Hieroglyphika

Hieroglyphika
N/A
Metacritic
63
Steam
47.384
xDR
Our rating is calculated based on the reviews and popularity of the game.
Price
$3.39
Release date
3 February 2016
Developers
Publishers
Steam reviews score
Total
63 (137 votes)

Open the gate to the egyptian underworld! Hieroglyphika is a roguelike game completely without text but with pictograms.

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Hieroglyphika system requirements

Minimum:

  • OS: Windows 7, 8, 10
  • Processor: 1.6 GHz
  • Memory: 1 GB RAM
  • Graphics: 128 MB
  • Storage: 100 MB available space
  • Additional Notes: 16:9 display recommended

Recommended:

Recommended requirements are not yet specified.
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Neat
Neat

I've seen many comments complaining about the slowness of this game, as one of the key complaints.

However, i'm sure the dev has heard that so many times now. I really hope it hasn't burnt him/her out on developing games.

I want to actually appreciate this game for what it can do. I was hunting for that elusive "win hard" achievement over the weekend and by god was it truly brutally difficult.

But I DID it!

And you know what? That sense of satisfaction after quite a bit of "suffering" was TOTALLY worth it, and gave me something other games may lack, a sense of pride of achievement and also enjoyment at being able to master this games mechanics.

I'm a big fan of hard challenges and at first I thought "this game is really unfair". But actually it IS fair. To an extent. There are still moments where luck really screws you over.

But this game plays a little like chess. You have to stop and consider every piece on the board. You have to consider that your next move could be your last, even if you have been destroying everything in your path. Even if you have 99 hp. There are clear chain reactions in your actions.

Every time I got to a new floor, I thought I was on top of the world, but then the game throws a new set of challenges at you with new enemies and increased traps. There were tense moments where I didn't think i'd live, and somehow I held on through thick and thin. To create that in such a punishing way really shows just how well this game creates tension and release. The moment you stepped down to the next floor, its a sense of complete relief and a hyping of yourself up again, I CAN do this.

At first it feels like you're completely out of control. Enemies can reduce your impressive HP down to peanuts in a matter of moments. You could have traps going off in every direction, be frozen for many turns in a row as the chasers hunt your butt down, surrounding you from every direction.

But then you start to realise what dictates the AIs movements, how to manipulate them in the way you want. How to prioritise speed and elemental advantage, how to manipulate the flow of the fight, fast paced rushing for the exit or slow paced holding back to slowly wittle your HP back up or to outmanoeuvre the pieces on the board.

In that sense, the slowness of this game actually suits it well and I commend the developer for sticking to his/her guns. Yes it can feel agonising. But I think that's the point. Agonising is part of the experience. You're supposed to agonise over every detail of the terrain and the game movements. You're supposed to analyse the movements of your enemies closely. You're supposed to see how things play out one after another. Will the AI get their move before the trap kills them? Which monster will move first? All of this is critically important to master hard mode and the later floors. When staring down death, you may only have one move that allows you freedom, and having the knowledge of the way the AI behaves allows you to better decide what that movement may be.

I do wish it was faster at times, but it was not enough to stop me hunting for total completion of this game and enjoying the feeling afterwards. I was enjoying myself, and that's all that matters. It was worth my time.

Whether people agree or disagree, that's fair. All criticism is valid after all. But I hope that some others can agree too that actually this game achieves quite a lot despite its humble presentation and relative obscurity. I think anyone who enjoys strategy and tactics games could find something unique from this game, or at least enough to scratch an itch.

Thanks mhanka !

barfcat
barfcat

This game is on the verge of being good. If you are a person who has a lot of patience, or at least a lot time to sink into a smaller game like this, then it may still be worth picking up.

The reason it's a no for me is that the game has two major characteristics and they are counter to each other.
Characteristic #1: There are no words in the whole game. Technically there is perfect information in the pictograms but it's very much an iterative process to figure out what everything means. Understanding how enemies and the environment work is also a thing that one must learn as they go.

#2: The game is incredibly slow. In most turn based games like this you take your turn and all of the enemies take their turns instantly. In this game you take your turn, then every enemy unit individually takes it's turn, then the environment takes its turn. Granted, there's something to be said about actually seeing what the enemies are doing (it works in CIV games, for example)

BUT

When the game is only learned by doing and the doing is so slow.. it's just not an enjoyable experience to get your sea legs.

