Recent reviews by MVB

I have played countless roguelites copying the framework of Slay the Spire but having one gimmick to try to set itself apart from the others. Games where you don't get any gratification from figuring out broken combos, because you already know what they are when you see them since they are just a copy of a system you've played many times before. The roguelite deckbuilder (and similar) have been in desperate need of some inspiration and developers with a vision of their own rather than "let's make a poor copy of a masterpiece game, but put a different color lipstick on it".

Luckily, we're finally seeing some innovation, with Balatro and now with Dungeons & Degenrate Gamblers.While both games might seem similar on the surface, they are very different. Both great in their own right, but go about their gameplay from different angles. Balatro challenges you to a game of optimization with putting pieces together to create a precise point scoring deck.

Then we have this game, which throws most other conventions out the window. The game basically puts you in the position of a mad scientist who can control a ton of what's going on in the duels. It rewards out of the box thinking and wild experiments, and it can become very, very complex if you want to. Reading other reviews that talk about frustrating stalemate situations etc sounds like what I too experienced before I started understanding that I had to approach this game differently than other games of the genre. I've only scratched the surface, but my impression is that there's a ton more to explore with the tools the game gives you.

For those that want something that feels familiar to the classics of the roguelite deckbuilders, this might not be the game for you. But for those like me that are tired of all the copycating with next to no innovation or iteration and want something different that can't be solved with the same approach as the 1000 games before it, then this is well worth picking up.

Very enjoyable turn-based tactics roguelite. The game difficulty is very well tuned in my eyes, making it difficult but gives the satisfying steady progress of finding out how to overcome the different enemies and build the different classes. It doesn't do anything special that players haven't seen in many other similar games, but most aspects of the game feel polished and well designed.

An easy recommendation at this price.

Very enjoyable turn-based tactical game. The Tetris minigame for upgrading the units is a fun addition that provide some genuine tough decisions. There's a limited amount of content yet, maybe 10-20 hours worth, but what's there is great and an excellent building block for what can become an absolute gem of an indie game.

The Big Below is a game heavily inspired by The Legend of Zelda for the NES, but feeling like it could've been a game for a console that was slightly less powerful than the NES. You have a sword, some arrows and bombs and try to find keys to unlock the necessary doors to reach a level boss, with some enemies, traps and puzzles to be in your way. The difficulty seems set at a reasonable level to not be frustrating or keep you stuck for too long.

This is no masterpiece of a game, but it's fairly competent as a homage to the early 1980s adventure genre. It's biggest pro is that it succeeds in recreating the joy of exploration from those old games, and rewards the player for finding secrets. I can recommend the game at it's price point, but keep your expectations to the point where you're expecting a good (but not great) game from this era of gaming.

After over 150+ hours played on a a version on a different platform and doing 99% of achievements in the 2.0 build, I comfortably put this game in the top 3 of roguelike deck/dice builders. Very fun turn-based gameplay, a huge amount of game modes, unlocks, achievements, character classes and items that provide a lot of chances to create builds and synergies that feel very rewarding. And the difficulty scales up to ridiculous levels for those that crave that.

The only downsides are the menu system etc, which frankly feels decades out of date. But it's only a very minor annoyance in what is otherwise an instant classic in the genre.

Like many others have said, the game is clearly in early development and doesn't have the replayability that is expected for a game of this type. Right now I'd estimate that there's about 1-2 hours of content for most players.

With that being said, the gameplay loop in this game is very good and well worth checking out if you enjoy the genre. It has hit a good mix of familiar mechanics that roguelite players will recognize immediately, while also having a good amount of it's own twist that makes it interesting to delve into. The most important ground work is clearly present for a great game, and with continued development it seems very likely to become a very easy recommendation for fans of roguelites.

The game is in an inbetween "worth picking up" and "wishlist and wait for future updates". For me it was worth it for the price so I'll recommend it, but with a big caveat for now.

In the "roguelite" genre with card (or in this case card-like) mechanics, there's been a lot of inferior copies of the influence they copy. The bright spots, in my opinion, are the games that take the genre in interesting new directions rather than simply copying what already exists with a new coat of paint.

Luck be a Landlord definitively takes this genre in a new direction, where decisions weren't automatically being made based on what I learned in previous games. After failing miserably some runs I had to sit down and theorize a bit about which approaches I wanted to test out that could work. That is what I want from a new game in this genre, and this game delivers on that.

With that being said, I do think this game has limited replayability as it currently sits on Early Access release. To me it seems more like a 10 hours or less kind of game, which is perfectly fine for the price point. The hours that I've put into it so far have been quite enjoyable, which means I comfortably can recommend it.

Children of Morta is a beautiful pixel art action RPG in the vein of Diablo and Path of Exile. However it's distinctly different in that it's more focused on telling a compelling story than creating a gameplay loop that keeps you entertained for hundreds or thousands of hours. The gameplay is on the more simplistic side for this genre, but is satisfying enough for the length of the game The character progression is a little too slow for my taste, but it does give just enough additions to the gameplay to keep you going. It had me engaged for the 20-25 hours it took me to complete the game, but wont compell me to come back for a second playthrough in it's current state. That's fine with me, though, as I feel like I easily got my money's worth and had a very good experience overall.

As for negatives I found the difficulty to be good for the first half of the game,but became a little frustrating in the second half as some characters had a bit too easy of a time while others were frustrating to play. I'm generally a fan of very difficult games, but Children of Morta's gameplay isn't deep or engaging enough to make it enjoyable to replay the same level over and over beyond a few attempts. I was also slightly disappointed by the ending of the story, but that was mostly because the story up until then is great. I wouldn't say the ending was bad, just wasn't quite up to the standard the game sets leading up to it.

