopt to help with the excess of variety some experience.

All in all, this game has been a wonderful experience. While I've completed all the achievements for now, if the game updates with new ones I'll definitely be happy to come back and snag 'em.

I'm going to give this a recommendation because it's an awesome game, but holy cow is it flippin' hard.

I've yet to beat the champion a singular time yet. I've gotten advice from both the developer and fellow players. Tried to adapt and learn and do better and improve. It still feels like I don't even come close to winning. I get as far as the Elite Four equivalent from time to time, so I'm not terribly far off of a victory, but it sure feels like it when they hand me a defeat so readily.

Again, this is an awesome game. It's very well put together. It's tons of fun. Just be ready for an extreme challenge before you even jump into optional difficulty levels that come after the first victory!

Editing for 1.0 release:

Fun game that I just still can't recommend. For whatever reason, the random bounce on pegs was kept in. Try it out yourself if you own the game, set a custom run with all the orbs that refresh if you skip them, set your mouse up and use your keyboard so you don't interfere with the aimer, shoot one orb, watch how it bounces, discard the next to refresh the board to the exact same state, shoot the next orb and watch how it goes in a WILDLY different direction than your first orb. That's just so blatantly unfun. The game is pachinko, it's random enough as it is with all it's roguelike elements which is GOOD. We don't need random bounces to add even more BS.

I don't like Cruciball, either. I grinded through 15 levels already, 16-20 are just un-fun even more than the first 15 were.

I had fun, but I cannot recommend this game to anyone still.

Editing for shop update as of 12-1:

Shop helps the randomocity be a little lesser, and actually allows you to get builds. There's still just a sheer amount of orbs in the game that you can STILL go many entire games without seeing an orb. It's a lot harder to than before, so it's a step in the right direction. It's an improvement.

Peg bounciness feels like it was cranked to 11 with a complete disregard for any type of physics. Have shot my ball in the exact same spot multiple times, and received different results despite the board having no changes. Not sure what they did behind the scenes, but it's incredible how differently the orbs are acting after this update.

Still can't recommend in good faith. Cruciball is super hard, but they said it was because they're still working on it, so we'll let that pass. But yeah, still think you should wait on this.

Editing For Balance Pass on 9-28:

Lots of changes happened, trying to make some orbs better and some builds more fun. I think this pass was definitely a step in the right direction, but ultimately not enough for specifically the shielded enemies. It's just insane to me that we offer bombs on a map for shielded enemies but the bombs, even if you multi-orb and hit every single one of them, only take the shield down to about 1/3 health, and you still have to crush through it while enemies are slinging arrows and magic and healing. I know what you're probably thinking "What about piercing damage, bouldorb or worbhammer?" I had worbhammer, couldn't get to the singular refresh though to make it do more than about 40 damage. Was never offered a bouldorb or icircle. Hopefully when they start releasing classes or addressing the sheer volume of orbs in the game this improves. For now, still gotta leave it at a thumbs down because we're still in supremely unfun territory in the cruciball. There's no difficulty factor, it's just plain unfair enemies that the board doesn't offer enough variety on to allow you to take them out.


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If you play just the base game or do custom runs you’ll be able to find some quirky builds and have a bit of fun. If you want anything more out of this game, like playing through the cruciball then you’re going to have a bad time.

The physics engine for how pegs bounce has always been a pile of hot garbage. Lately it seems worse than ever, but maybe that’s just the advent of shields in the second area. Certain relics that cause pegs to act differently are the most inconsistent thing. Electro peg net and it’s orb come to mind for how wonky they are. In prior updates it was fun wonk with some frustration, but lately it feels like the peg net is designed to force your ball into the wall or down to the bouncers. Which is weird because those aren’t pegs.

The cruciball itself and its added challenge aren’t horrible, giving some good difficulty. The problem comes from how inconsistent everything is. Builds feel like they get nerfed every single update so that one shots are only possible if you get exact perfect luck. As if battles are trying to be drawn out into long slugfests.

Orb variety is starting to get a little bit insane in that you might not see a specific orb type the entire game. I just finished one where multiorb didn’t exist until the spot before the act3 boss. I had a build where multiorb would’ve been insanely strong. But it just didn’t exist. Sure, that’s part of the randomness of a rogue like. But when I get offered a swoltorb and every other battle it just feels like something isn’t quite right.

I’m hoping future updates will change things