In my best run I died instantly from full health and am not sure why. The fact that I don't know, and it would take a lot of time to re-create that scenario makes me not want to play the game anymore.

Longtail
Longtail

It's good!

It is quite good actually. Unlike the other popular rougelikes, you cannot sit idle and farm like crazy in this game. You have an urgency to get to the end of the level before long or bad things happen to you, which I enjoy. I have not played too much at this point but from what I have seen, the weapon/armor sets are exactly the same in every playthrough. This is not a bad thing however, as the game presents you with a lot of items with drastically different effects. And the ability to change items/weapons/armors at will once you get them, creates an amazing utility that doesn't exist anywhere else.

While I believe the game can be further improved with the addition of randomness to the enemy spawn and other small fine tunings, the game at this point is fully fleshed out and complete.

As for the price, I think 9 dollars is more than fair for this game. It offers numerous replayability options and probably over 50 hours of gameplay before being any kind of bored. Which better than anything I can say for the most A+ titles.

Buy it, no brainer.

Necrolexicon
Necrolexicon

Hieroglyphika is a fun, new Egyptian themed, Turn Based, Roguelike with old school sensibilities. With no item descriptions to guide you and no text in the UI, your first couple of runs will just be figuring out what you can and can't do. Your next few runs will be trying to figure out the various pieces of clothing and equipment that you'll find strewn around the pyramid and why those nasty big critters start chasing you for taking to long. Then finally you'll be making the most of what you have learnt to try and push deeper into the underground to inevitably die at the hands of a newly encountered enemy type.
It's this learning process that will either keep you playing for the first 2 hours or put you off of the game. I personally loved it and am now slowly chasing the achievements for each new floor I manage to accomplish.
**the game has had some updates since my initial review adding more enemy types (some quite annoying) that I feel have altered the pace and feel of the game.

Thiine
Thiine

I usually don't like turn based, but this is an excellent game. Buy it.

Startrix
Startrix

Very interesting game. Has roguelike elements such as permadeath. The game may seem to be a bit confusing at first, but you will quickly get the hang of it.

Sheesh
Sheesh

This is a quite clever and enjoyable game that I see as a slow-paced puzzle rogue-like (turn-based, procedural levels, random loot, permadeath).
The premise: you walk from left to right, killing things, avoiding traps and looting other things until you go down the stairs at the far right and the difficulty ramps up.
Everything happens in turns, order is determined by a speed stat that mainly depends on your equipped gear, and traps give a tell before they go off.

The puzzle aspects start to come in to play when you find loot and try to figure out 'what does it do actually?'
All aspects of your gear are visualized as pictograms and while you get all information about its effects, you have to figure out what these pictograms mean in the first place (which isn't that hard if you experiment a bit when you find something new to you).

Examples: a new dress may restrict your movement to the 4 cardinal directions instead of the usual 8, but boost your speed and defence and further increase your speed when you stand in sand tiles instead of reducing it. Headgear may reduce or nullify a certain damage type / effect while making you more vulnerable to another type. With the new weapon you may be unable to attack now and then due to cooldowns, but it extends your reach and hit chance while dealing a damage type this particular enemy is weak against... and so on.

While often things feel at first like flat upgrades to your ability to deal damage or get faster, you will come into situations where you'll have to skip some turns to swap items (each equipment change takes one turn, and spells and such start with cooldowns when freshly equipped) - and that along to changing your own movement or attack patterns give it a surprising amount of depth.
Enemies come with abilities as well and may push you around (beware of holes in the floor after the first few levels), freeze or poison you and generally keep you on your toes since new enemies are introduced every level so far (made it past lvl 5 of 9).

Just to extend on what kinds of things you have to keep in your mind:
- your general stats: life, speed, defence, attack strength and hitchance
- attack pattern of your normal and special attacks, damage type, additional effects when attacking, attack cooldowns
- spell effects, patterns, cooldowns
- your and your enemies resistances and vulnerabilities
- traps, their types and patterns, and with your current speed, will you make it past them in time - or can you even use them against your foes
- your own movement pattern (may need to change your suit to get out of a dead end)
- and also how you deal with +/- health ... uhm... flying things(?); your shield may reverse their effects for example

As for the graphics: Just look at the screenshots and form your own opinion. Npc/trap turns take a few seconds so it's a bit slow going but the important part is that you can always tell what is going on - it could lose its readability if sped up further.
Equipped gear is always represented on your character sprite which is nice, but there are no animations bar some 'swoosh' lines when attacks are dealt.

