itch.io

Is there a way to buy the itch.io version? There is no button anywhere on this page to buy or download the game - likewise on the page for the demo.

I can always buy the game on Steam, no worries about that, but I wanted to try to get it from itch.io instead.

You are saying that you expected an authentic traditional roguelike experience from a developer who, by your own account doesn't even know what a roguelike is. What seems to have happened here is that the developer did not like what they were making, so they made something else instead.  You seem to be suggesting that the reason this happened is that language is insufficiently prescriptivist, and not that the developer just saw something they liked better and changed their mind.

He did have a general idea of what could be construed as a Roguelike because the game he was creating at the time ticked most of the boxes for what a Roguelike should be like. The issue was that his game was directionless, he added features, then removed them, then added other features that did not really fit the game... The best way I can put it is that he designed it the same way I designed my first game ever and that game is not online, I am not proud of it. 

And, I am certain it was caused by a term that was not prescriptive enough because ideas, opinions and ways of working are socially constructed and inspired. The person who made Pokemon created his game based on his childhood. Chain chomps from Super Mario Bros were born from a childhood trauma. When you find two artists online with a similar artstyle that is because one was inspired by the other. Inherently, everything you do, think and believe in were influenced by other people who, likewise, had their opinions influenced by other people or events.

Another point I would like to add is that if he had changed his mind he would have noted it directly in the video. If I made something I did not like no matter what I would tell people "I do not like making games of this genre, I will try to build something else that is more of my style", but in the video he still calls his finished product a Roguelike. So, the original idea was to make a Roguelike, his final idea was still to make a Roguelike, he did not have a change of mind in this regard. The only change of mind, maybe, was that he dropped the puzzle aspect of his game which is something he mentioned early in the video, but something that he did not follow through.

I don't see why that would be the case.  Not all dungeon crawlers are roguelikes, not even close; and roguelites are probably almost as apt to be labeled dungeon crawlers as roguelikes are, given that dungeon crawling is typically considered a theme, not a genre. I decided to try this out for myself.  Both The Binding of Isaac and Slay the Spire, which you keep bringing up as undesirable, are tagged "dungeon crawler" on Steam; in fact, when I browse the dungeon crawler tag on Steam, both of those games are prominently displayed in the banner at the top of the page.  Glancing over the actual recommendations, I see a handful of traditional roguelikes, as is expected, but I mostly see other genres.  If I were actually looking for roguelikes in this list, I would probably be disappointed.  The roguelike list is, as you say, a mix of roguelikes and roguelites, but it looks more promising than the dungeon crawlers

I hardly use the tags directly when searching for games on Steam, I use the search bar which leads me to games tagged "Dungeon-Crawler" or "Roguelike", similarly to how any other social media site works. I should have been less vague when describing my issue, sorry. I found 4 Roguelikes that I would have otherwise not found, using "Dungeon Crawler" as a search word, but admittedly it is not that much better I have to dig deep just to find what I want with either keyword. I still believe that Dungeon-Crawler was marginally better, however, I don't know how much tags differ from the search bar, but I will try to use them more often if that means I have a higher chance to find what I want.

For the record, Slay The Spire is not really undesirable. I am somewhat intrigued by the game itself, but it is annoying to see it show up whenever I am searching for something else.

By the way, I know of folks who would take umbrage at grouping traditional roguelikes in with dungeon crawlers.  To them, dungeon crawler is a term with a very specific, long-established meaning (which does not include Rogue) that has been diluted into uselessness, making it difficult to find the true dungeon crawlers amongst all the mislabeled pretenders.

Why would they? Didn't you say it was a theme, not a genre? A game that is not a Roguelike that I consider (To an extent) a Dungeon-Crawler is Zelda since you do exactly that, you crawl through dungeons, find the chests, find the keys and open doors, and I say 'to an extent' because that is only applicable to the dungeon themselves. Zelda has always been an action RPG/adventure game at heart, therefore, I would not call it a Dungeon-Crawler, I would call it an adventure game to remain as accurate as possible.

I am actually curious now, what do these people consider a game to be a dungeon-crawler? Perhaps it is something I'd like to play too.

"Some of those games are even using top-down view instead of platformer in fact. But that's my opinion and I have no right to deny those developers."

That is not just your opinion, this is what a metroidvania should play like, but as the person below you mentioned, some developers will incorrectly label their game on purpose because it attracts attention to their game, but not always it could also be an accident or a misunderstanding of the genre.

You should not necessarily dismiss the game or the developer because of a mistake, but if the mistake is flagrant then I think many will agree with you and ask the developer to rectify this issue. At least the metroidvania genre is pretty well defined among players, so that should not be too big of an issue to address.

