In the case of being defined by its own characteristics, it can be said that the Roguelike game genre is equivalent to the challenge. Players must in turn face countless impossible missions, where the probability of victory is completely proportional to the number of times they are defeated.

It can be said that the Curse of the Dead Gods game released by Passtech Games has really been very successful in expressing the pure essence of a Roguelike game. From the difficulty, upgrades to the mechanics in the game are designed carefully and meticulously to bring the ultimate challenge but no less attractive for players.

At its core, Curse of the Dead Gods is built on the exploitation of ideas that are already quite familiar to Rougelike game enthusiasts with Dungeon gameplay. Accordingly, players will have to adventure through four different Dungeons in 1 temple. The main task will be to defeat the boss of this Dungeon before being able to proceed to the next Dungeon. Each Dungeon will have many different rooms with attractive rewards to enhance the survival ability of the character in that Dungeon.

Along the way, players will be able to equip themselves with new weapons that drop on the floor (including 3 main weapon slots, secondary weapons and heavy weapons). Collect Relics to increase your power and use Gold to buy, sell and upgrade items at will. Thus, the deeper into the temple, the stronger the player will become, but this also means that the enemies in the temple will too.

What distinguishes Curse of the Dead Gods from most Rougelike-Dungeon games is its choice of direction. Accordingly, each Dungeon will be rerolled only once and the player will be provided with a complete map for each Dungeon. The map will include different choices with information displayed about the rewards of each room. Thereby, the game encourages players to make smart choices as well as specific strategies for each level, creating the experience of a true Dungeon-oriented game.

Regarding some special mechanics in the game, players will be provided with 5 stamina points that can be used for a variety of actions including dodging, finishing blows, using ranged and heavy weapons. This mechanism requires players to always keep an eye on their fitness score as well as understand the opponent's attack to be able to bring the best effect.

In addition, the counter attack mechanism also requires precise timing to maximize the amount of damage the character can cause. Overall, it's a really compelling system that combines the hardcore style of Dark Souls with Hades' variety of choices.

For each room the player completes, the character's Corruption bar will increase by 1 day. And once this bar is filled, the player will be subjected to a random curse. Being cursed will make the game much more difficult when forcing players to actively change their gameplay if they do not want to be crushed.

A few examples can be mentioned such as getting hit with the Curse of Greed will cause the player to lose a certain amount of gold each time they complete the room. In case there is no more Gold on the person, the player will gradually lose HP. Adding interesting curses to the game will help increase the inherent challenge as well as create an element of surprise for each lap. Players will now need to adapt their playstyle to best suit each curse they receive.

It was inevitable to suffer a multitude of different curses. However, players will be able to stop the Corruption gauge's rise by choosing the fastest path, while ensuring the character has enough power-ups to fight the boss. In addition, by defeating the boss of each Dungeon, players will also be able to choose any curse to remove. This contributes to bringing extremely high strategy to the game, encouraging gamers to freely explore various playstyles such as "high dose" or "safety first".

The game also introduces players to a rather new mechanism revolving around the management of light and darkness inside the Dungeon. Characters can illuminate their surroundings with their torches, enhancing their vision making it easier to dodge attacks. While some relics provide different types of buffs if the character is completely covered in darkness.

Most of the boss battles in Curse of the Dead Gods are pushed to the climax, where players will really need to balance dodging attacks against maximizing the amount of damage they can deal in the game. fastest time possible. This requires patience as well as quick reflexes, making completing each boss fight feel really refreshing and comfortable.

Conclude

Curse of the Dead Gods promises to bring the experience of a pure Rougelike hardcore game. Owning beautiful graphics, attractive combat mechanism has contributed significantly to the addictiveness of the game. However, Curse of the Dead Gods still has some limitations such as the lack of an attractive storyline when the game mainly relies on its gameplay to be able to attract players back. If you are the type of person who enjoys experiencing hardcore gameplay with a sense of refreshment when taking on challenges, then Curse of the Dead Gods is really a game for you, at least until when another Rougelike game appeared.

Kareem Winters

Update 05 January 2022