Caves of Qud

This game is really interesting because of the amount of options you have for making your chacter. I've made a bird man with a beak, wings, claw feet, that breathed fire from his face. I've made a 3 legged axe wielding hairy mutant with an evil twin from another dimension. I've made a psychic warrior who controls animals and rips apart the minds of his enemies. The game is super hard, but if you play a little while you start to figure it out through doing and get better and better. The shorted game I ever had was 7 turns. My evil twin spawned in the starting area, psychicly attacked me on the first turn. I survived the attack, but in suffering the abuse I got a nose bleed. I died from the nose bleed on turn 7. It's a really cool game.

Don't read anything about this game, Don't look up anything. Just play the game and discover things on your own, find out what mechanics work and what doesn't. It is a phenomenal masterpiece and I am just scratching the surface. If you're working long hours away from any internet or connection to the outside world. You should put this on a hard drive and spend your free time on it. Of course when you're hard stuck, just look up that specific piece of Infomation or just try and try again. The controls are weird, the learning curve is harsh and the world is unforgiving. Imagine, looking at an old painting in a museum and you wonder what it would be like living in this world and inside this piece of art, theres a whole new living world inside it.

Just want to preface this, the reviews below have been partially rendered incorrect because there are plenty of other places you can now get non-steam versions of existing mods (Nexus, GitHub etc) and plenty of steam workshop mods have non-steam links in their descriptions too anyway onto the actual review. Caves Of Qud is a tough game to get into, though in 2024 it's had a lot of work done to lower the barrier to entry, it's still not everyones cup of tea but that's okay because if you roll with it and give it time, it'll repay you massively. Qud's hallmarks are it's bizzare but equally facinating and charming world and it's total lack of hand holding and punishing gameplay, but once you lean the games ropes you can really see the depth and variety the game has, for example in my current playthrough I'm a four legged mutant that wields two battle axes, has fangs to bite enemies and I can also teleport, shoot ice and summon an army of plants, my companions are a Mechanimist priest that can burn entire grids of enemies and a sentient plant that makes copies of xymself to fight with us. Most games use "no two playthroughs are ever the same" as a marketing buzzword but this is one of the rare exceptions where that is true, because this game can be so emergent and so random that it's near impossible to have two playthroughs go exactly the same way, whether that is the powers you wield, killing a random legendary fish to gain reputation with another faction to make a dungeon easier or just the way your character dies. I recommend this game wholeheartedly, even if you dislike it you can always refund it, especially on GOG, I do also suggest watching a tutorial on how to start a game just so you can get the ball rolling, if you're unsure if the games really for you, start on roleplay mode so you can at least have an easy shot at beating the main story without having to start the game from the very beggining each time you die (which you will, A LOT), Live and Drink.

I am not that into roguelikes, but this game lets you play in roleplay mode, so when you die you respawn at the last checkpoint. You can also save the game whenever you want (as long as you enable the option), so it becomes less frustrating to someone like me who just wants to come home from work and relax with some exploration. The world generation is also great, as it does not randomly generate everything, so the general layout is always the same.

A bit of a disjointed review: For a game that has graphics in between pixel and ASCII, it is extremely atmospheric. The world is weird in an intriguing way and deserves to be explored. While the game does randomly generate the terrain, the world map is fixed and it's the details that are different. This isn't a critique but was not my expectation when I bought it. In fact, I like that even with the random elements the world has a history that can be explored and experienced. The modding scene, atm, seems to be mostly on Steam. I try to buy from non-DRM free sources like GoG, but I wish I'd known that before-hand. Anything I feel the game is missing seems be be covered by the Workshop. There are some available on Nexus, but not very many. That said, I have been and recommend playing Vanilla before starting with mods. I know the response to criticism of difficulty will just be met with "that's typical of the genre." But it's very frustrating to transition between screens and be dead before you've had time to blink. Once a threat you can't handle sees you, it's nigh impossible to run away even if you've been extremely cautious. I've been stalked between playthroughs and saves by a red-robed figure that explodes my head 2 screens away from the start-point. Not fun. The game needs stealth. There's still more on the Roadmap for this game, and I find myself hoping that the Roadmap isn't all that's left. There's a lot I'd like to see added. Heck, after the Roadmap is done I'd even buy expansions if they bring a whole new map to explore. If you're into the genre, this is a must buy. It's peak. Maybe I'll clean up this review later but these are my thoughts.