Barony

Game is fing terrible, got to level 2 opened the door, and got gang banged by a pack of giant spiders. 10/10 would get banged again.

I picked up **Barony** expecting a fun little dungeon crawler that I could play for a few hours. Instead, I ended up losing an unreasonable amount of my free time to one of the most rewarding roguelikes I've ever played. Every run feels different, every mistake is your own fault, and every victory feels earned. The game has this incredible ability to make you feel completely powerless one moment and like an unstoppable dungeon legend the next. It's punishing, but it's fair, and that's what keeps me coming back. One of my favorite things about Barony is just how many different races and classes can be combined together. There isn't a single "correct" way to play, and experimentation is constantly rewarded. Every combination changes the way you approach combat, exploration, and resource management. Even after dozens upon dozens of runs, I still find myself discovering new strategies or realizing I overlooked an interaction that completely changes how I play. Out of everything I've tried, the **Salamander Wizard** has easily become my favorite combination. It almost feels like the game was secretly designed around it. The Salamander's natural affinity for fire pairs so well with the Wizard's spellcasting that every fight becomes an opportunity to completely overwhelm enemies before they even know what's happening. Watching fire magic tear through groups of monsters never gets old, and there's something incredibly satisfying about building a character that leans so heavily into one theme while still being surprisingly versatile. Playing Salamander Wizard also encourages a more thoughtful playstyle. Instead of charging into every room swinging a weapon, you begin evaluating positioning, spell selection, enemy weaknesses, and resource conservation. Every successful encounter feels like solving a puzzle rather than simply winning a fight. When everything comes together, you genuinely feel like an archmage who has mastered the dungeon instead of merely surviving it. Of course, things don't always go according to plan. Sometimes you'll accidentally anger far more enemies than you intended. Sometimes you'll confidently cast the wrong spell and immediately regret your life choices. Sometimes you'll spend twenty minutes carefully preparing only to get humbled by something that looked harmless five seconds earlier. That's Barony in a nutshell, and honestly, it's part of the charm. Failure never feels like wasted time because you almost always learn something for your next run. Now we need to have a serious discussion about one of the greatest items ever added to a video game: **cheese**. I don't know who at Turning Wheel LLC decided that cheese deserved to be such a reliable companion throughout my adventures, but I appreciate them. Cheese has become less of a food item and more of an emotional support artifact. Every time I find a piece, I immediately feel safer. Other adventurers are celebrating legendary equipment while I'm standing in the corner thinking, "Finally... cheese." If my inventory is full, I'm making room for the cheese. The sword can wait. The cheese cannot. There is something strangely comforting about carrying cheese through the dungeon. It doesn't have flashy particle effects. It doesn't summon meteors. It isn't legendary or magical. It's just cheese. Yet somehow, it consistently ends up being one of the items I'm happiest to discover. Every run eventually reaches a point where I'm managing my inventory, and somehow the cheese always survives while other items get thrown away. At this point, I think my character is less of a hero and more of a traveling dairy enthusiast. The procedural generation is another reason Barony remains endlessly replayable. Every dungeon feels fresh, and the randomness keeps you constantly adapting. Memorizing layouts won't save you here. Instead, success comes from learning systems, understanding mechanics, and making smart decisions under pressure. That balance between randomness and player skill is what separates great roguelikes from average ones, and Barony absolutely nails it. The combat deserves a lot of praise as well. It's simple enough to understand quickly but deep enough that mastery takes time. Learning enemy attack patterns, spacing yourself correctly, using magic efficiently, and knowing when to retreat all matter. Every victory feels earned because you know the game wasn't pulling punches. If you survive a difficult encounter, it's because you played well—not because the game decided to be generous. Multiplayer somehow makes everything even better. Exploring dangerous dungeons with friends creates some of the funniest gaming moments I've ever experienced. One minute everyone is coordinating like a professional raid team, and the next someone accidentally starts a disaster that sends the entire group running in different directions. Even failed runs become memorable stories that you'll laugh about long after they're over. The developers also deserve credit for continuing to improve the game over the years. It's obvious that Barony is a project made by people who genuinely care about it. Every update adds polish, balance improvements, and new reasons to jump back in. It's refreshing to see a game continue evolving while staying true to what made it special in the first place. Visually, the voxel art style has aged incredibly well. It gives the game a unique identity that stands out immediately, while also making the dungeon feel charming despite how dangerous it is. The soundtrack complements everything perfectly, creating an atmosphere that can switch from relaxing exploration to absolute panic the moment something terrifying rounds the corner. At the end of the day, Barony is one of those rare games where every mechanic works together beautifully. The challenging gameplay, satisfying progression, diverse character builds, cooperative multiplayer, procedural dungeons, and endless replayability all combine into an experience that I find myself recommending to anyone who enjoys roguelikes. Whether you're experimenting with new builds or trying to conquer increasingly difficult runs, there's always another goal waiting. And yes, after countless adventures, I can confidently say two things. First, the **Salamander Wizard** is one of the coolest and most satisfying combinations I've ever played in any roguelike. The synergy between the race and class is incredibly fun and makes every successful run feel like you're wielding overwhelming magical power. Second, **cheese is one of the greatest items in Barony**. You can keep your legendary artifacts and mythical weapons. I'll happily walk into the deepest dungeon carrying enough cheese to supply an entire village. If you know, you know. **10/10. Came for the dungeon crawling. Stayed because Salamander Wizard turned me into a pyromaniac, and because every successful run is made at least 37% better by finding another glorious piece of cheese.**

Great game to play with friends, its hard and frustrating but once you get the hold of it, its super fun.

Much like Synthetik I bounced off this at first. This is definitely a 'roguelike': You die, the run is over. You can snowball very hard but you can also easily get murdered by a trap, ambush or getting over confident. It grew on me though, with straightforward gameplay that seems very oppressive at first. The tutorials explain mechanics but don't help with how overwhelming things are, at first. This is very a much a "throws you in the deep end" sort of game, and I think for better and worse most of my deaths were at the start of a run. You can customise the difficulty, reducing your score, but it says a lot there's a leaderboard for score, not successful runs. When you get 'that run' though, the game feels amazing, and it's a wonderful power fantasy going from something that found rats dangerous to a thing able to shred half a dozen powerful and well equipped monsters. I've seen some people complain about the amount of DLC and the price. You know your price point and I will simply state you probably shouldn't bother with them until you know you like the game or unless you read about a class that really interests you, like Shaman did for me. (I love 'beastmaster' and shapeshifter archtypes) The base game classes cover the usual archtypes and sure, a shapeshifter class that lets you change form for the situation, or a class that builds half a dozen arrow turrets to turn an enemy into a pincushion sounds great in practice, but there's mechanically more advanced than base game with the simple "Hit things with melee weapon, try to find magical items to help you hit things with melee weapons. gl, hf, don't die." or "Backstab the snot out of everything" or "Heal people" the base game archtypes have. The DLC classes are also locked to a specific race until you beat the game which sounds bad, but back to the Shaman: you're locked into Goblin, but the goblin's racial traits synergize extremely well with the class to the point you can argue you should always play goblin.

Accidentally beat the secret boss and didn't even realize it, fun game!

This game is impossible

meow :3

Had a lot of NOT fun, I love the rats in the game. They are pure bliss inducing creatures!