You are not wrong, but that isn't nearly as cut and dry as this. Language is socially constructed, that is true, but that is not necessarily what I think really makes this misconception this particularly egregious, but rather what makes it particularly egregious is multi-faceted.

Firstly,  there was this video on YouTube titled "How NOT to make an indie game" which goes over an indie dev's journey into programming his own Roguelike in Unity. There is a point in the video where the developer says "My game is a mess, I have to start over" which is fair seeing that the game really had no direction, and I do not think the developer himself knew what he was doing. So, his solution was to get inspiration from other games on Steam, specifically "Roguelikes" and because of that, instead of a Roguelike, the developer made what I would best describe as a top-down arena-shooter. In the original beta tech demo for his game, his game might have been messy, but it was much closer to be a Roguelike with the grid-based movement and effect tiles (trap tiles) and the fact that we lost an authentic Roguelike experience for yet another clone of The Binding Of Isaac made me very mad that day.

In a nutshell, the developer was developing a Roguelike, but because it did not pan out the way he intended to, he got inspired by games he found on Steam to make another quote-on-quote "Roguelike", wrongfully thinking he was still developing a Roguelike and that misconception came from a spread-out misinformation that still gets perpetuated to this day.

Secondly, this asinine problem makes it harder for me (and other people like me) to find games that I like, thankfully the Dungeon-Crawler tag still works and that is the only way I can still find Roguelikes on gaming sites such as Steam, Itch and Gamejolt. Otherwise, I come across clones of Slay The Spire and clones of The Binding Of Isaac, the latter of which I have never been into anyway because, other than The Legend Of Zelda, action RPGs are really not my favorite genre.

Nevertheless, while language is subjective, it needs to serve its purpose. I can not imagine how a conversation between a fan of Rogue and a fan of Isaac would go like when the term that even link these 2 games together have different definitions, the other of which is wrong and so general that half of games ever released could be interpreted as "Roguelike" just by having the 2 features from Rogue. To add onto that, I am positive that some arcade games had a permadeath mechanic, and in addition to that possibly randomly generated levels too, this is beyond silly.

I wanted to open this discussion thread because of a Steam comment. In a nutshell, the person was calling a bunch of people dumb (including me) for suggesting to nerf a weapon that is a bit too strong (You be the judge of that, that is not really the point) and this individual was angry at the fact that the game was a quote-on-quote "Roguelike" and that it was dumb to nerf items in a game dependent on RNG. That comment was seething of "The game's hard, plz make it no harder", anyway that part did not piss me off because I had my dose of toxic people online, what really made me fuming was that he called the game a "Roguelike" and I had to mentally restrain myself just to not cause a scene because this nonsense has been going on for so long this is driving me crazy.

Further noting that I do not know whether naming the game and linking to the conversation would break Itch.io's community rules against advertising. Therefore, I decided not to link the conversation since I am not too active here and am unaware whether that could be breaking the rules. If that is not against the guidelines I am perfectly willing to link the conversation/game.

Regardless, I decided to comment on here and not Steam for several reasons: First off, the person who made that game first published it there; Secondly, this is an issue specifically affecting the indie game scene. Therefore, Itch.io, which grew wildly in popularity for indie game developers, was a much better place to discuss it than Steam; Thirdly, I think Steam's community forums are less active than those of Itch.io, but that could be a misconception on my part.

This nonsense has been getting on my nerves for as long as I cared about the genre and I know I am not alone in this. I find solace in knowing that there are plenty of fans of Roguelikes (Some of which grew up playing Rogue) that have likewise been annoyed at this disinformation. I first got introduced to the Roguelike genre through Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. A story-focused Pokemon game Roguelite (Missing permadeath, but does everything else like Rogue). While I have not grown up with Rogue, I still grew up with a Roguelite I did enjoy a ton as a kid and this is sad to me that other than Chunsoft, there are no gaming company interested in making these, including both AAA and indie.

And I should note that I am not against experimentation, Crypt of the Necrodancer is a fantastic game and is very faithful to Rogue, both concerning its gameplay and dungeon crawling. On the other end of the spectrum, we have got the most blatant bastardization of the genre via Slayerlikes. A Slayerlike is a game inspired by Slay the Spire, a permadeath, linear, choose-your-path, strategy, deckbuilding RPG. Slay the Spire itself claims to be "Roguelike", in fact, I saw an interview with the developers on YouTube, which I will paraphrase, who have stated they wanted to combine the Rogue genre with the Deckbuilding genre. They did an awful job at it.

