Ring of Pain

Rogue-lite games manifest in repeated playthroughs and gradual metagame progression. Complete mastery of the game may allow you to win a run on the first try. But for mortals there is no option other than to run many times to gain a better chance of winning. The notion of repeated play to challenge yourself to get knowledge and progression is apparent even in the name. Ring of Pain ↗ is a very good rogue-lite game with its theme embedded in every corner.

You step into the run which consists of a ring of rooms each being a ring of cards. You are in a position between two cards, and have at each moment at most 6 options of what to do. Step left/right, attack (or use) left/right card, use spell/scroll. Bad decisions in the first room can make you die right and there. Choosing well lets you walk through a roughly 25 minute game.

You may encounter creatures, items, upgrades, heals, chests, and many more things. Rooms represent various encounters, each with a specific feature or quirk – all quite unique. Some rooms even have hidden quests that, upon completion, grant a reward; what a delight to figure them out. By achieving various deeds you open further cards that may appear. When you unlock enough strong cards and become reasonably good at the game you get the ability to up the difficulty which makes the enemies a bit different, but mainly, adds new enemies for you to discover and get killed by.

Some items can make a run, some rooms make break it. In the end I got into a state where I would attempt a feat, but each one would be quite hard to do. At that stage, I stopped liking the randomness that item drops and room randomness bring to the table, but until then I quite enjoyed the experience.