Recent reviews by do not die

TLDR: You can buy it (and even enjoy it, perhaps) if you are starving for first-person real-time based dungeon crawlers.

The words that best describes this game is "dull" and "generic".

A depressingly primitive plot even for a dungeon crawler, designating the player character as a gladiator specially trained for an expedition to a lost city, but dumping him in the first location with no clothes, no weapons, and no skills. Wow, looks like the King or Queen or President or whatever doesn't really need that Life Stone all that much in the first place.

Half of the character's abilities look useless right from the start - you can invest in Intelligence or Constitution at the start to get an increased bonus to health or mana on each level, but after that you will hardly understand why you need to increase these characteristics further.

The skill trees that open at level 5 are also not impressive. You can't "fail" at leveling up your character, this game is too easy for that, but just know that you don't really need anything other than the Warrior branch.

The stamina system is designed solely to make your life difficult, especially if you want to wear heavy armor and weapons, in which case you'll only have enough weight for a couple of keys, a couple of potions, and maybe one torch in your inventory. But you don't want to wear heavy armor, because nothing in this game is capable of doing damage to you. Except spiders, maybe. At first. And stupidly designed traps, the trigger for which is specifically placed so that you don't have time to get out of the way of arrows flying at you when you place a rock on a pressure plate. At first.

In the few hours I played, my health was only spent when I jumped into pits. In Legend of Grimrock, you rarely wanted to fall into pits, but sometimes you could find a few supplies here and there to brighten the bitterness of a painful fall. In this game, however, you have to fall . Many, many times. One of the levels contains about six rooms, which is a 3x3 square of squares with a pit in the middle. Go ahead, jump, solve a small puzzle, teleport upstairs, go to the next room, go ahead, jump - and so on.

Honestly, it's all of these things - easy combat, weird role-playing system, constant overload, boring puzzles, and an aspiring atmosphere make this game just plain boring . It doesn't make you want to play it. I kind of wish I had time to do a refund, but at least I can use this game to learn from its mistakes and figure out how you shouldn't make a dungeon crawlers.

4/10 only for starving dungeon crawlers fans in their late 30s, i dunno.

TLDR: It's a good game that can present ten or twenty hours of decent gameplay. After that... Well.


The game is a solid dungeon crawler inspired by old school games. It can scratch that itch nicely if you like long runs through big, randomly generated dungeons and contentedly repititious gameplay. This is NOT a King's Field-like by any chance due to rogue-like/-lite/-like-like'ness, but I think the source of inspiration is pretty obvious. I got interested in games of this genre after games like Lunacid and Legend of Grimrock , and overall enjoyed it enough to not regret spending the money. Though if the price had been half the size, I would have been much more satisfied. Buy it on sale, and it will be definitely a good investment.


On the plus side, the game has a good number of not-so-obvious mechanics, many of which won't be explained to the player - you'll have to find them on your own. Crafting improvements out of trash, combining spells, using elements of the environment, from throwing barrels at enemies to drinking from muddy puddles.

My favorite is the mushrooms. They heal your XP but put a "Confusion" ailment on you for a short amount of time, inverting game control on you - a great source of healing outside of combat, as the negative effects wear off fairly quickly. They usually heal somewhere in the range of 5 to 20 hit points depending on the size of the mushroom, but... if an enemy is killed right next to the mushroom, the mushroom will grow and its healing (and negative) effect will increase many times over.

Enemies in the game are quite varied, ranging from slow thundering barbarians to jumpy goatmens(?), and while the game eventually starts to just use recolors of enemies already encountered, i think it tries to compensate by varying their behavior. Did a flying head from the sand temple meet you in the woods? Well, now instead of ranged attacks it jumps at you and bites you, and instead of a slowdown spell it will hit you with lightning.

There's enough content in the game that you won't see even a tenth of the variety in a single playthrough. Spells, weapon enchantments, magic rings, abilities that fall out after defeating bosses - all this creates room for customization. Some magic abilities can make your passage much easier, such as Cannibalism, which allows you to eat the corpses of enemies for hit points and mana, or Recycle, which allows you to get items for crafting from broken weapons and armor. Combine it with "Evoke" spell, a spell that summons a random item at your feet, from garbage to armor and weapons, and you can craft very, very often, never getting out of equipment and potions.


On the downside... The game can really often depend on random. Your playthrough can and will be pumped at the very beginning or at random moments simply because your gear broke, but the game doesn't give you chests with new weapons and armor - and fighting enemies with your fists is almost impossible here.

This works in reverse as well, when you get an extremely powerful and useful spell in the starting village, or find a weapon or shield with a broken enchantment.

For example, in one playthrough I got an Enchantment spell very early on that casts, quite obviously, a random useful enchantment on a weapon or shield in your hands. My mace started putting poison on enemies, which didn't help me much because they died faster from my attacks than from poison, but my shield... It gained the ability to suck the health out of my enemies on a successful block, and transfer it to me. So not only was I not taking damage, but I was healed. For the next 70 levels out of 99, it was enough for me to simply repair my shield and keep it in good condition to never have to think about healing again. This made the run easy to the point of boredom. Did i mention it was on Extreme difficulty?

Like some of the other old-school dungeon crawlers, there's a definite imbalance in level ups here. All stats can be useful for all "classes" and play styles, but Agility, as is often the case, is the most useful. It increases movement speed, which helps in exploring levels, dodging traps and enemy attacks. It increases attack speed, which allows you to interrupt enemy attacks and spells more effectively and deal more damage in less time. It increases the speed of spell casting. I quickly found that even when I started the game with the mental attitude of playing a "martial-type" character, I'd still get Agility up to 20-30 points first, simply because it gives me more benefits that a straight Strength boost wouldn't give me.

Overall, as i said, it's a solid game. It can be fun, and it provides plenty of opportunities for speedruns, challenges, and experimentation, but it can sometimes get a little too monotonous.

Upd: Update my review from time to time when i notice some grammar mistaces or logical errors. English in not my native language, sorry.

This was my first "Old School Revival"/King's Field-style game, and first game from Kira and oh boy, it's been quite the journey.
The visual style, game lore, and music are extremely enjoyable and create an ineffable atmosphere.
This game is worth going through slowly and thoughtfully to let it unfold.

Perhaps this game isn't for everyone, there may be questionable aspects here, such as one save point per level and the resulting risk of losing a huge amount of progress when you die, including rare loot that can drop from some enemies.
The lack of even a minimal, maximally obscure minimap doesn't help you navigate the local often almost identical corridors on some levels either.

But it all pays off with the dreamlike atmosphere through which you walk, discovering more and more bizarre locations and creatures, just wanting to know what's around the next corner.

11/10, will replay during the full moon, and will try the author's other games.

With every day that passes, with every new update, this game becomes more and more unfriendly for Killer players who DO NOT want to spend at least 4000 hours of their lives acquiring a lifetime supply of top meta addons and learning all the counterplays for all perks.

A large number of killers simply do not receive any significant buffs for entire years, while survivors receive more and more buffs: first Stamina when removing the hook, now the "anti-camp" system. Survivors are the main paying audience for developers, and it shows.

Don't waste your time, if you are a new player. There are better games out there.