I'll just start out here by saying outright, this is not only the greatest roguelike I've ever played, but one of the best games I've ever played, period, and I've been gaming since the Atari 2600 era (born in '81, you see). In fact I think this might be my new all-time favorite. It's that good.
Now, I'd had high expectations going into this one. I've played Michael Brough's games before, particularly 868-HACK and Cinco Paus, and have spent boatloads of time enjoying each (HACK primarily played on my iPad, Cinco Paus on PC). Over the years, I keep coming back to both. And I've dabbled into other games of his too. These were all brilliant. If this could be even close to how good those were, I thought, that'd be amazing. But this goes well past those.
Part of what makes these games so good is the uniquely focused design. There will be a central concept, and absolutely everything about the game will orbit around that. The core mechanic is always simple and easy to understand. But how everything else spins around and connects to that core mechanic creates an endless array of puzzling situations, wild interactions that are surprising yet make total sense when you find them, and so on.
In this game, that core mechanic works like this: You have these siphons (usually 2 per room, sometimes 3) that you can pick up and use. When used, they suck stuff out of the tile you're standing on, and every adjacent tile. If they hit a floor space, you get the resources displayed on that space. You use those resources to activate programs, which you siphon out of cubes (walls) that have those programs displayed on them (so you always know what you'll get). If you hit a cube with a big number on it, you'll get data (points). And every cube also has a red number on it, showing how many enemies will spawn when you siphon that cube. Each program has a value (the Refresh program for example always brings out 4 enemies), and for data, if it's 8 points, it's gonna summon 8 enemies. You'll then use the resources you yoinked out of the floor to power the programs you yoinked out of the cubes to fight the enemies that were summoned when you did the yoinking of the cubes. All with the goal of getting as much data as you can, and then escaping the 8th sector (room) of the server you're on. And combat is simple: you can move in 4 directions, if you move in the direction of an enemy, you shoot a beam at it instead of moving. You can also activate a program. That's it. Simple, yet it absolutely isnt.
Other elements are also there, interacting with all of this. You have a big map of servers you'll uncover as you go, and each server has a passive item to get (which you get the moment you enter, you dont have to find it in some maze or something), and special bonuses (for the enemies, not for you) that affect conditions within the rooms of the server. The passive items are all about having even more screwball interactions with the stuff in the servers. Maybe one lets you push walls around (which could allow you to push them into spots where you could siphon like 3 of them at once, for a big risk to get big points). Another might give you a turn of doing double damage, each time you use any program that causes you to move as part of its effect. Which makes for yet another interaction involving the main concepts.
The passive items (called "devs") are done differently from how most roguelikes do them, too. You'll have a build of them, sure, but unlike other games, they arent just always on. When you start a server, all the devs are inactive. As you enter a new sector, you'll first choose one of your devs to turn on; it will then remain on until the end of the server. Or you might choose to boost one that is already on instead of turning a different one on. This means that even though your items are constantly there, the decisions you make in how you use them... and which ones to use... change depending on whatever lunacy might be happening in the server. Maybe the room you just entered has few walls in it, a mostly open space, so perhaps it's time to turn on the dev you got earlier that gives you double damage when hitting an enemy at a long distance. Stuff like that.
What really gets me about this is that it allows for an absolutely insane amount of different combinations and situations and such to do, but without bloating everything. In a lot of roguelikes, they sorta have everything and the kitchen sink too. Too many mechanics, so many in fact that the interfaces for the game in question is a mangled mess and you need to memorize like 30 hotkeys, and you'll find more and more screwy mechanics as you go, with complexity increased by just adding more, more, more. I've always found that very frustrating. It's like, okay, I dont know what this potion does, so I gotta dunk it in this weird shrine so that a mysterious god can fart on it and then I figure out which potion it is based on which enemies gag when they smell it. There's too much going on in just one small mechanic (identification, in this case). And there's just... so much of that. So many mechanics, too much of everything.
Here? Siphon works on cubes. Cubes give you things and summon monsters. There's only 5 monster types (and trust me, that's enough). Programs and devs directly interact with those things in very simple, easy to understand ways. They dont come with like 500 mechanics of their own. Instead, the complexity occurs as a result of the arrangement of all of these elements. All happening on a grid that fits in one screen. And what confusion you will experience, instead of being like "how in the world was I supposed to know to shove the key up my nose?", here it's like "these things are arranged like THIS right now... how can I puzzle out a way to survive this?". You can only have 8 programs at once, so you'll have to work out how to use them in that unique situation. And there's no end to these puzzling situations.
The game is definitely hard, but the difficulty is yet another thing that interacts with everything. Play defensively, dont go after too many points, you'll have less monsters. Take risks to get more stuff, you'll get more monsters, and that means things get darned tough. The difficulty spikes didnt happen because some god sneezed wrong. It happened because of decisions YOU made, servers you chose, cubes you chose, programs you chose, with effects that are absolutely communicated to you. Well... mostly. There are a few things that are going to be darned surprising when you see them the first time (just wait till you see "advanced graphics"). But never in a "geez I have to go to the wiki AGAIN" kind of way.
All of this in a gorgeous style with some absolutely amazing sound design. Good golly do I love the anxiety-inducing music in the Megatron servers (no, not THAT Megatron). Or that calm yet distressing theme in the much too sterile Unified corporation servers. All in a world that I find interesting. A lot of games have big stories I cant remember later. But I aint gonna forget the Basilisk moment from this game, that one's gonna stick with me, I loved that.
I have no complaints about this game. None. Heck, every time I think "well this dev doesnt seem very useful", I soon find that it is. Every time. And there's just... nothing negative for me to say here. I tried thinking of something, because my name is Misery and what's what you'd expect, but I've got nothing.
Seriously, this game is a masterpiece of the highest tier. Stuff this good comes along like once a decade. It's a hard game with a tough road to mastery, but in the best way possible.