Also, a codex of some sort would be nice where you could unlock a view (with the same pictograms) of what you are up against, so far it's all about observing and memorizing and quite some guesswork - which isn't bad per se, but e.g. after I've killed the same bugger 20 times it would be nice to take a closer look into his actual stats.

Can't comment on technical stuff, I've experienced no problems like crashes at all. *edit: about half an hour minutes after writing this it crashed for the first time. Well... *edit2: and an update that specifically targets that crash came within one hour. On a sunday.
It's good.

Vinrafel
Vinrafel

First Impression video:
https://youtu.be/etjUJi1M0AE

This is one of those situations were I would prefer something between a thumbsup and a thumbsdown. Hieroglyphica is a really cool idea that has some serious flaws in the gameplay.

Hieroglyphica is a game with no text (except for the title, I guess they needed that one). Everything you do, and everything that you pick up, is described through pictures. The player has to interpret what every new item does and, in combat, hope that they get it right.

The gameplay itself is a rouge-like turn based strategy game. You explore and loot the dungeon while being threatened by traps, monsters, and the demons coming up from behind you (they're the rebel fleet mechanic you can see in FTL. They force you forward). Every turn you get to either move or act. Acting can include attacking, looting a chest, or getting ready to block.

Issues:

Now, the most glaring problem occurs with one particular type of enemy. I've never made it past the third floor, because there is an enemy there that can perpetually stun lock you. You can do nothing but hope that the enemies attacks miss and you'll be allowed to do something. This is frustrating at best, it made me want to throw my computer from the ISS at worst.

Another issue comes in the damage system. You start with 99 health. Even the weakest enemies can easily do 10 damage to you. More powerful enemies (on the second floor, so take "powerful" with a grain of salt) can do a quarter of your health worth of damage in a turn. You're limited actions mean that you either have to accept eating damage to try to run, or your locked into combat.

The map is also absolutely jam packed with traps. This one is not so bad as the previous issues, but I thought it was very annoying. The traps are so plentiful that it feels like none of the map is safe. You can usually get a warning that traps will fire next turn, unless an enemy steps on a pressure plate and sets them all off. This makes combat really hard to pull off, especially against enemies with multiple action. Yep, those are things.

Well, it might sound like I hate this game, but I actually liked it quite a bit. It just has some flaws that prevented me from really loving the game. If you have a hankering for innovative mechanics and incredibly punishing (often unfair) mechanics, then go for it. If not, pass it up, by all means.

Terrarius
Terrarius

great for everyone that enjoy hard games....hoever be warned this game is REALY hard and the smallest mistake will result into your death.....

the rng is fair.it plays still a important role like in any other roguelike but most damage you will take because you made some dump actions like walking into a trap or let you surround by multiple monsters

the game hoever is a little bit slowpaced...you should realy think alot before you do somethink(but hey...that should be the case in any good turnbased game^^).

if you like hard games that require alot thinking....buy this

Knight Paragon
Knight Paragon

Too slow due to each and every enemy on the screen moving in turn before you can take your next action. Cmon! Seriously? I'm not an impatient person, but when you can easily imagine this being better, more convenient to our time, and quite simply a better game with a simple change in the code.... Not playable right now for me.

samdamandias
samdamandias

This is a challengeing rougelike with a really neat gimmick.

I have yet to reach the third level, but this is one of those games where I have to step back and think before every action and I love that. Did get it on sale, because I'm not sure if it's woth $10, but it sure is worth $5.

a b s ( e )¯ nce
a b s ( e )¯ nce

Gorgeous Minimalism. Impatient souls beware Slow turn ticks.

advancedspuds
advancedspuds

This game suffers from a horribly slow enemy turn. You move one tile, then the enemy takes 3-5 seconds per enemy to move. With multiple enemies, it can take what seems like 20-30 seconds of waiting for moving one tile. It's a waste of your time. I'm a traditional roguelike player and have never seen such a poorly implemented AI animation/movement sequence.

The game looks beautiful, has some interesting language mechanics. It's a shame the slow AI turns make it not worth the wait.

