What a strange distillation of a dungeon crawler this is. One health bar, two stats, and a whole mess of keys are your allies, but your only real enemy is your human inability to perfectly run the optimization problem each floor presents you with. Every battle does a known amount of harm and provides you with known rewards and your task is to choose the past that leaves you least harmed in the end.
It's a compelling loop , but it feels almost too much like empty stimulation of the urge to strategize and see numbers go up. When I'm succeeding, it feels fun but in the same way as randomly generating and solving 3-SAT problems might. When I'm failing, it feels like I probably made the wrong microdecision fifty moves ago and it's unclear whether I can ever get back on track.
Maybe the game expands into more depth later on. I'm not even sure if I hope it does: there's a nobility in its minimalism that I admire, even if I don't think I'll be returning to it any time soon.
It's a compelling loop , but it feels almost too much like empty stimulation of the urge to strategize and see numbers go up. When I'm succeeding, it feels fun but in the same way as randomly generating and solving 3-SAT problems might. When I'm failing, it feels like I probably made the wrong microdecision fifty moves ago and it's unclear whether I can ever get back on track.
Maybe the game expands into more depth later on. I'm not even sure if I hope it does: there's a nobility in its minimalism that I admire, even if I don't think I'll be returning to it any time soon.