Miseria

First, the good, and the thing that probably brought your attention to this game in the first place: the presentation is bang on. Totally captures the Diablo 1 aesthetic, even down to the text and storytelling. One of the primary pleasures of the game is soaking in the dark gothic atmosphere. Beyond that, there’s a bit of fun to be had unlocking nodes on the skill tree and restarting, blowing through floors that were previously a bit of grind suddenly no problem at all.

The biggest issue, as noted by others, is that the content is severely lacking for the asking price. You can get through the whole thing in two or three hours, and there’s nothing left to do after that. It’s also a bit of a tease to employ the D1 aesthetic but not include randomized loot; I get how that can be hard to balance with an incremental game, but others have done it, and it could go some way toward enriching the gameplay experience here. Perhaps an endless, roguelike mode that offers random loot after beating the main game would solve a lot of the problems here.

Beyond that, it’s more of an idler than incremental, and I had personally bought it hoping for the latter. The gameplay really consists of nothing more than leveling up your characters and weapons, which is tedious more than anything else. Any sort of active engagement with the game itself would have been an improvement, whether it’s just quick-time events to pull of additional special moves, being able to move your character around and kite enemies, or whatever.

Ultimately, I’m giving this a recommended rating because I find the overall score a little harsh. Despite the clear shortcomings on display, I don’t want to devalue the effort that went into the presentation, and the framework is there for a compelling incremental D1 experience, but that’s not what’s been delivered in the 1.0 release. I’m hopeful future updates will see this game approach its potential; if it does, I’ll be glad to return. If it doesn’t, I may adjust this down to a “not recommended.”