I’ve started to realize that roguelikes scratch a major itch in my brain in a real dangerous way. The satisfaction of seeing yourself progress, feeling yourself improve run after run… The core gameplay loop hits a specific nerve in my body that makes me hyperfixate on the game for hours and hours on end. Meanwhile, Paper Mario holds a special place in my heart. It's my favorite franchise, bar none. The joy, the world, the humor, and the masterful rpg mechanics all bundle together into a package resting perfectly in my heart.

So this game broke me under its knee. I was under its thrall for an alarming number of hours. I only managed to force myself to step back when various due dates began piling up. This is a mod that was tailor made to wreck my brain into pieces so I’m obviously going to be biased going in. But with that in mind, the craft going into this fan game is truly incredible.

Giving Paper Mario 64 a Pit of 100 Trials is a solid gimmick on its own. The Pit in TTYD works mainly because the gameplay is so fun, you WANT to play through 100 levels of challenges. Yet Black Pit goes beyond just that central idea and crafts an entirely new game. It transforms into a well-crafted roguelike that constantly rewards your efforts. Classic Pit mode runs exactly as the original Pit. Every ten floors, you’ll find a badge and unlock a partner. Using coins, you can upgrade Mario and your squad to get more powerful. Go deeper, unlock more badges and partners, get stronger, etc.

But then there’s Roguelike Pit mode. This goes ever harder into the roguelike Paper Mario concept by stripping you down to your bare essentials each run. Partners and badges and upgrades are all randomly generated on the floors, letting you slowly build up your team and discover how far you can go before you run out of items and health. It's furiously addicting but also rewarding. Any coins you gain in the Rogue Pit will be sent to your bank, allowing you to buy upgrades for the main Classic Pit mode.

On top of THAT is the Maze. A randomly generated maze full of traps and poison air, slowly suffocating you as you try to navigate its twisting corridors to find star pieces. Star pieces unlock chests which contain your Health and Flower Power upgrades. It's the only way to upgrade those stats for your main Classic Pit run. It's my least favorite part of the mod, but it's different secrets and upgrade tree opens up another different gameplay style to work from.

And then on top of THAT, is the achievements. Doing different achievements fills up your star points/(exp in Paper Mario proper). In Black Pit, those Star Points can be used to unlock your special moves, which are allowed in both Classic and Rogue Pit. Those special moves make it easier to complete achievements like “Beat the Pit without items” or “Beat the Pit with minimum badges” and so on. Which then gives you more Star Points to get more special moves and so on and so forth.

And then after beating the Classic Pit, a whole NEW Pit opens up, leading up to the game’s final climactic battle. Beating the game then unlocks new Very Hard modes for the other pits. I haven't even touched that yet, but this is a game I'm gonna be spending a lot of time earning 100% completion on.

The whole game builds on itself, over and over, adding new swerves and gimmicks and modes to craft an entirely new, incredible game. I’ve been interested in finally trying out game hacks and mods for a while, but this was so instantly rewarding in so many ways. It completely changed how I think of a series I already adore and helped me find a new way to love it in ways I couldn’t foresee. It made me stop and think harder about how these games are designed and what it takes to build a satisfying system. How later games tried to reinvent the series and just couldn’t match the perfect crunch of the original Paper Mario system. A perfect labor of love, with surprising swerves and delights that only a dedicated fan could have crafted.