Ring of Pain

An interesting concept. You traverse rooms, being strategic about how you move in them, to gather gear, 'money' and stat boosts so you can gradually create a build that allows you to progress further without dying. At least in theory, that's what the game WANTS to be. In reality, the balance is so whack it just turns the game into a glorified slot machine where you can hit jackpot in the first room and win the entire run. The balance around items is just mind boggling. There's a common item (Hermit's tiara) that can autowin the run from turn 1 without picking up another item. Then there's hyper specific legendaries that you get 40 minutes into the run that only really work if you have 5 other hyper specific items to synergize with. Set bonuses in a game with nearly 400 items (good luck making any of them work), and countless other problems. The gulf between item usefulness and the pool size, combined with the player's inability to nudge the randomness to their favour makes strategizing and being clever about builds nearly impossible, which should be the damn point of this whole game.

It's a decent game, and has some neat ideas, but never really hits that addictive "one more run" stride that you want from a roguelike. I never felt that that ring format of encounters really adds much to the gameplay, or that the core stats and items are particularly interesting.