I generally love Soldak games, and Din's champion is no exception. Still a little rough around the edges, and performance could be a lot better, but currently love the builds, theory crafting, and questing. Maybe a little devoid of an overarching goal other than unlocking the classes (although hardcore has solved that for me somewhat.) Generally, i already have 260 hours in this game and I've been having a lot of fun just trying out a million different builds an dying to fall damage.

I have been following Soldak Entertainment ever since I saw a box copy of Depths of Peril at Fry's Electronics (RIP) back when I was a teenager. I keep coming back year after year to his games because I find myself resonating with what I see as some of the core design philosophies (I could be reading into it, since I'm not active in the community). And the core design philosophy I see is emergent meaningful gameplay.

What makes games fun are the stories that we experience as we go through the gameplay loop. Quest after quest pile up, usually at the same time, with all of them having some degree of time sensitivity. Do I save my surly naga who name I choose to read as Thimble, pushing tiles beyond my comfort zone to save my companion, or do I deal with zombie pixie uprising that will surely assail me if I leave the infestation alone too long? Those choices feel meaningful in the course of a game session and will have impact on my game while I play. Its that slog that builds steam until I'm checking off quests until I defeat that nemesis.

Pretty fun iteration on the Soldak game formula.