So, how does that connect to my initial issue? The game I am talking about also happens to be a Slayerlike with the gimmick of an inventory management system inspired by Resident Evil. I will say this much, this game does have dungeon-crawling elements that did not exist in Slay the Spire, so I did not think much about it, I just tolerated that misconception and I do think the game itself is really good, almost addicting. So at the time, I thought to myself "Whatever who cares".

A lie travels far, unfortunately. It seems that every game nowadays is thought of as a "Roguelike", all it takes is for that game to have randomized elements and a permadeath mechanic and ta-daa, we got you the next Roguelike! If we go by that logic then Terraria is a Roguelike, Minecraft is a Roguelike, Diablo is a Roguelike, Don't Starve is a Roguelike, this is just silly.

What is more baffling, in my opinion, is that Cuphead was labeled incorrectly too, by gaming journalists who called it a Soulslike. How comes everyone thinks everything is a damn Roguelike nowadays, but gamers have no patience for a different breed of idiots who compare games like Cuphead to Dark Souls?

/End of the rant

Returning player here, I  do not know whether that was said already or not, but I think walking speed, flight and jump need to be tweaked a bit. Maxed out flight is faster than Signy's wheelie. Jump, I am not sure why it exists since there is flight, but if the jump was consequent it would probably be a lot of fun just to propel my character around and it could realistically be a pseudo-dodging mechanic. Walking speed is very sluggish, even at max.

I really love the new biomes and the way they make the game feel more desolate and alien. I don't know which update introduced them, but they're a great addition. No more of that drab mossy cobblestone floor. :D

Correct, but the most reliable way to give the player rage is via the forge. In fact, passing by the forge twice will make that every hit the player makes gives him +2 rage, and if he really is that lucky he can increase this number again to +3 and then +4. The forge upgrades are almost a must-have for endless and the fact that only weapons and shields can receive them is why this is not a good build in the long run.

You can attempt a run with a ring of rage, but you will need mana and a way to recover it consistently. The most common book type item has a rarity of uncommon (with the Necronomicon being Legendary and the best book to pick) and the most common item that gives you mana automatically at the start of each turn is the robe which has a rarity of rare, but because it is an armor type, it cannot be used if the player is holding a Berserker's ring, so the only item in the entire game that gives the player mana automatically in this specific set-up is the frog totem, but because it is a relic you can only have one of them.

You may also consider getting a cap (+1 damage to wands), and the magic necklace that adds +4 mana whenever you kill an enemy with a wand, but it is all really cumbersome, speaking from personal experience.

The electric wand should not be there. I see that you were trying to start a magic build, but without any book or the robe, that wand only exists to take up space. The staff, however, is fine. You could only wield it 3 times per battle, but at least it hits every enemy and deals 11 points of damage.

Using it once and then hitting the bees with the club would kill the Queen's summons immediately and thus you would have had an easier time dealing with the boss.

Your post explains why it is nearly impossible to combine these 2 energy rings for those exact reasons: 

1. Other than the bricks and broken ring all of the items you have mentioned have an uncommon, rare or legendary rarity including the energy rings themselves and regardless this is not a viable strategy in the long run due to endless' scaling.
2. The scaling issue is particularly true for the Teddy sword because the Teddy sword cannot be upgraded at any forge and ignore useful items like the gems since it is not treated as a weapon by the game, but I think you are aware of that already.
3. Out of the entirety of your comment I think the brass knuckles strategy could eventually be the most fruitful if paired with multiple "wolverine gloves" to quickly kill all the enemies simultaneously and much more quickly. 

Ideally you would want the broken ring too, but still the issue of mana management could make it more of a shore to use against enemies that deal 20 damage per turn, or enemies like the fire geckos or the repxecutiors which will break down your defenses making it pointless. Though, I do recommend the candle and the My First Wand coupled with a Necronomicon for this build to alleviate the issues posed by those enemies if anyone will ever be attempting a run using this build.

From what I do know the dev-team planned to add a town you can upgrade in a similar vein to Rogue Legacy in the Steam release. We do not know yet what purpose it will have, however.

The coral and the spiked scale are much better than the helmet and the roses, and they are both compatible with the shield.

The coral doubles the spikes of the shield each time it is used. The scale esclusively adds +1 spike each time the shield is used.

Damage to self from items that increase the weapon's damage ouput is intentional. The same thing occurs for the Berrserker's club.

Try this again with the addition of the Fox Rapier in your inventory. 

Hercule Pavise is broken with the Fox Rapier and the Shield Spirit.

