Oceans of pain and thick manuals. First look at Zorbus

A pure, truly hardcore roguelike with a good amount of content for the genre.

The game is announced for the Windows platform.

LYRICAL INTRODUCTION

Just yesterday I was visited by a thought that does not correspond to reality – I imagined that I could (learned, was able to overcome, etc.).d.) pass hardcore bagels.

Today’s me will laugh in the face of that naive me. What happened during these 16 hours?? Zorbus happened. I can’t say that I understand the game well, so here’s a first glance.

Found a description of the world in manuals and in-game guides. Without spoilers, in the end we need to challenge the local deity and if we win, then the hero and companions (if any) will be able to interact with our next party of adventurers in a complex way.

The gameplay is a classic old school roguelike.

First, I highly recommend reading the accompanying documentation for the game. The link to it is in the start menu. A solid 52-page work on what’s here and why.

There is also a shortened version with the most basic basics of the game. It is contained in two books that are lying on the floor in the first room of the first dungeon.

First we decide on the hero. There are six character classes to choose from with pre-defined stats and starting equipment. It seems like in the future there is a possibility that NPCs will join us in the form of a squad.

And then. Then the pain begins. We are always thrown into a more or less identical room with a couple of exits and at our own peril and risk we go to explore the dungeon.

Anything could be waiting for https://maxbet-casino.co.uk/mobile-app/ us. One day we managed to run through the dungeon more or less decently and what we saw does not inspire optimism in terms of achieving victories.

Hordes of powerful orcs and goblins, boss beasts like elephants, some cultists, hostile adventurers and ordinary monsters.

Each enemy has a description, in general, it can be boiled down to the main thing – how dangerous the object is, with approximately how many hits will it take to kill the protagonist.

Opponents are smart and if, for example, they sense imminent death, they can quickly begin to run away from the hero.

You can fight in melee or ranged combat. and also use magic, if it exists of course.

I really liked that the game world reacts vividly to the character’s actions. For example, the orcs are discussing among themselves how they will catch the hero, or the unlucky adventurer who just wanted to kill us after the death of three comrades in front of his eyes says that he simply got confused and went into the wrong room.

The manual clearly states that you don’t need to fight all enemies, and you also need to use all (there are not many) means to survive.

There is a save, but it purely formally facilitates the game according to the principle “I’ll finish it tomorrow, time is up today”, you can’t abuse it, since it is deleted immediately after loading.

Let’s look at the pros and cons of the game and summarize.

+ Minimalistic but nice graphics.

+ Good music and sound.

+ Quite different hero archetypes.

+ Many types of enemies and bosses.

THINGS THAT CAN BE BOTH A PLUS AND A MINUS:

± The game is filled with randomness and is controlled by it. You can hit three strong enemies in a row, and then some weak enemy will one-shot you. In my opinion, this is somehow too cool considering the fact that you have to replay it from scratch. It’s almost impossible to understand where you will win and where you will lose.

– The image is adapted to a resolution less than 1920×1080. Accordingly, the main part of the screen is occupied by black color.

– Creating screenshots by pressing F12 in Steam does not work. Update: they are being done, but this is not visible or heard. But you can download them later.

– Exit from the game is implemented crookedly. Steam believes that the application is running even when it has deleted all (meaning not all) of its files.

– There is no Russian language at least text. The required level of English seems to be average. There is a lot of text to absorb for a comfortable game, but it is mainly on gaming topics, so the task is simplified.

CONCLUSIONS OBJECTIVE

An old-school roguelike with a fairly large amount of content for the genre (10 regular levels of a decent size, a lot of loot, a complex combat system, companions, many types of enemies). In the old school tradition, there is a good, detailed manual for the game in English.

CONCLUSIONS ARE SUBJECTIVE

In my opinion, too much power is given to the cube and at the same time, the enemies are indecently strong from the start, and our hero is excessively weak.

PS: I probably didn’t cover all the aspects, I might have missed something. I will be glad to add/correct the review or answer questions along the way in the comments.