All in all this is an easy recommendation for anyone that doesn't expect hundreds of hours of satisfying gameplay from a game at this price range. It's a game for those that can appreciate that a game tells a good story in a compelling way, while having serviceable gameplay for this genre.

This is an amazing game from start to finish. The controls are perfect, the game allows you (and sets you up) to feel like a complete badass regularly with it's well executed array of tried and true 2D platforming mechanics, that are fed to you at just the right pace to not overwhelm you. The art style may not push the bar of pixelart, but it's got that charm from the old 8bit and 16bit era games for sure. The music is the highlight of the presentation for me, catchy chiptunes that fit the game perfectly and a lot of work clearly went into making the music fit the game's design (that becomes more apparent later on in the game). The story is not mindblowing, but it's well thought out and more interesting than you might expect from this kind of game. There's a nice amount of humor and flavor that you can mostly skip out if you just want to get back to kicking ass. The game is reasonably challenging, but not to the point where I think most gamers should be worried about it being frustratingly so.

As for negatives, the biggest issue with the game (as someone who played with a keyboard and mouse), is that the button controls are not explained well enough. It's not a big deal if you are willing to spend a few minutes experimenting, but for example I ended up alt-tabing to get to the menu screen, which is a little annoying. Other than that there's not much to say. If you end up wanting to get all the secrets of the game (which I did because I enjoyed the game so much), then in the last third of the game there was a bit too much backtracking for my taste, at least if you don't want to use a walkthrough that will set up the path for you. The game needed a few more fast travel options for that part of the game in my opinion. A few places I also think the game needed to be a little bit more visually clear about when you can drop down through a hole to a new screen instead of dying, but this is really just nitpicking as it's not like there is no indication at all. Maybe some of the boss battles could be a little more challenging, but overall the game's difficulty is well done in my eyes so it's again a really tiny issue.

All in all this is easily one of the best 2D combat platformers of recent years, a must-play for anyone that has any kind of interest in this type of genre. Easily worth the full asking price and more.

Ruin of the Reckless is a good game, no question about it in my opinion. The game has satisfying combat that blends a mix of melee fighting and spellcasting with (if you prefer) movement abilities that gives you a very good amount of control and opportunity to take on enemies. In addition there are "orbs" floating around each level that you can use to upgrade your character as you level up, that have a good amount of variety ranging from pets, new attacks or passive upgrades. The way you play the first couple of hours will most likely not look the same after 10 hours, both in speed and efficiency. Graphics are serviceable, but nothing special, which I assume is to avoid the game being too cluttered. The game succeeds for the most part in that aspect, but it's just barely and there are at least a few moments where it becomes too much with swarms of enemies around you.

However where the game succeeds the most in my opinion is the music. It has one of the best chip tune soundtracks I've heard in years to the point where I decided to buy the soundtrack after about 5 minutes of gameplay. If you are a fan of that kind of music I would certainly recommend listening to a few tunes, because personally I will probably listen to the music long after I stop playing the game.

When it comes to replayability, something most people expect a lot from with roguelites, I think many people could be surprised in a negative sense. Technically this game goes into the same genre as Binding of Isaac and Enter the Gungeon, but it's different enough that you could be left surprised if your expectations are to get exactly the same as those games in a different packaging. The game has procedural generated levels, but if you expect hundreds of items and weapons that completely change the experience of each run then think again. The game has enough of these items that you can change up the way you play in multiple ways, but they are too few to take away your choices in almost every run. For example if you prefer weapon X and spellbook Y, then in the vast majority of runs you will find them to make your favorite build. In other words, if what you are looking for is an instant classic of a game that will provide you with hundreds of hours of gameplay, then you very well may be disappointed.

However I still think you should consider giving Ruin of the Reckless a chance, because while it's not going to be able to compete with (in my opinion) indie classics like Isaac or Gungeon, there is a good game here that will keep you entertained for a good amount of hours if you like challenging games, and also has a very interesting system that lets you adjust the difficulty and change up the gameplay in a much more comprehensive way than the other games. You acquire items while playing or talking to NPCs in the hub world at times that are called "cards". These cards can be added before you start a run in the hub world that drastically changes the game. You use this system to change "classes" (which basically only means starting gear), but can make enemies stronger/easier, make more items drop, change the ratio of traps compared to enemies and much more. Even if you use all the cards you find that make the game easier (something I recommend in the start), it's still very challenging and will most likely kick your ass run after run for a while. I'm almost 10 hours in and still haven't beaten the game on as easy as possible modifiers even if I'm getting close. If you play on medium or harder modifiers then I imagine you will have a massive challenge on your hands.

In conclusion this game is worth the price in my opinion as I expect that I will get about 20 to 40 hours of gameplay from it. If you enjoy the challenging aspects of roguelites then I think this game will more than satisfy you. If you don't think you could enjoy a game like this without an almost infinte amount of wacky combinations of items and weapons for more than a few hours then probably wait for a sale.

PS! I have some framedrops at times in this game that are far from gamebreaking, but can be a bit annoying. These are typically when using devastating spells that kill a ton of enemies or in some later levels where there is a lot of enemies on the screen. The developer has acknowledged this and said they are working on an optimization patch. Personally I don't think it's bad enough to avoid purchase, but for those that have low tollerance for the occasional framedrop should probably wait until further patching.