OOH boy that was a lucky run though.

I was on my way to best my personal best which was 25 floors, (as a matter of fact, I am absolutely certain this build could have carried me all the way to floor 45 at least) but because it was past mid-night where I lived I kind of dozed off and made very reckless stupid mistakes after stupid mistakes.

My first mistake was to discard the My First Wand because I dealt so much damage to enemies that healing became irrelevant.

My second mistake was to discard my legendary energy wand due to lack of space which was a carry early on.

My third mistake was not to pick the candle, I took the knives instead.

Because of my third mistake, when I had encountered the Blademaster, I triggered his spikes dozens of time because of all my weapons and my cleavers (In the screenshot, I lost 3 of them due to curses), so that alone made me take in damage half my 90 health points, but because I was in endless the enemy dealt way more damage on top of that.

Because of my second mistake, I got overwhelmed by cursed enemies by not being able to kill them quickly enough. Those extra energies would have helped me a ton to deter off enemies from casting their curses.

Because of my first mistake, I could not recover any of the health I lost which could have carried me for a few floors.

Please, if anyone out there gets as lucky as I did in my run I want you to try to go as far as possible with a similar build to mine's. I want to see how truly overpowered this build was.

The issue with the vampiric axe + peridot/poison whetstone still has not been fixed. :/

Nice build for a first time player.

I would recommend a halberd over the machettes. It takes an extra space, but unlike the machettes it does not have reduced effects (Or as the game call it, a multiplier of 0.5x), therefore, you can take full advantage of your ring of doom and your spellbook.

Pro tip: If you play the current update, please avoid the Enchanted Swamp, go to the Deep Caves instead.

I am aware that the Salamenders needed a change because they were very simple and could be exploited due to lack of any action other than bluntly attacking, but the fact that they got the same treatment as the red slime (Which is already a threat despite having only 36 health) is horrible.

Every turn Salamenders will deal about 15 points in damage and give Purse a curse. Yes, it happens every single turn, and it is not just a mildly annoying curse either, it is one of two curses, either the spikes curse or "add 3 poison per turn" curse, the latter appears to occur more frequently than the former and the fact these 100 health monsters can appear in packs of two worsen the matter.

Even the pre-nerf Fire Geckos (Added poison in stead of burn) and the Olms were not nearly as difficult to defeat. I somehow survived two battles back-to-back with these Salamenders from the skin of my teeths, but still succumbed during my third consecutive encounter. I went from 55 health points all the way down to 0 and it is in spite of having healing and a potted aloe to counter the poison too!

Yeah, the 10 damages justify using it. The anchor is not an issue since I usually keep all my items in the same spot, maybe that changed with this update because I have yet to try it out. 

The new character is cute. A porcupine I think?

The graphical overhaul is pretty good too!

That aside, I relate with the other 2 comments below, I feel that the nerf on the bow is a tad bit misjudged. The real problem stemmed from the barbells and the mouse wood combined that added an excessive amount of attack power to the arrows.

Edit: You forgot to mention a few changes. For example, machettes are much better with this update. Since Sunday, I was wondering why so many players had machettes in their backpacks.

My weaponless run:

I reached farther into the dungeon than I had originally anticipated, died to a Sable.

It IS a softlock and a bad one at that.

Jaspel has received feedback about it a month earlier and I think he will consider giving this enemy an action to turn tail if there are no supporting enemies, which should prevent the softlock from happening again.

King is tough with cleavers. A stopwatch could have helped defeating him, but I am not completely sure of it.

You give the fly to the shopkeeper and they reduce the price of whatever they are selling.

I found a new bug.

Pro-tip: Do not use the poison whetstone on the vampiric axe because you won't like the result.

I am sure it is a bug because this weird behavior occurs with the mirror shield too.

Basically, the issue with the mirror shield is simple: whenever the player adds a spike effect to it at the forge or with a spiked scale, it overwrites the shield's spike removal effect.

edit: Added a strikethrough to one statement. (The spiked scale acts independently from the shield, I believe)

I am sorry for being a downer, but no.

Definitely not the best since I have found screenshots here where players have managed to reach floor 100 with cleaver builds.

I think this is as far as you're gonna get with the pick.

Although I agree, just be careful in endless. Poison does not scale well because the enemies have way too much health to tank the damage.

3-5 roses, are you crazy?! They are worse in every aspect compared to the spiked helmets! At least try to get good thorns items like the scales or the coral, not roses!

Christ, I feel like you are a total noob rudely talking over veterans on the contents of the game because every single time you comment you say something completely absurd and occasionally inane. Just block me already, you are getting on my nerves.

