Doors of Insanity Reviews

Kinda hard to review this particular game, but at the end of the day I would not recommend it. I am pretty much always looking for a new deckbuilder, and this one looked unique. I also think that looks are the one thing that really set it apart from other games in the genre because the psychedelic cartoonish vibe it is going for is pretty cool. I am also a sucker for games that let me see my equips on my character. But here is my cons list: Cons: Classes distinguish your runs, but they are mechanically shallow. There are very few unlocks between games that I could see having a substantial impact on future runs. There are very few cards in this game, and even less of them are unique and impactful. Pros: Everything looks neato. Has an interesting theme. Card design is good for what is there (although there are balance issues and strictly bad cards)

This is a fun game, people are to busy comparing it to STS. If all you do is compare games to the best, you are always gonna be disappointed. Maybe play the game for what it is. A fun RogueL that is worth a purchase. IMO

It's a early access game so it might get better however it's abit too clunky and the art direction is all over the place and the crashes.

Really enjoyable, funny, and overall great deck-builder RPG! Already coming to enjoy this game as much, if not more than Slay the Spire (a game I also really enjoy). I like the additional RPG systems in place here that, I think, help Doors of Insanity really stand out. If you want a really solid, tough, and comical deck-builder this is for you.

It's really barebones at the moment. It has potential to get fleshed out in later patches as it's early access but I cannot recommend this game until then.

Huge potential, way too buggy for a full release. Baddies will say that they're doing X damage and will do X+Y instead. Cards that claim they will do extra damage or block when conditions are met just straight up won't work some of the time. Card that claims that it has a random cost turn to turn will randomly change cost while it's still in your hand. Card that claims that you require "20 absorb" to use cannot be used unless you have more than 20 absorb and actually COSTS 20 absorb. Stick with the game they very obviously were inspired by until the bugs are ironed out.

I would be lying if I said this wasn't "Slay the spire but...". That being said, its not trying to hide the fact that it takes inspiration from STS. Its proud of it, and its doing everything it can to improve on that formula. You have 6 energy instead of 3, but this lets them do interesting stuff with 1 energy cost cards. Cards do like 25 damage base, but this lets them mess around with incremental bonuses and debuffs. There is additional RNG involved in the form of crit and damage-ranges, which I think is a big frowny-face, but not much to do about it. Long story short, its a love letter/remediation of slay the spire that has tons of style (which rocks) and some of its own ideas, some of which work well, some of which kind of suck. All in all I had a fun 7ish hours with it, which was enough to beat it twice. I'll return once there's more content, and hopefully more than one class.

For one the whole "lol so random" aesthetic just seems trying to hide that they couldn't get a cohesive artstyle going. But the real issue is the balancing. You start with 200 hp, attacks do around 20 damage and your block is around 20 block. The word "around" does a lot of lifting there. Because everything is uneven values. You are supposed to use "dice" to mitigate the difference between what 2 mana worth of block gives you and the enemy attack but it never quite works out. And then there are horribly bad cards. Like 10% Crit chance for 2 turns for 2 mana. This is a joke and shouldn't even be in the game. You have defense and attack buffing equipment but defense lowers damage by 1 and attack raises it by 1 which again if the base damage is 20 for all attacks it doesn't matter if you have 2 or 3 defense. But most gear only gives 1 or 2 def. Also this card: gain 2 def for 1 turn for 2 mana. Then there are summons that for only 2 mana sometimes can deal 20 damage per turn aka they are a free attack each turn (the defense summons only give you 6 block though so why even bother taking those?). I won my first pvp game by not buying any equipment and getting summons and voila the opponent that had full armor died in 3 turns. The game doesn't have a slay the spire like map but instead just tells you how many rooms to the boss and otherise nothing. "When Stanley came to a set of 3 open doors he choose the one in the middle because they were all regular fights so why even bother having 3 doors?"