REPKAR - れぺか
REPKAR - れぺか

just read the first 2 most rated reviews...... says it all.... i persnally didnt like it like i thought i would, kinda regret buying it :/

Tarrnack
Tarrnack

Pretty unique take on the classic rouge-like genre. There are no words to be found aside from the title screens. Items and abilities descriptions are explained only through hieroglyphics and numbers. Clever combat and interesting gear to find. My biggest gripe is it can take a sec for your turn to come up. There are a bunch of traps and enemies that need to take there turn with no way to increase the speed. Unlike many games of this genre. Other then that definitely worth picking up on sale.

Archerion
Archerion

Definitely worth the money if you like strategic puzzle-games.
The decision to have no text on the screen is both infuriating and interesting at the same time.
The first room is hell when you don't know what the various traps do, but once you start understanding the internal logic, the game makes complete sense.
It's still hard as all hell though.

duruk
duruk

Although most of the negative reviews on this state that the gameflow is rather slow, I had no problem concerning this. The fact that there are nothing written adds depth to the gameplay and makes you feel you're discovering/identifying the items and enemies you encounter. However, once I will figure out all of them I wonder if the game will have the same appeal. I have been playing roguelikes for more than 10 years and yet to complete any of the traditional ones. With Hieroglyphika, on the other hand I have figgured out about 80% of the items/enemies and I have won on normal mode only in my 5th run. So I am not sure if it has the replay value of a traditional rogulike. Some extra content, items and ui improvements would be great. But it is still worth its price, especially when it is in discount.

Wesker++
Wesker++

It's a decent game, but not worth $4.99. If you can, pick up Hieroglyphika when it's on sale. Why? The mechanic of using pictograms in place of text evokes mystery and discovery not very common in modern games. It's neat to pick up equipment and discover the abilities of each item.

Despite this clever mechanic, insanely punishing difficulty and long AI turns will have you pulling out your hair. I consider myself a "hardcore" roguelike player, but I rarely make it past the fourth level. The lack of moving animations is a letdown, but I am more disappointed there isn't more background music in the game. Enemy turns take forever, so you're stuck listening to the same three tracks on repeat.

TL:DR Buy it when it's on sale. There are some fun mechanics, but infuriatingly long turns and insane difficulty. Needs more music.

Spookya
Spookya

Despite its abusive game play, I absolutely adore the style, sound, and originality of this rouge-like. A rouge-like should be difficult but not impenetrable. With its difficulty ramping up to ten at every turn, Hieroglyphika is not a game that allows advancement and chooses instead to just thrash its players. Heiroglyphika is not built to allow a player to adapt and learn.

quietscribe
quietscribe

I like this game a lot, it is challenging and fun, but I have found it disheartening at deeper levels.

It seems like the game is balanced with three things in mind:
1. Player Knowledge
2. Strategy
3. Random chance on loot

With the game being permadeath, and loot drops being random out of a wide selection, it can actually depend a lot on the loot as to how far you get in the game. If you don't have the right armour, or abilities to counteract some enemies, you are at a vast disadvantage no matter how skilled you are. The only knowledge-gain players get for playing better is a mouse-over description of one mob for each level you have completed in the dungeon, and that doesn't really give you as great as advantage as you might think.

Even the strategy is a little problematic, for while it is possible to work your way around mobs, you are basically against an invisible timer before really harder mobs start constantly spawning at the start of the level and coming towards you. It is possible to kill them, but because they keep spawning, you are basically encouraged to just avoid them completely and rush through. These rear-spawning mobs don't ever even seem to drop loot either. A careful person, in another game, might use time to eat away at the different mobs in the dungeon until there was a safe route, but because of this invisible timer of these mobs spawning, that really isn't an option, and so it cuts out that sort of strategy.

Due to these things, I found that I was losing the will to really keep trying with the game. The last 6 plays or so I have got down to level 6, but never past it, and my skill as a player, combined with the random chance of loot means that it doesn't really leave me feeling I will be in any better a chance next play-through. This has left me, while pleased enough with the game, likely to uninstall it because while I enjoy it, I don't like feeling I am just going to be spending hours without any real improvement. There isn't really much I can learn about the mobs further that will improve my chances.

So yeah, while I recommend the game, it isn't going to be for everyone due to the limits the game imposes on players to create the difficulty. Some people will adore it for this difficulty, but others, like myself, will just get frustrated.

Xenomorph
Xenomorph

Game got great potential but it needs lots of update. Game mechanic is unbalanced. Code filled with anomally that makes game unbalanced and hard to play.
Graphics, sound and music are great.

