Margoq's Lair

Just not very good. Movement feels crappy, like something made by an amateur in the 80s, just a fixed speed on each axis, no acceleration or smoothing of any kind. The spell sequence thing is a good idea, but it's wrapped in, again, 80s amateur basic-programmer style "if you shoot again while a bullet is already in motion the older bullet disappears" sort of meh. Don't get me wrong, I like good 80s games. The graphical style here is okay for that, *except*, it's not just about being pixelated, a real 80s game is *clear*. This one makes it easy to bump into a monster without seeing it because the color of the monster is similar to the floor and there's no clear borders, everything's just sort of a mess. I was going to give it another shot to see if it's less boring with one of the melee classes after getting past the first 'boss' with the sorcerer, but apparently those aren't available without doing something to unlock them, so no second chance here. I doubt it would have been better anyway. The inventory is mostly finding a variety of identical-looking sticks which have different power levels then manually sorting through them to equip the best one and dropping the rest, which is not a fun experience in inventory-management either. Occasionally you find some hats, which is just the same thing again, the type of the equipment is almost irrelevant, it's just a set of stats, and you have to manually compare the stats of all the items that fit in the same slot to find the least bad one.

Nice fun little game. Many fun combos to explore, perks to pick, and the map changed after every respawn so it never goes stale.

The magic system is cool, but everything else is a chore. There are lots of technical issues, like items and enemies spawning out of bounds. Audio levels are inconsistent, with some sounds being EXTREMELY loud. Sometimes souls (the main resource for run progression) just don't spawn at all. For gameplay, visual clarity is a mess. Enemy projectiles get lost among friendly ones. Bosses spam abilities that clutter the screen and deal huge amounts of damage, resulting in unfair deaths. Inventory management is poor, where you just have to periodically drop all your items to pickup new ones. The itemization is boring, with very basic stat upgrades on each gear piece.

Feels slow, controls aren't tight at all, inventory and spell system is lackluster, and enemies are too bullet-spongy. There just isn't a good reason to pay $10 for this--or even to play for free, really--when there are so many other similar games out there, most of which do everything better.

I've been following the development and this is a game worth a try if you're into action roguelites. The spell combo system is great when you get the hang of it.

+Interesting spell combo mechanic -Major technical issues; full screen can randomly just flicker to windowed and since it's exclusive full screen -> your run will likely end as you're swapping the modes without the game pausing -No 4K UI / no scaling options of UI -Loot is mostly linear upgrades without any "choices" in a sense -> at least early game -Loot = too much useless loot. When 9 items out of 10 dropped in the early game are worse than the gear you have - filling a limited inventory, with no salvage option, the loot (which is also hard to see on the ground) turns to a chore. You need to pick it up, drop it - drop it in a spot that it doesn't actually drop on some item you might want to drop on the ground. = Disappointed. This is towards a neutral review, but since I wouldn't recommend such game for myself, I won't do it to you either.

Challenging game that is really well made, both gameplay and visually (espcially if you're into old-school top down 2D graphics). I've yet to explore the combos fully, but it feels like there is a lot of depth.

Control system is fundamentally flawed. Combo casting is horrifically janky.