Curse of the Dead Gods Review: Cursed, Bloody Riches (PC)

Nailing the proper difficulty for a roguelike (or roguelite, if you’re particular) is a tricky prospect for game developers. Examples of either extreme abound, from Pixel Dungeon‘s simple and accessible approach to Risk of Rain‘s harrowing easy mode, and while good entries exist at both poles that balance is one trait shared by the most enduring. With the benefit of an early access period from which it has been freshly released, Curse of the Dead Gods gets close, tripping only a few spike traps and flame-throwing jaguar heads along the way.

The title is certainly a departure from standard fare for developer Passtech Games. After cutting their teeth on tower-defense games Space Run and Space Run Galaxy, they successfully tried their hand at the RTS genre with Masters of Anima. Whatever lessons they learned from those titles have carried through because, if nothing else, Curse of the Dead Gods is well-polished and, from a gameplay perspective, clearly crafted with a great deal of love and care.

You can get Curse of the Dead Gods on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch for $19.99

STORY – A MISSED OPPORTUNITY

Story has always played second-fiddle to gameplay when it comes to roguelikes. The conceit of the genre is that you’re not there for the lore, you’re there for the progression. You play, fail, upgrade, and repeat; anything beyond that is just icing on the cake. Still, it’s getting more and more difficult to explain away the exclusion of at least a bare bones narrative when it comes to modern roguelike games. Players might be experiencing the same labyrinth of procedurally-generated dungeons over and over again, but the space for story structure still exists. In a way CotDG‘s exploration does provide act-based progression, but it’s not narrative and I’ll go into more detail on that later.

It’s just unfortunate that Passtech squandered the opportunity to tell a proper story in a universe so rich with visual detail. So much time was spent perfecting themed traps and areas for each temple but so little was devoted to exploring those decisions. It makes you wonder why they even bothered with the limited story elements they provided.

Take the main character, for example: His name is Caradog McCallister. That’s a hell of a name to give your main character with no intent to build upon it. I actually had the look his name up online because I couldn’t recall seeing it in game; they could have left him unnamed and lost literally nothing. It’s a basic rule of storytelling: If you provide a detail, make it serve a purpose. Narratively speaking, there’s a lot of stuff in here that serves no purpose.

The Dark Avatar of the Jaguar is one of the bosses you’ll face in the Jaguar Temple

To be fair, flavor text has its place and is used to great effect here with the names of weaponry, blessings, and the text on curses. But at the end of the day, if you look at the game purely through a narrative lens, it’s generous even to describe it as bare bones.

GAMEPLAY – A BLOODY GOOD TIME

The good news is that all the time they could have spent on a story was still put to good use, and it shines nowhere more brightly than in the gameplay. As any good game should be, Curse of the Dead Gods is filled with choices, some more meaningful than others. Before you even start your run you’re choosing your weapons and Blessings. The latter are purchased with Crystal Skulls which you earn by defeating enemies. They offer bonuses or buffs that last as long as you have them enabled, but you’re limited to only three at any given time. There are times where three seems pretty constrained, but if you choose wisely you can set yourself up for success before you ever set foot in a temple.

You expand your arsenal by unlocking weapons with Jade Rings, a slowly-earned currency collected after defeating bosses. As one would expect the selection is limited to begin with, but soon enough you have a smorgasbord of deadly weaponry pulled from 11 different classes, each with its own distinct play style.

You like the classic sword and board setup? They’ve got you covered. Want to live out your Indiana Jones fantasies? You’ll never want for whips. They’ve even got throwing weapons like axes, stars, and knives if you prefer a nimble, from-a-distance approach. The only downside is your starting choices are randomized, but you can spend Crystal Skulls to increase both the variety and quality of weapons you choose from.

Players get to decide how they traverse the temple of their choosing, room by room.

You have three stats and, barring a Blessing buff, they always start at zero: Constitution (health), Dexterity (damage), and Perception (chance to find gold and treasure). You can increase these stats during your run by picking up relics and offering any items you find but don’t want to the Gods. Your kneejerk reaction might be to focus on Constitution and Dexterity, but don’t leave Perception out to dry.

Gold is what you use in-run to purchase upgrades and items from Altars, and without it your only choice is to offer Blood which increases your Corruption. Amass too much of that and you’ll be slapped with a Curse, which is a debuff or gameplay change meant to make your run more difficult. Some are more forgiving than others, but the fifth and final curse you obtain is always debilitating; not necessarily insurmountable, but certainly not something you can easily work around.

Combat is a delightfully fun mix of button mashing and finesse. Between your main, off-hand, and heavy weapons you can approach combat many different ways, but each is used with only one button (the game recommends using a controller, regardless of the platform you’re playing on). The finesse comes in with dodge rolls and parrying, both of which are extremely fluid and intuitive. Performing either also offers opportunities to do even more damage in retaliation, giving a low-floor-high-ceiling feeling to combat as a whole. You don’t need to dodge or parry outside of avoiding traps, but you’ll be well rewarded with critical damage and a satisfying feeling of supremacy if you do.

Exploring the temples requires players to be fleet-footed and adaptive.

The last major choice you’ll be faced with is which Temple you want to face. You can pick between the Temples of the Jaguar, Serpent, and Eagle, each with their own unique enemies and traps. Each temple is also thematically tied to one of your stats, so for example you may want a higher Constitution to deal with the heavy hitters in the Jaguar Temple, whereas the increased damage Dexterity provides is a little more beneficial against the seemingly heartier enemies of the Eagle Temple. That being said the distinction isn’t overt and seems to serve mainly as color coordination.

GRAPHICS AND AUDIO – TECHNICOLOR HORRORS & PULSE-POUNDING BEATS

The game looks as good as it feels. It’s the same style you’ll find in Passtech’s previous games (they’re only a 12 person studio, after all) but richer and sharper. The temple environments are distinct from each other while still feeling connected. The enemies and their many attacks also look great. The simple slashes of a Lurker are just as impressive, in their way, as the shattering attacks of the Dreadful Offspring. It’s a game full of color, even when you’re in the dark. True, much of the detail is lost without a consistent light source in the room, but visually there’s nothing quite like dodge rolling through a wave of technicolor death when you aggro a few too many foes at once.

Boss fights are intense and each is set to its own, unique soundtrack.

The sound effects are another point of excellence; enemies can sometimes sound similar, but the atmosphere is relentlessly eerie and the most individualistic enemies always have special audio cues. I’ll be having nightmares about the Harpy’s blood curdling screams for months. The mixing is so crisp and timbre so on point I tried a few runs without the sound on and it genuinely feels like a different game. Still well-designed and fun, but it doesn’t feel quite right without it.

On top of the fantastic sound effects, the soundtrack is thing of beauty unto itself. My only gripe is that, outside of the boss battles, there’s really only one song; a generic sort of battle music rife with thumping temple drums and anxious edges, more than serviceable as a means to make everything feel fervent. To their credit, they nail it where it counts. Each boss has their own theme music and it’s hard to pick a favorite. There were times I caught myself choosing a specific temple specifically because I wanted to hear a certain boss’s theme. Maybe that’s intentionally cooked into the design of the game: withhold the good music to be used as a reward for completing a temple section. But what I would give for a little variety between bosses!

Curse of the Dead Gods was reviewed on PC.