Source of Madness

Of course it's experimental and weird, but that's probably what caught your attention, as it did mine. I moved on from it though because people were saying it's AI slop. But then it's on 85% discount and I was like surely there is something worth it at that price, so looked again and found this info from the dev, which says it all really; "Soooo okay, this is NOT AI slop, this was made way before AI art became a big thing. There are a few cutscenes that were made with an old Diffusion model and later animated with another system. This game was made with love between mainly the years 2018-2021. I do regret adding the diffusion cutscenes especially with the stigma anything neural network based comes with these days. But the game is mainly made with hand drawn art that was later treated with an algorithm that I find ethical called deep style transfer which basically redrew our own art in the style of a source texture that we photographed or made ourselves. Personally I am proud of the world building I made in this game and it has a very unique physics based world and procedural enemies. As for fun, I think it could be better but a lot of people have enjoyed and loved it. I am trying to perfect fun in my new game Midnight Horde that is not using any of that stuff at all this time. I think it is more than worth it, if it sticks with you it is at least 10-12 hours of unique worlds."

Foreword: Not AI slop (at least not in the modern sense) This is an older creative use of early generative AI before the slop craze of more recent years, using some generated patterned cutouts to play into the game's narrative themes of eldritch horror, just as early diffusion models produced manmade horrors that were absolutely maddening and eye-straining to look at. What the game has always needed was more polish, especially for its control inputs. Was definitely an interesting art experiment.

[h1]This is.... [b]MESSY[/b][/h1] Like that one other reviewer said. This is just prime MESS. I like the idea of this game (Dead Cells, but you're a pure caster). If Codex Lost had been a side-scrolling roguelite, it would probably look like this.... only with COHERENT ENEMIES. To give you a picture, you've all messed around with the corpses in the original Dark Souls, right? Ragdolling them around. Watching them flop back and forth, trying to see if you can flip them off ledges and into wells and sh*t. That's how enemies move in this game. [i]"Haha, yeah. You're kinda exaggerating though... right?"[/i] [b]No[/b], I'm not. They literally flop around like a flounder out of water. Like some hollow soldier on the way to Undead Berg being ragdolled around after you've backstabbed it. I appreciate what they tried to do with enemies here, using a neural network AI to create an amalgam of parts... but man, it needed some more seeds or something. Some more variation other than "that thing from The Blob, but with 3 legs". Enemies, bosses, just start looking like the same thing. As a result, combat that is just MESSY. It doesn't help that my inputs just don't register once in a while..? I'll press L1 (release the bamboo rockets!) and nothing'll happen. Not on cooldown. Not waiting for the active one to become inactive... just nothing. The slight delay in pressing dodge and actually dodging doesn't help either. Just like how getting stuck between ragdolling enemies while your dash is on CD doesn't help anything. I dunno... it's a weird roguelite (with meta-progression), and I like playing as a caster. But this one is just a bit too clunky and MESSY! PS: I [b]DO[/b] like the map designs though. Hard to tell what's foreground and background some times, but the overall design was great.

People keep saying this is AI slop, and simply put, it's not. Furthermore, it's decently put together. I felt I needed to review this game because it was engaging enough to give me 25 hours of fun before finishing the game, all while being review bombed by people who go into the game with prejudice based on some artistic choices. The developer chose to use some early diffusion models to make some cutaway "beyond comprehension" looking scenes, however, there is clearly art in the game that couldn't have been made with AI models at the time of development. Another criticism people have is that the gameplay is monotonous, which is an entirely avoidable issue. There are several playstyles that you can take on depending on which class and weapons you choose to run, all with different tradeoffs. I've seen several people claiming that pyromancer is the only good class, and I firmly believe that those people either didn't play with other classes much, if at all, or they didn't play to those classes' strengths. I went from a build that let me slowly melt enemies from a distance where I could avoid the majority of conflict at the expense of slow and largely uneventful progress, to a build that let me explode monsters in a few seconds if I got into point-blank range at the expense of it being riskier, and I had several builds that were essentially different gradients between those two strategies, some more defensive, some more offensive, some just silly to see if I could make it work. I had highly successful runs with every single class in the game at least once. Treat it like a sandbox. Yes, you can do the same few things the whole time you play the game, but are you really going to only ever play prop hunt in Garry's Mod? The largest complaint I have is that the game ends on a bit of a cliffhanger. I would happily welcome an update that finishes the story, even if it's just one more level consisting of the remaining necessary bosses to make the story make sense from where it left off. Maybe in the same breath the diffusion scenes can be replaced with human art, putting an end to the influx of unjust criticism on the game. Since the story is really simple, I don't think it would be a tremendous effort for something that people who liked the game, like me, would really appreciate. Overall I'd say this game is a 7/10 given you give exploring its mechanics a chance.

