Caves of Qud Reviews

Probably the best roguelike I have ever played. It's a real roguelike in the sense that nothing is unlocked between runs, other than a larger understanding of the game. The lore and atmosphere of this game is nearly unmatched. A lot of love has been put into it. You will encounter wise talking plants and incomprehensible ancient beings. You can grow extra arms and fight your way through with a half dozen swords, or you can use psychic powers to manipulate the world, and anything in between. The systems in this game offer incredible flexibility and opportunities for creativity. There's a hugely fleshed out world to explore and experiment with. Underneath the simple graphics which may be understandably off-putting (it was to me at first) is what has become one of my absolute favorite games. And despite the initial impression, this game manages to still be far more immersive than you would expect. The characters, descriptions, sounds, music, etc, come together brilliantly. The lengths of what is possible is genuinely remarkable. You feel like you're really uncovering a wonderful and expansive post-post-post apocalyptic world. As a recommendation for new players, spend some time on "journey" mode rather than "classic" mode. If you jump into classic mode first, it's easy to get frustrated because you may end up dying in a couple of minutes each time. This could encourage you to drop the game before giving it a real chance. Journey mode gives you the space to make mistakes and try things over again without a full reset of the map. It gives you the space to feel more comfortable taking risks and experimenting to learn the game's systems.

A gem of retro top-down exploration games with indulgent strata of lore a la classic text adventures. You can cook up some truly outlandish character builds and the world of Qud will welcome you with open arms, or other limbs, possibly too many appendages for your comfort level. Embrace the complexity and absurdity!

I've always been enamored with classical roguelikes and thier complexity and aesthetic. But I don't like PLAYING them. I hate my progress resetting when I die, and I die a lot, because I like trying before I think on occasion. But with this game's new mode, which provides save checkpointing, I've finally found a classical roguelike I can really get into and enjoy. And enjoy it I did! The gameplay is excellent. There are builds. They get crazy when done right. Really what I love in every RPG. But this one truly has enjoyable things in it. Mutate yourself! Install cybernetics! Stack on quasi-metaphysical relics! You also don't want to miss any of the writing or descriptions. The author of them has a beautiful and unusually evocative way with words I could never replicate. I love the graphical style, too. Now, don't get me wrong. It's not an easy game still. It IS a classical roguelike. I've achieved a minor victory, but I haven't managed to get to the endgame content and win in a major way yet. But I soundly think that I enjoyed this game and I will enjoy it many hours to come. It's really something special with a lot of love put into it.

In my top ten games of all time. Amazing writing, art, music, and ambiance. Absolutely wild roleplay/build potential. In my first (mostly) complete run I started out with a stun rod barely able to take down the easiest of enemies and ended up as a four armed gunboat/cyborg, mounted with phase cannons, each firing of which took the power grid of a small nation and caused an instant brownout, all the while barely being held aloft with dozens of antigravity spheres. If this sounds remotely cool to you, play this game. It takes a bit of time to sit down and just learn the controls/ui, but once you do it's absolutely worth it. It's clearly made for mouse/keyboard, but the Steamdeck controls are also surprisingly usable if that's your preferred mode.

The game is fun and is the type of game that should be right up my alley, but the emphasis on it being a super hardcore roguelike with next to no save options even when you turn on the quick save option (Which is broken and does not work properly) just makes the game not fun to play. Might be fun for some, but I don't like to lose hours of gameplay because the game lacks a proper save function. That kind of stuff is just a major waste of time and turn off for me. If they had a more RPG friendly mode that let players just play the game like a normal RPG with proper saves then I could see myself liking the game more, but as is even when you choose the normal adventure mode it relies too much on the hardcore element. You may not lose your character when you die, but you will lose hours of progress if you don't constantly back track to a town so the game will save. I'll probably get clowns from the hardcore players, but that's fine. I'm just not into the super hardcore roguelite the Dev went for. The controls, menus and basic systems are also more complicated than they need to be. Which I can forgive if the gameplay is solid, but for me the game just doesn't stick the landing.

This game is a classic roguelike with a unique art style that can be confusing at first, but once you get used to it, it sucks you into the world they have created. The developers are dedicated to constantly improving the game, and with a small but growing modding community, it has become one of my favorites.

14 hours already and i've only booted up the game three times. makes me think of pixel dungeon meets dwarf fortress. haven't been this hooked on a game in a long-time, and i know i've only scratched the surface of this.

Caves of Qud is a wonderful game, but my expectations were too high. Other reviews get into the positive aspects of this game, but I found very few people talking about how much is randomly generated. There is a main storyline, and several areas and dungeons which are hand-crafted, but they make up a small portion of the time I spent playing this game. While there are lots of wonderful ideas with faction relations, the wide array of items, and the lore to the world, I think all of these good ideas are hurt by leaning on random generation. Improving Faction relations is entirely dependent on the random people you may (or may not) find, and their random relationships with the factions. The wide array of items is great until you've found your 100th trade item and can't find a merchant to buy anything worthwhile from. The lore is great but the stuff you find outside the main story is mostly small inconsequential details, which are randomly generated themselves and don't really have any useful applications. I look forward to further updates to the game, but I think it is over-rated at the moment, with way too much filler.

Qud, it hits different. Whatever you're expecting from this, you're probably right but also so very wrong. There is so much magic hidden in this game. I think this is my first review ever, so yeah, it's that worth it.

I bought it because I like procedural, roguelike and turn-based game genres, but nevertheless the first impact with the game was quite strange. I was not sure whether to play it or refund it. Finally I decided to give it a chance and... it is damn good. Even the graphics, which sound rough at first, are extremely functional for the game .... and I love the style of the menus so much. Caves of Qud is another game that demonstrates that huge CPU and GPU power is not essential to play well and have fun. If you like the genre, buy it. You will not regret it.