Into the Pit

I was super stoked when I saw the trailer a few months ago. It looked intense and challenging like Doom or Heretic, but tbe game isn't like that at all. The gameplay is shallow. It seemed pretty deep at first but really isn't. When you enter the pit, you pick three random skills: one attack for your left hand, one for your right hand, and a passive skill. The pit is made of dungeons that you unlock with keys bought at the village. Each dungeon has four levels + a boss. You rescue villagers from the dungeons to unlock things at the village. Each level of a dungeon has four arenas. You must clear each arena to go to the next level. You clear an arena by destroying keystones. Enemies are few and far between and rarely overwhelm or even surprise you, and they're pretty slow and dumb. You pick one random upgrade for your powers after clearing each arena, and lose these upgrades when exiting the pit. You can also buy permanent upgrades at the village (e.g. health boost). You pick a few when entering the pit and they're locked in place until next time. I found myself using the same runes every time. Despite all that, overall the experience is enjoyable and I would've seen it through to the end, had it not been for a number of game-breaking bugs: - Getting stuck on invisible stuff while running around and unable to free myself - Destroying the last keystone in an arena shows the "arena cleared" screen but you can't get out of the screen, it sounds like the game is still running behind the screen as I can hear myself firing magic out of my hands instead of returning to the dungeon hub. - Destroying the keystone after beating a boss doesn't do anything, the game is stuck and doesn't return you to the village For me, the keystone bugs never happened at first but started happening more as I progressed. Eventually (~15 villagers rescued) I got fed up and deleted the game, without seeing half of the unlockable dungeons, let alone the end of the game. Disappointed.

Movement feels good and the gameplay is rewarding. The atmosphere and graphics are pleasing too. There is some weapons variety and most choices are valid; you can easily rock two shotguns or nebula/hawk and clear a dungeon no problem. The powerups are more of a mixed bag but by the end of the dungeon you'll have picked up at least a few decent ones. And that's an issue. I don't think there's a solid justification or purpose for this game to be "roguelike" and have randomised loot. All it does it force you to play something a little less optimal, but unless you're an idiot you won't have any problem as this game is far from difficult. Yes some maps are claustrophobic, and having a slow or piercing modifier makes some encounter much easier to deal with, and the weapon "the bomb" (basically a rocket launcher with slow projectiles) allows you to check every corners and deal with fliers with ease, but it's extremely hard to get hit in the first place. So all the randomisation does is prevent you from exploring a build of your chosing. It's a mild aggravation. And since there's only 5 depth to every dungeon, even the abyss, it's not meaningful either, since your build doesn't carry over. I was really expecting more from the abyss but no, it's just more of the same. Maybe you get to fight a true boss with a true end after freeing all of the villagers and collecting all of the pages but I'm not even going to bother, because I have no idea if there's actually going to be a hard fight as a reward or if it's just busywork. A few bugs that require you to restart the game, but you lose virtually no progress by doing so. Also, mushroom maps will get you stuck on walls and ledges at the worst timing. It's a good skeleton of a game. Lacks content, not fleshed out enough. Maybe give players tools to add maps and mod the game or release an expansion. Maybe bigger dungeons, more rooms, more depths, heck add another class or two. Whatever it takes to expand on this baby.

On the surface level, Into the Pit is a competent game. It looks good, runs well, and shooting stuff feels great. The issue is that this gets real old real fast. Being a roguelite, Into the Pit has you do runs, each of which follows the same pattern: Clear roughly a dozen of rooms, beat the dungeon boss, repeat. You have a single life bar for each run, and the more runs you do, the more support runes and maps you get to unlock. You only ever have two weapons, one for each hand, which are given randomly at the start of each run, and you get bonuses modifying your weapons after each cleared room. Each room takes around a minute to finish, amounting to roughly twenty minutes per run. If you die, you start back at square one. And that's it. You need to do ten runs in total to get to the final map, which merely looks different than the others, and all of these runs will basically play the same. The environments and enemies will vary a bit, but beyond that, you're essentially doing the exact same thing over and over again. And since the game is far from challenging, you'll soon wonder why you're even playing this. I've had entire runs where I didn't get hit once, and I only ever died when I got stuck in the level geometry. There is no sense of actual progression, and since you almost never die, I'm inclined to call Into the Pit a roguelite on paper only. To add insult to injury, even the final map is no different from the ones before it, aside from a different theme and a different final boss. There is no actual narrative, either, so why even bother? In short, unless you enjoy wasting your time, I can't recommend this game. The foundation for a good game is there, but without additional fleshing out, Into the Pit is little more than an empty husk.

I don't care what you read about it. This game is good, really good. It looks great (rx570), it's heavy, it pulls you along, there are also light logic tasks. Yes, it's not ultramega original, but it has "balls". Buy at a discount. Oh and one more thing don't play it after dark. Maybe I'm too scared, but... 🫣😁