Got this back in 2022, didnt realize there was such heavy ai usage or they started using ai much more. Every negative review is well earned, would refund if I could.

(Desconozco por qué no hice una reseña sobre este juego antes, pero en fin, detalles) Luego de haberlo completado en modo Locura tengo para acotar un par de cosas y en el final dejaré una reseña general sobre el juego Para el internauta que esté interesado en comprarlo/jugarlo: No te dejes engañar por las malas calificaciones. La gente que se queja de su "estética rara" o "monstruos demasiado deformes" en su perra vida han leído o al menos oído ni una de las historias de Lovecraft, centrado en el terror cósmico, el miedo primordial a lo desconocido y a lo superior. El juego TE ACLARA EN LA DESCRIPCIÓN que es LOVECRAFTIANO y que vas a encontrar cosas horribles pero algunos papanatas lo compran y entran esperando encontrar un hollow knight. Me recuerdan a ese dibujo donde un tipo compra una lata de garbanzos, abre la lata de garbanzos y se enoja porque dentro de la lata de garbanzos HAY GARBANZOS y no tomates. Para el creador / devs: Realmente le falta poco y nada a este juego para ser perfecto en su propio estilo. Un par de detalles que sí agregaría serían -Agregar más logros. Por ejemplo por desbloquear a todos los tipos de adeptos, explorar algún easter egg o área secreta. La zona del lobby es ENORME y no tiene absolutamente (o casi) nada de contenido más allá que algún que otro diálogo. -Realizar la elección de dificultad al INICIO de una partida y de forma permanente. Que no se puedan hacer cambios todo el rato de dificultad. Le quita la gracia al juego. -Agregar un logro por haber completado el juego en dificultad Locura porque POR DIOS, es un dolor de cabeza completarlo por puro amor al arte. Un mínimo reconocimiento estaría de lujo y le daría más razones a los jugadores para querer hacer ese desafío -Por último (y esto ya es más opinión personal) estaría brutal si pudiesen implementar un modo Cooperativo Local, porque lo único que hay de local es un modo PvP que no está nada mal, pero claramente un coop sería mucho más entretenido, Aunque entiendo que eso implicaría más trabajo por el combate y balance, pero creo que sería una gran mejora para el juego. Podrían agregarle fuego amigo para hacerlo más difícil, por ejemplo. En conclusión y a grandes rasgos: El juego es muy bueno. El sistema de progresión es muy adictivo. Pierdes personajes con nombre y apellido de forma permanente al morir y eso le da una sensación de que casi todo es efímero. Los mapas, monstruos, recompensas, cofres y demás se arman casi totalmente de forma aleatoria, lo cual hace que NUNCA juegues dos partidas iguales (para los payasos que dicen que es un juego aburrido porque se vuelve repetitivo). Es decir que tiene muy buena REJUGABILIDAD. Hay una bruta variedad de tipos de personajes, mejoras, y un sinfín de combinaciones porque cada ítem se genera de forma aleatoria en cada partida con bonificaciones tan únicas que quizás nunca vuelvas a toparte con algunos ítems dos veces. Los monstruos salen con mutaciones distintas cada partida y en cada nivel o bioma. Se mueven de forma muy aleatoria y cuesta predecirlos, por lo que nunca renta bajar la guardia. Especialmente en el modo Locura. Sin nada más que decir, recomiendo totalmente el juego y ojalá en un futuro cercano obtenga más reconocimiento del que actualmente tiene porque lo merece y con creces

It's, not very good. The procedural generation loses its charm fast, and the gameplay gets stale quickly as well. Not really worth it unless you're really into the old and twisted Ai-generated art style, before AI generate content started to piss on everything.

I can see some of the points raised in the negative reviews, the game is quite often confusing mostly due to the AI-generated enemies. Yes - I'm reviewing positively a game that has heavily used AI: I think these developers are quite unlucky though as they used it "before it was not cool". It's quite funny that I like how it was used early on - they were crafty with it, and managed to generate some cool lovecraftian monsters - whereas now you just see it used for regurgigated, realistic (but uncanny valley), and mostly stolen from other people's art really as now the models do really excel at that aspect. The main issue with the game is that the combat feels like a very old game, where basically you have to get out of the way of an enemy first and foremost, and if you can guess some of the patterns or understand the animations (if there are any readable ones at all) all the better. If you approach it like this you can have fun, but otherwise you will be frustrated. The roguelike progression also is a bit weirdly done if I'm honest. What I can praise the most is the sound design which is really well done and atmospheric. Some of the creatures and their sounds are genuinely terrifying. The level design also is not bad at all and I appreciate that it's not procedural. Overall, this is a cool, creative, and pretty unique small indie game, which I had a lot of fun for the 10 hours it lasted me.

Its Ai garbage grab bag. Support real artists and never buy anything made with AI. I would refund it if I could.