PicardOrion
PicardOrion

This game has some good points

+only Symbols, no Text
+good music and atmosphere
+loot

+Superslow (0,5 seconds to Attack and wait half a minute to look enemy moves) -> IMHO unplayable
+to many Traps (half the map is flooded with gas or ice)

Lord Douglias
Lord Douglias

I get the game...I don't get the the complaints about the slow pace of the game, as though the negitive reviewers had never played a TBS game before? The disconnect may be an element of the rouge-like crowd expecting a fast twist game like Spelulky- a great game but so is Hieroglyphia which has elements of both turn-based strategy and the rouge-like.
Slow down and think rather than react for once- pay attension and observe the monster moves to have a slim chance to learn more of hieroglyphics before your exploror's career is abruptly terminated once more. The game pace moves along just fine. It difficult but but not unconquerable. It is mentally challeging yet refreshing rather than taxing because there is great depth within its simplicity. Artistically speaking Hieroglyika is brilliant, the stylish medium res graphics setting a mysterious and sinister tone.

pollieboy
pollieboy

if you like strategy games and dungeon crawlers, you should try this!
The game has a simple but great art style! the basic mechanics of the game are unique and feel nice.
the items are intresting, but I'd like it if there was a bit more variety in the items, sometimes they are really simular.
the game is hard, and has a lot of random elements to it, if you don't like that, I wouldn't suggest you buy this.
I have 2 big issues with the game:
1- The generation: sometimes the generation of the rooms is a bit weird, I would like it if there was a bit more space. a lot of the times you get stuck between traps and enemies,
2- I feel like a lot of the runs are a bit the same, I'd like some more variety in items and some cool new things to interact with, you can replay this game a lot, but not as much as a game like the binding of isaac, or enter the gungeon.

so: great game! I hope the devs update it a little bit tho

Acidicjew
Acidicjew

Great Roguelike. A unique take while having that familiar feel of other great roguelike notables, like 868-HACK.

Will buy again, and again, when this comes to Android/IOS

Streaming Puppets
Streaming Puppets

Had the normal retail been only $3 I might've been able to recommend but unfortunately
there is no sense of progress in this game, since nothing carries over from play to play, and the content/gameplay is only slightly more advanced than a freebee like Minesweeper.

The game also suffers embarrasingly from 'Little Man Syndrome' where in it tries to overcompensate it's shortcomings by attempting to offer a 'hardcore' challenge. That challenge (however) fails leaving the impression that playtesters (if any) just got a lucky draw during thier randomization. More or less the game relies a lot on luck; how generous the level drawn for you is from the start.

A bit of Casino Slots mixed with an OS complimentary game; neither asking for $12

I'd suggest waiting for Hieroglyphica to turn up in a bundle or a holiday sale for $3 or less.

Your Homeboy Totoro
Your Homeboy Totoro

This game has some of the coolest artwork I have ever seen.

Mrs. Leslie Coleslaw
Mrs. Leslie Coleslaw

Very challenging but rewarding. I found ther lack of detailed instruction frustrating at first but ultimately it adds to the charm of the game.

mrmuk
mrmuk

I can confirm what others said.

The game is turn-based and the turns take quite long with no option to speed things up. The entire game is controlled by mouse. If you like to play with keyboard or gamepad: Nope, not working. The "no text" gimmick is kinda interesting, since you have to figure out yourself what the stats and symbols mean, but the fun is killed quickly when the game pace is extremely slow.

Also, the music is mediocre at best.

Tazoika
Tazoika

Nice little turn based dungeon crawler. The music gets old really fast, but otherwise it's pretty fun. But look out, it's tough!

kawaika
kawaika

There are some mechanics spoilers, and I haven't blacked them out, so if you don't want to see them, don't read any further.

I want to like this game, but it's too slow for the pay off. Being a roguelike game, there are obviously frustrating moments, like getting to level four only to discover that apparently some enemies can blast you against the wall at nearly full health and insta kill you. Well, FTL and Don't Starve have those moments too, but at least they don't seem as slow as this game.

I don't have a problem with turn based games--original XCOM is one of my favorie games, and some of those turns can be quite long. The problem here is, that it just isn't as fun for me. This isn't really objective, as some reviewers don't mind it. What I really find frustrating is that when you loot sarcophagi it can take you a full turn to equip the item, unless it's the first item. For example, if you loot a shield and you didn't have one before, it's automatically equipped. If you already had a shield, you now have to choose to spend a whole turn equipping it. The problem is the turn based system for this game. It's the whole design. It seems to be built around initiative, so you get our speed up and it seems you get more turns, but it still just takes way too long.

