Ring of Pain

Let's put it this way: I think if it had a demo, it wouldn't be making many sales. I should have listened to the negative comments, but was drawn in by the style and intriguing mechanics. Those above points ARE positives for it, but look at the negative reviews and you'll see the real issue spelled clearly: RNG and bad balancing. Barely 2 hours in, and I can already sense how I'm not really feeling in control of this game. I basically just have 2 choices at any moment, and if you get cornered by all the moving parts, oopsies run over... Weird choices make things worse, like overpowered enemies arriving in early levels, annoying explosion/poison type death-reactions that feel like late-game but also arriving immediately... There are so many stats, spells, and gear slots so you'd think you have all these options and tools and are in for a long journey. But all it does is increasingly water-down your chances of getting any of those things in a meaningfully helpful combination. I actually think this is part of the mechanical issue with this title, just threw a bunch of random pieces into the mix and depend on pure luck to make them useful, instead of balancing and tuning it so you get a better success/synergy rate. "Hey we'll call it Ring Of Pain to pretend the bad balancing is a design choice instead of lazy design" This is one of those games that you get the feeling it's playing you, and your only role is pushing it forward by clicking, the game happens TO YOU rather than feeling you have much agency. I won't refund it because I do respect the art style, presentation, and innovative core and got it on sale anyway... But feels like they leaned on RNG taking the blame for bad player experience, instead of figuring out how to increase player agency and success rate. Maybe adding difficulty tiers that simply add more basic HP might make players able to tune it until it feels right... Maybe letting players hold on to healing potions would also shift it to fairness... Or allowing you to always eject from a room when you want instead of putting that on a random spell item... Default "Stealth" should be 50% so you have more freedom to skip past enemies... This could be tuned into feeling right, but clearly the devs are insecure and want you to fail to stretch the game out. I've seen the word "slot machine" used in other negative reviews, and I think it's a good analogy. Imagine a slot machine, but you get to turn one wheel up-or-down by one position after the wheels settle - That's how this feels, a tiny amount of agency in an overwhelmingly automatic machine. "I got to pull the lever, and tweak 1 wheel by 1 position! So much agency!" A good roguelike can be hard but has to feel fair, and success rate + innate player tools need to feel hopeful enough to keep trying again. This misses those marks I think, leaning too hard on "hope you get the items giving you that agency". When you can die in the first 2 levels of a roguelike, you should know something is out of whack... You can almost hear the designers of projects like this "We can't let players succeed too often or they'll lose interest" and totally blind to "Players will lose interest because we made it too brutal or random and they keep losing in BS ways and lack of a fair shot". A good roguelike doesn't care if you win a lot, and focus more on the experience being fun to repeat and interact with with a roughly 50/50 success chance (aka fair). RNG factor should keep each new run interesting and fresh, NOT be the single major factor determining success. That tuning is what makes this one feel like you're out of control here. I'll keep playing it once in a while, but it's already wearing thin which is too bad because card roguelikes sorely need new formats like this instead of everyone just cloning Spire.