Sword of the Stars: The Pit Osmium Edition

I don't usually play roguelikes but this is excellent, with a great soundtrack. their dlc policy is awful, some of it could've just been a patch, but even the base game offers a ton of content, different classes, items and recipes. now it's bundled with both expansions for 10 bucks, plus 4 more classes sold separately, except they're 2 bucks each here, while only 1 elsewhere. dev or gog oversight? not cool either way, means at least 1 star off. naturally, it saves when you quit, but you can decide to make shorter work of your ascent by only doing every 5th floor, etc. weapon degradation, ammo and food are out to get you, and with more and more ingredients and recipes added over time, you're always managing inventory, but if you're not prepared for rng to screw you over (and over and over), why are you playing roguelikes? (and that's why I normally don't.) and of course if you find all the things overwhelming, don't install the dlc and play the less intimidating vanilla(ish) experience. so I obviously played on easy, and to my surprise, managed to reach the end (floor 30 at the time, before all the dlc started flooding in), then went back a few years later to fool around with different classes a bit and check out all the new stuff, something I don't normally do either. sadly, hacked computer logs are limited to the first 50 on easy, so can't get a full collection of lore without increasing difficulty, but recipes and encyclopedia entries are retained between runs. definitely try the demo to get a taste, worked for me (also not available here, unfortunately). infinity a few years later went 1st-person shooter, no thanks, the proper(?) sequel went back to its roots but added unnecessary and damn ugly 3d and it's been in early access for years, untouched for a while, also no thanks. neither are on gog anyway.

I've seen this game on streams several times. Finally decided to try it myself. And it was 100% worth it. I've started as engineer, because I knew it is a good choice for finding new recipes. On normal, because I still wanted to have some fun. Six times I failed very early. But seventh run took me very far. But let's start from the beginning. I understood pretty early, that one should save ammo. That is why I had enough of it and even collected some, which I could not use at the moment. But I was starving for very long time, lost some food trying find new recipes, but hopefully still being alive. Than I found out that I have to repair my staff, and repairment kits in my pocket drop maximum durability to 2/3 after each use. Not so nice for good equipment. I kept all of this in my mind and always had to make a choice what to repair and how. The next big problem was... yes, ammunition. May be I trade too much on jungle levels, fighting for food. Or possibly spent more than needed, trying to get a new recipe (you don't have to clear all the levels, but I cleared every room, where the console appeared). I think, I had almost no problems with Hit Points, because I played on Normal. And now imagine combination of all the mentioned. I finally come to a point that this is the game, where you live or die not due to circumstances, but due to the choices you made. And not forget very funny situation, like running away from Spectre because you spent all your energy ammo. Or stepping two times into teleport trap and getting two levels forward, surrounded by enemies and having no infrastructure near you. Or being grabbed by adaptoid in a full room... I forgot to say, I reached the final level and the final boss. In heavy marine armour I was almost immortal, but I ran out of ammo. And I died at the door, blocked by tarka females, preventing me to come in. After 25 hours of the run I felt like I read a really good book, with unpredictable plot and a lot of empathy to the character. Will definitely return to it some day and highly recommend it.

This is not such a great game. At all. Useally rogues don't care much about their visual style, but when they do it should not be infantile. This game yells at you from the start, seemingly thinking it is the funniest game on earth, whereas in fact the humor in this game is old and stale, aiming at underaged people. The mechanics are OK, taking into account the game has a lot of examples to look at. No depth and generic character building, flavour of the genre. The feel and the looks are those of a cheap mobile phone flash game without the flexibility of the likes that are much better. Many, many (free) games outdo this game. Look at Caves of Qud or Cogmind if you want a great game. Even ToME, ADoM or Rogue Empire are much better games.

This is awesome! Sci-fi Roguelike goodness! They should call the roguelike genre, Pitlike. Its far superior. Play as a human or alien, a scout, marine or something like that and delve into an underground complex filled with tools, artifacts, computer interface ETC.

Not great - and sometimes irritating in its slowness or grindy nature. I knocked one star off because the installer is bundled with Galaxy, which I don't use (and doesn't add anything).