I really like all the different equipment and spells you can get: armor, helmets, amulets, defensive/offensive spells, and weapons. Probably my favorite spell is the vampire spell which allows you to take half an enemie's life.

There is a lot of thought put into this game, for sure, and I do enjoy trying to figure out the mechanics myself. Some enemies you kill will turn into white bat-like creatures that you can heal yourself with, or they may heal or kill certain enemies. There are also black bat-like creatures that can heal or harm you and enemies. There are certain conditions for that which you have to figure out. You can knock enemies into walls, each other, and various items and have completely different reactions. It can be quite dangerous figuring out what new spells do, as they can hurt you. There are different kinds of traps: acid/gas, fire, freeze, spikes, etc. and each level is random. There are a lot of different things going on each turn, and you can't stick around too long in the levels as enemies spawn in from the left, and you really don't want to face all of them.

I like a lot of things about this game, but it's just so slow. I may play it again, but I really can't recommend it, because I know a lot of people aren't going to like this aspect.

FeverPyretic
FeverPyretic

This game is fantastic, I was looking for something I could take my time with and this game offers great Rogue-like elements. There is no text to read in the game so lots of the spells and abilities are quite cryptic, which I love, as in many of my favorite Rogue-like games, you learn by doing so to learn the effects of each spell you must cast it. I still need to sink lots of time into this game but am enjoying it so far. My only problem is that the game is not random enough at the begining, sure each playthrough offers a new randomly generated dungeon but the character is always the same, and in a game that has no discernable story I found that bugged me a little bit. I would highly recomend this game to those looking for another Rogue-like experiance.

Drsen57
Drsen57

Although I LOVE the idea of this game, I simply cannot stand how slow turns progress. Once you move, EVERY SINGLE ENEMY moves singularly, and slowly for that matter. This problem is so prevalent that I could not continue playing this game. In these regards, I cannot recommend this game.

Biodredd
Biodredd

This game looked intererting to me so I made the purchase. Was very disappointed after running it for the first time. No tutorial. No manual. Nothing to indicate how the game is played or what any of the stuff on the screen means. There are player guides, but other players should not have to teach me the game. The game should have done that. While I have kind of figured it out. Still not happy that the designers didn't do anything to explain this to the player.

Mabry
Mabry

this game is made for the tablet, it's terrible to play on the PC.

fourismith
fourismith

good, but the play speed can be frustratingly slow at times.

HellSlayer
HellSlayer

Well this game is interesting.
I bought.. refunded.. re-bought again.. struggled over and over.. many ragequits etc..
And then I beat it. This is one of rarest roguelike game in existance that has such high skill cap and made me feel "pride and accomplishment"..
no, there are no lootboxes..

Game is turn based, hard to learn, but once you really get used to it(takes a lot of time because no youtube guides available or real gameplay that doesnt suck.

But the game really shines because its really a lot depends on your skill.
At first I swear it was stupid rng over and over but now its just SKILL and SKILL only*

*except if you pick that shield as first item. Shield that drops - health. Then you need to find another shield asap or die..

BlueNexa
BlueNexa

Really fun and challenging, although I'd appreciate an option to speed up the enemy turn.

Big_Macintosh
Big_Macintosh

- The game has nice graphics, though system requirements are surprisingly high for static sprites in a turn-based game, it's like Binding of Isaac all over again.
- Icons are mostly self-describing, bit it needs some time to figure out the rest. Guess I'll just read the wiki on most difficult ones.
- The turn-based roguelikes are usually faster as others say, but for me it's more of a chance to catch up of what's going on on whole map, I can catch up with all changes without having and unexpected enemy if they were all moving simultaneously. Suits for a slowpoke like me. Could have the "field of view" for enemies though, player should not see the map so far behind so many obstacles, but that could raise the difficulty. Still would like to see a toggle of this feature.

Zaiquiri Daiquiri
Zaiquiri Daiquiri

Really fun game. The artistic choice to exclude text added a level of problem solving and discovery to the turn-based combat and startegy. The music and art were fantastic, as well. Although, I wouldn't recommend this game to anyone looking for a mindless game to pass the time with.

Revolverfrau
Revolverfrau

What? What? What the hell am I doing? Oh - dead again.

Next try.

