This is the work of someone who understands not only why roguelikes are such a long-lasting genre but also why they've been mostly stuck in a niche for nearly forty years: by identifying what actually works and separating it from what is just tolerated by inertia, Golden Krone Hotel is all gameplay and no busywork. A bit like DCSS in how it doesn't want to bullsh*t the player or let the player bullsh*t it... if DCSS took place in a cozy little Romanian castle (read: spooky, poorly lit, broken windows, not really that little, vampires everywhere) instead of in a sprawling Australian underground dungeon.

As a vampire hunter turned vampire, or maybe a vampire turned vampire hunter, or possibly even a hunter vampire, you spend roughly half your time as a spell-casting, sword-swinging, revolver-shooting, lore-reading, human-looking, slowly regenerating BATTLEMAGE, and the other half as a slowly decaying monstrous bloodthirsty nightvision predator who probably can't sign his own name or even properly grasp a pen with those massive claws to begin with, and who also spontaneously combusts if exposed to the scorching sunlight of a gloomy Romanian afternoon; mind those broken windows and keep aware of the time of the day unless you want your vampiric self to develop instant atomic skin cancer. The Hotel has some very spacious rooms so I'd recommend just exploring the opposite side of the floor while the sun impersonates Auric Goldfinger's laser cannon.

Or, you know, just drink one of those Soul Elixirs that turn you back into a human. This is what the game is about, in the end; managing your time and abilities as both a spellcasting human and a faceshredding vampire. NPCs from the opposite faction will attack you, and different areas have different predominant populations; resources are generally limited just enough to be comfortable for a whole game as you alternate between forms, but to make it not really convenient to try to spend all the time as one of the two. All in all, an extremely solid game that knows exactly what it wants to do. It is rewarding on account of how differently the same character might play as human and vampire; not only the way you approach each fight changes, but you also need to reevaluate constantly whether you should really be in a particular room, floor or even branch of the castle around the time you transform.

While a lot of roguelikes both old and new take pride in their unstoppable feature creep and unwillingness to let players play the game, instead clobbering them with infinite menus and inventory screens and cooking recipes and fetch quests and all other kinds of bloat that just get in the way of the moment-to-moment gameplay that made the genre, it's refreshing to see a game that presents no more than a few novel core mechanics and builds a fair, balanced and distinctive experience out of it.

This is the work of someone who understands not only why roguelikes are such a long-lasting genre but also why they've been mostly stuck in a niche for nearly forty years: by identifying what actually works and separating it from what is just tolerated by inertia, Golden Krone Hotel is all gameplay and no busywork. A bit like DCSS in how it doesn't want to bullsh*t the player or let the player bullsh*t it... if DCSS took place in a cozy little Romanian castle (read: spooky, poorly lit, broken windows, not really [i]that[/i] little, vampires everywhere) instead of in a sprawling Australian underground dungeon. As a vampire hunter turned vampire, or maybe a vampire turned vampire hunter, or possibly even a hunter vampire, you spend roughly half your time as a spell-casting, sword-swinging, revolver-shooting, lore-reading, human-looking, slowly regenerating BATTLEMAGE, and the other half as a slowly decaying monstrous bloodthirsty nightvision predator who probably can't sign his own name or even properly grasp a pen with those massive claws to begin with, and who also spontaneously combusts if exposed to the scorching sunlight of a gloomy Romanian afternoon; mind those broken windows and keep aware of the time of the day unless you want your vampiric self to develop instant atomic skin cancer. The Hotel has some very spacious rooms so I'd recommend just exploring the opposite side of the floor while the sun impersonates Auric Goldfinger's laser cannon. Or, you know, just drink one of those Soul Elixirs that turn you back into a human. This is what the game is about, in the end; managing your time and abilities as both a spellcasting human and a faceshredding vampire. NPCs from the opposite faction will attack you, and different areas have different predominant populations; resources are generally limited just enough to be comfortable for a whole game as you alternate between forms, but to make it not really convenient to try to spend all the time as one of the two. All in all, an extremely solid game that knows exactly what it wants to do. It is rewarding on account of how differently the same character might play as human and vampire; not only the way you approach each fight changes, but you also need to reevaluate constantly whether you should really be in a particular room, floor or even branch of the castle around the time you transform. While a lot of roguelikes both old and new take pride in their unstoppable feature creep and unwillingness to let players play the game, instead clobbering them with infinite menus and inventory screens and cooking recipes and fetch quests and all other kinds of bloat that just get in the way of the moment-to-moment gameplay that made the genre, it's refreshing to see a game that presents no more than a few novel core mechanics and builds a fair, balanced and distinctive experience out of it.