I want to like this game but can't recommend it in its current state. The style of the game is great, it's got humour and a great aesthetic, but it's currently style over substance. In terms of a deckbuilder it feels very shallow. There doesn't seem to be a strong potential of synergy between the cards, so most turns feel boring with very little interesting decision making. There are currently no different classes/characters, not sure if this is coming but coupled with the lack of interesting interactions between cards the game gets stale really quickly, there's no real identity to your character and every run just feels the same. The gear is generally just basic stat boosts and there seem to be very few relics that make a big difference to play. The ability to level up your character is a nice idea, but it's essentially just the same as gear, basic stat boosts. There's no pathing which is another aspect that takes away from making interesting decisions. The first area feels like it's setup to be 80% normal battles, so a large part of your initial experience is just clicking on any random door because there's no discernible difference. By your third run this gets pretty tedious. Lack of pathing, no health reset after end bosses and what seems like a low encounter rate for healing events also means you need to play very defensively which leads to drawn out battles that really emphasise how bland the cards are. Other little things like not being able to preview rewards you get offered in events means more blind clicking, and so far a lot of the events just feel more punishing than rewarding. Most of the time you either take damage to avoid a reward, or you choose a reward option that is really underwhelming and seems to always come with a drawback that doesn't make it worthwhile. The balance of the game feels off to me in general. There's a dice mechanic that seems just tacked on, maybe I haven't come across the cards that really take advantage of the dice, but it is rarely impactful. The dice add a bit of damage or armour to a turn, but that's just another binary decision without much depth. The cards I've seen that interact with dice so far just add more or reroll them. There are typical polish issues that you get with Early Access which is fine, but some things are fairly grating, like the twitchiness of selecting a card or the sometimes difficult to read font being used on the cards. Battle interactions tend to lack impact and don't feel satisfying. Overall this is an avoid for me. The price it's being offered at isn't that much lower than other popular roguelite deckbuilders that give a more satisfying experience. It's a shame that all this style isn't being backed up by good gameplay, I hope they can turn things around and make this an interesting game.

It's not all bad, but there are enough things bugging and annoying me, to give this a thumbs down when we compare it to its competition, with the same price tags and early access attachments. If we look past all the obvious bugs that comes with a early access game, and go to the core of the game play, is the phasing and progression feeling off. To begin with, you will always start with the same 9/10 cards in a new run. I thought to begin with, that the purgatory system would add more and more unique cards, so every player had their own starting hands. I was wrong, it only add 1 new option after each run, and delete the older option. I do not like deckbuilders who force us into using basically the same set of cards every single run from the get go. That is the biggest mistake from the developers, and I doubt this is a mechanic they are gonna change. If so, it would completely change how I look at this game, be course that single thing alone, add so much more diversity. They tried to give the game diversity with the gem shop, where you can add more cards, gears etc etc. to the runs, but those things are not equipment you start with, but instead find in a new run. You still start with the same set of cards every new run no matter what, but might after 100 of hours of runs, have a very diverse selection of stuff in the runs. But getting to that point, will take far to long. I had 9 normal doors in a row. With almost the same set of monsters to kill. That is just boring. There are simply to many doors with just normal monsters, compared to events, merchants, witches, or what ever else they could put in. Killing the same stuff over and over, that many times in a row, is just lazy game progression to me. In my furthest run, which was 39 levels of doors, I had 1 elite door, 2 merchants, 1 well & 2 witches, the rest was normal doors, and that is counting that on many of the levels you get 2 or 3 doors. So go figure how device it is, when it comes to actually choosing something. Choosing between 3 normal doors, is like giving me the option to pick between my 3 white shirts in my dresser. The gear is boring, in the sense, it is just a stat booster. No set bonuses, or anything unique about it. You can't even sell all the tons of useless gear you get, to make it feel worth your while taking it, instead of just skipping. Again, lazy game design if you ask me, if I compare it to other games in the same genre and what they have done with gear, and how it interact with other mechanics. I really hope they turn this game around with updates, as it is quite obvious how much time went into make some really nice aesthetics, cool music, and graphics for a game like this. But for now, do the game feel really weak and thin in its core. And again, there are plenty of bugs, more then I'm used too, I'll allow that, in any sort of early access. My review is only based around the core game play and how it made me feel. This could of course all change, and therefor also my review. Time will tell, if this stands.