Every time!

Great!

bobfantastic
bobfantastic

Pros - the art design is lovely; there are a lot of items to discover and usually just enough clues to infer what they do.

Cons - turn speed (as others have mentioned) can be very slow; have encountered same game-breaking bug twice on the same level (seems like it hangs during an enemy turn).

I wanted to like this game; unfortunately there are so many other rogue-likes I could be playing I'm not going to spend any more time on this one, only to hit that bug again. If you don't run into that bug you may enjoy it.

nemogoldfarb01
nemogoldfarb01

A fascinating turn-based dungeon crawler that is a delightful mystery, communicating complex mechanics via a few symbols and observation of environment.

Hachiseiko
Hachiseiko

I wish I could say I like this game. I really do. It's pretty, runs well and has a lot of potential.

But it's frustrating as all hell.

I can get over the overly stylised interface and obtuse item descriptions. It's actually kind of rewarding to figure out what the symbols and descriptions without words mean. You'll do several runs so you'll have plenty of time to get accuainted with the items. It also sounds good and is a truly beautiful game.

The biggest problem I have—which I share with most people complaining in their reviews—is how frustratingly slow it is. This is coupled with the fact that you as the player have one single action. You can move, attack, shield, use a skill or simply wait. Forget moving and attacking on the same turn or anything like that. Meanwhile there are enemies in this game who can move two tiles, position themselves perfectly and then attack you, doing massive damage.

This is further infuriating as the enemies often simply undo what you literally just did. Oh, you grabbed some health? No, this enemy just attacked you for just as much, if not more. Oh, you moved a step forward? No, this trap was just activated by an enemy at the edge of the screen who stepped on a tile and you were pushed back again. Oh, you readied your shield expecting this enemy to step forward and attack? No, he just stood exactly where he is and won't move for several rounds just waiting for you to step into range so he can fucking push you back again.

Meanwhile, in between every single turn, you have to wait for every single enemy on the screen to make their slow moves as well as every single trap to activate and show their slow animations and every single effect on every single tile to animate. There is so much waiting in this game.

The predominant feeling I get in this game is utter powerlessness: a complete lack of proper agency. That is not what you want to feel in a game. In this game I am at the complete mercy of the game in terms of what items I get, what the level layout looks like, what enemies are where and what they do—and like I said, sometimes they decimate you and sometimes they do literally nothing. I feel like I'm playing poker but I have to play the first hand I get. No exchanging cards. Oh, I got a pair of threes? Well, too bad. The game just plucked that third ace straight from the deck and slapped me in the face with a full house.

I want to love this game, I really do. I just wish I didn't have to struggle with my impulse to rage quit every time the game turns my perfect run into instant defeat in one or two turns in a way that's completely out of my hands.

tori.nox
tori.nox

This game is just meh. It`s not addictive, it has no rogue-like replayability. It`s slow and, most of all, boring. You feel no urge of digging into it and playing more. I`ve been wanting to buy it for a year or so, finally got it on the sale and it just didn`t impress me. Even the visual style is somehow unexiting. So I ended up farming cards and deleting it for good.

Can`t recommend.

acmd
acmd

+ engaging combat
+ stylish art

- short
- a bit unbalanced

Merino
Merino

A 3/5 rating as yes it is a bit fun, but frustrating to play.

Sorry, but there needs to be more ways to boost your health than one as there are WAY too many things that decrease it. It is especially annoying that the thing that gives you health has wings and keeps moving about. It makes the game hard (even on the easy mode) to get past level one. I will get as far as the very end, literally the last tile to the stairs, and then die. Assuming I even make it that far. Only once so far have I got to level two, but died instantly.

Although it takes a bit of figuring out, it is fun to see what new skills and armour do. It's just REALLY frustrating the amount of times I died. To me it feels like there's no goal to reach the next level, just survive as long as you can on the current level.
Oh, and it seems monsters can move AND attack you per turn, whereas you can only move OR attack. A bit unfair.

This game is probably good for some people who are experts at this kind of thing, but not for those who just want to play for fun.
I would only recommend this game if there were some other way to gain health other than to risk chasing around the health with wings icon.

weebyte
weebyte

This game is great. Hard as heck, but I keep coming back to it over and over again. I'm still learning about the inticacies of the game and occasionally get a bit further before dying. This is a thinking strategy game where very move and action counts. Sort of like chess.

