Doomed is the next roguelike/lite twinstick shooter by the developer behind Toroom. The structure is a bit different this time. Instead of going through a big map, you are mostly playing in one area. There are waves of enemies to beat this time. The structure is basically finish one wave, select a temporary upgrade that will help you with the current area, finish all the 5 waves, get teleported to the shop where you can buy upgrades/weapons that will help for the entire run, repeat this process 3 more times, fight the boss and now you need to do the entire process again with 2 more bosses. The game has 3 biomes where the environments look different, with other enemies and weapons. A run can typically be completed in around 45 minutes after you know what to do. It took me a couple of failed attempts before reaching that time. The upgrades are mostly stat based and there are two types of weapons: guns and swords. They serve different purposes.

The game is more polished and refined compared to Toroom. This can be said about the graphics, controls and gameplay. The game has a minor story with 2 cutscenes even, you can save your run and continue later when you’re inside the shop. It’s certainly more balanced where a run can be completed in different ways instead of needing something specific. The gameplay can be really fun and engaging, even more than Toroom.

The game has 3 things going against it depending on how much you care about those issues. Let’s get the technical one out of the way. There is a bug when playing in fullscreen. Instead of enlarging the entire screen, the middle is zoomed in with the border cut off. You do not see most of the enemies or the bosses this way unless you play in window mode. In my case it’s a bit more annoying because it doesn’t support 1440p resolution. I get to see my desktop background which is distracting. Secondly, the game gets old quickly with the lack of content. There isn’t enough variety due to playing in one area the entire time, there aren’t enough weapons and the upgrades are stat based. You only play with one character, there are no modifiers in terms of difficulty or having unique events etc. Once you complete the game you’ve seen it all for the most part. Personally, I am more than fine with this. I have too many games to play. I don’t need the content to get artificially extended. This is what the game attempted with the achievements, which brings us to issue number 3! Four of the achievements involve grinding. You need to complete 100 runs to get all of them. As mentioned, the game doesn’t have the content to justify this. The achievements should have went up to 10 or 25 times at most. I dislike when this is done to give the illusion the game is longer than it is. I would have liked the game far more if it didn’t have this.

On one hand I’m impressed by the polish and growth shown from Toroom to Doomed to Hell. It’s a good game that is short lived. This issue is amplified by some of the achievements. It’s worth the sale price of €2 I paid for and it’s worth playing, but I wouldn’t go much higher than that.

We got us another roguelike/lite! Only this one is the twin stick shooter type. There are 3 random generated biomes, multiple characters to unlock, same with difficulties, lots of skills and weapons too. It’s for the most part the usual and actually the type of roguelike I normally dislike. There is absolutely no progression to work towards. Neither permanent nor the chance to find/buy things. All the items and weapons are unlocked from the get go and there are many of them. Unlocking characters is the motivation to keep playing. The characters are mostly locked behind different difficulty modes which I find that to be motivating on paper.

The game can be incredibly addictive. I’ve spent around 36 hours completing the game on easy, normal, hard, fiesta and attempting hardcore. The items and weapons truly change the game and are so fun to experiment with. The characters are also different enough with clear advantages and disadvantages. It looks so cute and it sounds really nice.

But it has some real issues unfortunately. You see, the game is on the difficult side but a lot of it has to do with balancing more than anything. A lot of enemies and bosses can be far easier to deal with if you have certain items/weapons. It’s ridiculous how much of a difference that makes, more than any other roguelike I’ve played. There is nothing you can do to affect the RNG to drop something you really need. Being able to banish or bring some items when starting a run could have helped out tremendously. It doesn’t end here though. As mentioned, the biomes are random generated. That includes the rooms and enemies. Some of the enemies are truly unbalanced, they attack too quickly or have a big reach. This becomes more of a problem when lots of enemies are cramped together in one tiny room, or the exit you come from is shaped in a way where you are going to get hit no matter what you do. But the worst of all is hardcore mode and having 3 achievements locked behind it. They are: unlock Canta, complete a run with Canta and unlock all characters. Hardcore is hard mode only with 90% less health. This means you die with one hit for the most part unless you find a tunic that increases your max health by 20%, this allows you to get hit 3 times. You can increase the odds by finding 20% damage reduction armour, the cursed stone with 30% damage reduction, 20% chance to avoid damage and getting one life when dying. Good luck finding all of this in one run and it will most likely still not be enough. Personally I feel there are 2 better routes the developer could have taken to solve the achievements/hardcore mode problem. Either change the max health reduction from 90% to 50% or unlock Canta in hard instead of hardcore. I find the latter to be the better option because hard is seriously no joke and you don’t unlock anything when completing it. My heart sank when I completed it and I didn’t get anything for the effort. Hardcore should have been kept as an optional mode, not having 3 achievements locked behind it.

The game did obviously do something right for me to spend this much time on it and remain engaged for so long. But it’s a shame how the experience can drastically be improved with a few very minor changes to the game’s balance. I hope the developer will patch the game to make it easier to unlock Canta one day. This game is worth looking into if you like to get punished or don’t mind not being able to get all the achievements since it can easily be completed on easy and normal.

This is a very cool game that has a lot going for it. But it’s totally not polished, especially when you try to get the other endings. It focuses on story and puzzles. There are at least 7 endings depending on the route you take. You have 7 lives where a day is repeated after dying (only in terms of plot). You can try to change your fate by either focusing on the heroes, special powers or items. You have to pick one of those three in 3 main areas, you will then have a fourth area without choices and then a final area where you defeat the boss.

The game oozes charm with its style and dialogues. The game is very colourful with detailed environments and the characters have some funny animations that make the game feel like an enjoyable anime. The dialogues have some very minor typo but they seem to be written by natives. The dialogues are so witty and fun. The gameplay is pretty varied. It has puzzles similar to point and click adventure games, you need to explore to find items to use them somewhere and you have to avoid enemies when they charge at you. There are consumable items to heal yourself in case you get hit.

On to the flaws, they’re mostly related to programming, UI and bugs. So the game has at least 7 endings, you know what to do to get the other endings once you complete the game once. There is a secret room where you can take shortcuts to get the other endings. It feels like the shortcuts are unfinished in terms of development. Some routes don’t work (with softlock at least once), the third main area doesn’t have an extensive selection like the first 2 main areas which forces you to repeat the third area often. The third area has an annoying ice maze which makes this a missed opportunity. On top of this, you have to do the puzzles again every single time. There is no skip option. Same for cutscenes and most dialogues. I don’t know about you but all the things mentioned above are a big deal when a game focuses on different endings, certainly when there are many achievements attached to them. I felt like my time was being wasted too much by repeating the same steps over and over even though I absolutely had a blast with the first ending. The puzzles can be really good and engaging but a few of them are unclear and one felt downright misleading (the code door in the fourth area). The map is a bit confusing, the UI with the items feels a bit clunky etc. I could go on but those are the main flaws.

The game’s heart is in the right place. It’s a great game that’s definitely worth the 90% off sale price I got it for. You might be surprised what you’re getting in terms of content even with the normal price. But the developers need to work on improving user experience and UI. This matters more with a game of this type.