Like any other event in the game, every single one of them, but he is exceedingly rare.

I have spotted him once as early as floor 2.

This is the worst boss fight in the entire game.

I have to spam the whetstone before attacking because otherwise it would take forever, plus he will not hurt me either because he is not programmed to, and his summons only ever add spikes, they do not do anything other than that.

Besides that, I wanted to make a Keg build, but I was really not lucky on the boss relics, so I dropped it eventually. I had a golden bow and a pig to make me rich, but no matter what I tried I could not find the spice relic which would have made this build pretty broken rather than underwhelming, therefore, they both bit the bullet before the Keg did.

At the very least it came in handy several times within endless whenever I was about to die.

You are the first person to mention that the M key must be pressed once the game starts loads. I thought it had to be pressed in the title screen. Thank you very much, what a complicated system.

The way the chest drops its items is not a bug, it was in the game since the first time I played it. For enemy encounters and the shop it was changed, why it was changed is anyone's guess, but I do empathize with you.

I think Jaspel should make the chests' drops behave the same way as enemy encounters' drops and shops for the sake of consistency.

It is an excuse and a bad one at that. I am decently certain you picked up 6 spiked helmets because you believed that thorns would carry you, which meant afterward that you would not have enough space to put in any other useful item.

The My First Wand build is so easy because you are almost guaranteed to find a mana stone after each battle, I think it is a 50% chance average and the wand itself is a common. Even when I did not need it I came across this item at least once per run.

If you are new to the game I would suggest you to disregard the other suggestion since it requires heavy foresight, luck and preparedness which is difficult to follow through for newer players.

Although I have played the game for over a month, I only ever got a cleaver build running once, an archer build running 8 times (6 out of those 8 times were thanks to Matthew), so my recommendation would be to stack up on armor pieces because enemy spikes and burn become irrelevant anyway with a hefty block.

The archangel armor and the plate armor are both very good, the former gives haste, the latter adds 8 block which is massive! Then, there is a bug that causes the ninja suit to add armor instead of removing it if you are affected by haste which again the archangel armor provides.

Your last concern should be poison because right now you are practically invulnerable.

To counter poison you can use a combo of both a cleansing rag, plus either a vampiric gem or a heartstone gem. Alternatively, if you run a mana-based build a my first wand will always recover all the health you have lost due to poison.

As for damage, I recommend a full-on magic build, it is an easy build to get going for newbies because wands deal extra damage on top of your action turns which you can use to refill on mana thanks to the spellbooks.

Although yes, an archer or cleaver build is objectively superior and will always get you farther in endless, it is difficult to build. Then again, as a long-time player, I struggle to get those builds going because they require lucky drops and foresight. Even when I did get the build running, it would not scale well in endless because I stop findind the items I need. For cleavers, I had like 9 of them queen, king, golden and normal in my inventory, and yet, I could not progress farther because that was as powerful as my character was gonna get by the end of the day.

Ah so suddenly your thorns build that you were so eagerly spamming in the comment section before does not help you out at all so far into the game? What a surprise!

If you want to get past that area you either need to kill everything in one turn which is difficult without a bit of good luck or have both moderate damage output, plus moderate defense output. I would recommend you stack on armor pieces and aim specifically for the archangel armor and the paladin's plate because one adds +2 haste and the other gives you 8 armor which makes a difference since early on enemies can not hurt you at all, but once you arrive at the Magma Core it effectively reduces enemy damage by 1/3.

For Snakes and bats, you will either need a cleansing rag + heartstone gem combo or a My First Wand to counter the poison.

When it comes down to what type of weapon you should use, aim for a bow, a wand, cleavers, shivs or accessories that increase your damage output.

The Ring Of Doom is very potent in that department, and, with the assumption that you have a considerable amount of mana stones, you can dish out over 30 damage per hit easily which should kill anything under 3 turns. Spend money at a shop to buy one if you can.

That is so silly.

Do not add the dumbbells into your inventory if you're gonna run a pick build.

It is one of the worse relics because of things like this.

H A V E  T W O  O F  T H E M  B R O

I was doing so well, but a certain cultist ended my run. This run was starting to get really good too, I got lucky with both the relics and the drops.

Relics are considered as Legendary items in the game's code. 

In previous versions they explicitly stated that they were Legendary, but this was removed to make their distinction from other Legendary items that can be obtained in the dungeon.

Relics should probably not be a tradeable item, I guess...

What about the cultists that add dodge to themselves? Have you thought of that too?

The mask should add +2 dodge to be honest. That would make it worthwhile.