I feel like at some point rogue-likes begin to make sense only as sandboxes of many interacting and cooperating systems that play out completely differently every time pseudo-random generator arranges the same pieces in a different order. Otherwise you just get an unfocused shallow game that will always lose to fidelity of human craft for single player or invention of a human opponent for multiplayer. It will be a good cerebral distraction at best.
City of Brass is commendable for attempting this kind of design, employing the sensibilities you can find in immersive sims. It's got some good ideas too in the form of a multifuntional whip that serves as your hands-off interaction tool setting little environmental dominos in motion by activating traps, pulling objects and foes towards you, knocking enemies off and even serving as mobility option by becoming a context sensitive grappling hook. Sadly it's a bit too shallow and the most satisfying thing you can do is pushing enemies into traps or blow explosive barrels around them; these environments simply have nothing on Noita or Spelunky where a little push can set an entire train of chain reactions in motion. Another thing I found in conflict with its design is health system: you don't get many opportunities to refill hearts thus you HAVE to go about it safe making sanitized non-experimental playstyle the preffered way to play the game that in theory should encourage player's expression and knowledge.
Overall I fould City of Brass to be another rogue-like that could work better as hand-crafted linear experience where all the interesting mechanics and interactions could be refined and utilized for actually interesting gameplay situations. Still, it was 90% off and I got a few hours of joy that well realized arabian nights setting brings, and experienced an interesting game design experiment, albeit not a very successful one.
City of Brass is commendable for attempting this kind of design, employing the sensibilities you can find in immersive sims. It's got some good ideas too in the form of a multifuntional whip that serves as your hands-off interaction tool setting little environmental dominos in motion by activating traps, pulling objects and foes towards you, knocking enemies off and even serving as mobility option by becoming a context sensitive grappling hook. Sadly it's a bit too shallow and the most satisfying thing you can do is pushing enemies into traps or blow explosive barrels around them; these environments simply have nothing on Noita or Spelunky where a little push can set an entire train of chain reactions in motion. Another thing I found in conflict with its design is health system: you don't get many opportunities to refill hearts thus you HAVE to go about it safe making sanitized non-experimental playstyle the preffered way to play the game that in theory should encourage player's expression and knowledge.
Overall I fould City of Brass to be another rogue-like that could work better as hand-crafted linear experience where all the interesting mechanics and interactions could be refined and utilized for actually interesting gameplay situations. Still, it was 90% off and I got a few hours of joy that well realized arabian nights setting brings, and experienced an interesting game design experiment, albeit not a very successful one.