BATTLEMODE
BATTLEMODE

This is a mad game, old skool gaming values at their best, and the music is absolute FM synthesis heaven!

Pril
Pril

Tried LVL1 3 times on easy difficulty, died horribly in a no fun way. It´s not the fun and challenging hard like Darksouls it´s just stupitly hard.

I love the Idea, that it does not explain stuff, it fits into the theme to find things out,
I love the design,
I love the sounds.
It´s just sad that it´s an impossibly stupid hard game, with a ton of random deaths : (

Loner
Loner

I really like this game and had fun playing it (and would have) but......
there are game-breaking bugs in it that will not let you continue playing
and the developer is aware of them but doesn´t do something to fix this.
Another weakpoint is that there are no level saves after you beat one Level,
you must start from the beginning every time.

demonhellfish
demonhellfish

Stylish, rather pretty. Lovely ambient music. Turn-based, which is good because the combat is almost puzzle-like. Still hard.

Telecrab
Telecrab

tl;dr
Great aesthetics, but horrible gameplay. This game could be really awesome if the author spent more time working on the gameplay. Too bad he didn't. If you're a game developer yourself please don't repeat the mistakes explained below.

Each turn you have to spend about 15 second watching every game event one by one. The gameplay is not RL at all. Yes it's permadeth, but it's so limited that it's more fitting to a board game. Even card games allow more tactical freedom than this one. Every level you are given barely enough turns to finish before powerful monsters enter the dungeon and start chasing you. So you basically have to plan the optimal route and avoid deviating from it. And that's where the RNG kills the last remains of "fun": either monsters will block you wasting your precious turns or you just won't get enough equipment to kill even the last enemy on the level 1. You can avoid him, but it's the main enemy type of level 2, haha. Also there is no other goal than just reaching the stairs and going to the next level. Maybe there is boss or puzzle at the end, but good luck keeping yourself interested long enough.

X7373Z
X7373Z

This game is incredibly terrible.
The controls are absolutely ridiculous. Nothing is at all clear as to what it's benefits are... or aren't.
Enemies aren't clear as to what they do until its too late.
Any game that requires you to die again and again just to understand it is not worth your, or my, time.

The game plays like a tabletop RPG but where everyone and everything gets a turn, and I mean everything, each and every trap getting a move-act in sequence. This doesn't make things fun it's just annoying and makes the game feel like a stuttering video in game format. Like a lagging flash game pre-2004 when the processor can't handle all those large sprites.

I mean, I do like the visual aesthetic in the "ancient egypt" feel. But that's about the only positive thing I can say.

trizgo
trizgo

👌😄👍
↘️
♨️🐵🔥🔥🔥 💥😵

serialzero
serialzero

Thought I would swing back around and make a contribution to the thumbs-up jar for this one.
First, the graphics are wonderfully stylized, and I thought the use of pictograms explaining how everything works was really clever given the theme. Sure, it may still take some trial and error to fully understand what things do, but that can happen even in games where you have text descriptions.
Music is good, sounds are great, and I also appreciate that any gear you equip shows up on your character model.
One of the most common complaints is the slow pace, but I find myself leaning more towards agreeing with the developer on this one. If enemies moved too quickly, you could miss quite a bit of what's going on. You need to be able to pay attention to how many tiles an enemy can travel so that you can learn their patterns, which panels they're stepping on, which traps they're triggering, the tiles the traps are affecting, and so on.
Given that the maps aren't that large, and once you advance so far, you then have guards chasing you from behind, it essentially forces you to pay close attention to your surroundings and carefully work out how you plan on making it to the floor exit. Whether or not you're going to skip grabbing some goodies because the guards are too close for comfort, or if you're going to risk walking into a trap zone because the consequences of staying put are much worse, etc.
This isn't an easy game, but I wouldn't necessarily say it's harder than any other rogue-like, just difficult in its own unique way, if that makes any sense.

MrProgressor
MrProgressor

Cute trad roguelike with bitesize runs. Uses symbols to explain what the items/spells do. In many games would be a flaw (just tell me what XYZ does!), but in this game is part of the charm. You're an adventurer digging up an ancient's culture's artefacts , after all. (You'll get them soon enough, tho ;-)). You see a lot of complaining about slow enemy turns. While there is some validity to this, I suspect those reviews were before an update that sped things up. Especially in the beginning the speed is fine. You'll be busy enough trying to figure out what's going on. Another small minus is that the game is mouse only.