Shadowcrawl: The Dark Pilgrimage Reviews

If you like roguelikes, horror, sci-fi and a good bit of "Lovecraftian" (aka eldrich?) stuff - this is for you. It's like playing Infra Arcana, but in future, where technology, magic, and otherworldly gods cults co-exist and intertwine. I really liked game mechanics - simplistic at first glance, but making for an engaging action, where you still have to think, otherwise get overrun and eaten (stabbed, disintegrated whatever you want) by hordes of enemies. I've got this game for 50% off, and I think its worth double of its price at least. I highly recommend it.

A simple to pick up, but hard to master top-down dungeon crawler rouge-like with a deep meta game. There is an emphasis on speed, and can turn into arcade levels once you're familiar with the controls. There are quests each floor of the dungeon, as well as a town and a boss of each floor. Something that really blended in nicely was the music, it doesn't stand out, but it's not out of place. It sets the mood for a retro-futuristic dungeon setting and you'll find yourself 'grooving' to it as you do combos, which can average around the x200 range.

A different twist on a roguelike, simple but with a lot of content. An interesting theme and story with a fun gameplay despite the few bugs. The UI could be improved but its workable. If you enjoy roguelikes, this one is definately worth it.

I love it. Great game. I would like to find an option to silence the music. But the game has enough dept to intrigue the player to continue his quest to end this game. Developpers to keep an eye on. Good job.

This is a very special game. Truly weird and obtuse, this feels like something in the realm of Golden Krone Hotel - a scaled down roguelike with a modern presentation and bunch of quality of life adjustments, not to mention the potent and engrossing theme. Definitely buy it if you have an interest in the genre - this one is truly different.

This is the most realistically "retro" game I've ever played. Whoever wrote this was actually around in the 80's and 90's. The music is fitting. They've got the little graphics settings you can make which will make the game look like it's on a CRT. As a roguelike, it is simple to pick up and light to play. Nothing too hardcore. You should be able to figure this out in 5 minutes with the little pop up tips that appear as you play. Enemies here have morale and run away, which is something most games like this don't have. That said, I'm not going to go over the top here. Overall Shadowcrawl is a well made, simplistic roguelike game with some nice touches, not some indie game of the year or something you'll spend 500 hours on. It is overpriced at $10, but I got this at 50% off and I'm pretty happy with the value for that price.

When I spoke with the developer of Shadowcrawl at a games convention a few years back, his vision for this game was pretty simple: make it a complete clusterfuck. He had worked as a programmer and creative team member in the games industry for some time and was completely annoyed with how much got cut from a game to save time and meet release deadlines. Shadowcrawl is less of a game on its own and more of an experiment. How many of those weird, one-off ideas can you shove into a game system before it becomes convoluted and annoying? Turns out, not many. But despite that, Shadowcrawl is surprisingly easy to pick up and play and obviously has quite a bit of depth because there are so many weird, disparate system mechanics clashing with one another that for those of you that can survive the initial headache, you're gonna have one helluva time. However, there is quite a bit of Shadowcrawl content that has fallen by the wayside (I mean, seriously, what the hell happened to that card game concept?), so it's kind of disproven its own point of "you can put as many systems and whimsical ideas into the game as long as you have enough time."

I recorded much of my experiences with ShadowCrawl, if you prefer an Audio/Visual review of the game. Take a look for a more complete picture. https://youtu.be/fWzICHaKvSo I did not like ShadowCrawl. Why? Well, for MANY reasons. As always, I will strive to be Productive in my critiques, in the hope that perhaps the dev will address these simple to correct problems that really tanked my perspective of the game. A reexamination of the numbered issues below, & corrections to them, would REALLY help this game, & might cause more people to review it favorably, which may in turn result in more sales if paired with a promoted discount. Here we go. [h1]1. Please add volume options off the main screen[/h1], the music is too loud, I can barely think straight with it blaring in my ears. Worse, there are no volume options in the game, period, so not great. Hell of a first impression game! So, after I exited the game in a panic due to the loud repetitive crap blaring in my ears, I adjusted my desktop volume & restarted the game, and [h1]2. I Could not initially complete the character selection! [/h1] After MUCH clicking around, I finally found out that you have to press “E” to confirm your selection! The game NEVER tells you this! WHY?! Why not just let another mouse click do it, one mouse click was enough to highlight the race I wanted, [b]what was the purpose of requiring the E key for that?! Was it to increase Shadowcrawl’s refund rate?! Because I’m sure that’s the effect it’s having! [/b] [h1]3. Rebinding keys issues. [/h1] I tried to rebind the WASD movement to standard number pad movement, as is common & preferred on RogueLikes, but doing so screwed things up. You see, ShadowCrawl got confused, conflating the number keys, with the ARROW KEYS, different keys, but the game thinks they are the same! And, for some unknown reason, the “examine” command is mapped to the arrow keys, & which only works 1 tile away! Again WHY?! So, what was happening when I tried to bump damage a foe, the game thinks I want to examine it, constantly spamming the giant monster popup window over the game screen. GREAT! Anyway, I ended up having to change it back to the default so the game would at least control somewhat adequately. I should also mention: ShadowCrawl did NOT have a button to reset the key-bindings to the default, so hopefully you remember what they were! Now, I should mention that you can examine some things like monsters with the mouse, but if the whole idea was to be able to effectively play ShadowCrawl with just a keyboard, why make such a poor choice by binding it to the arrow keys, & not bothering to distinguish between arrow & numpad keys? Not a good idea. That’s a common theme in ShadowCrawl: [b] EXTREMELY QUESTIONABLE Design Choices abound in this game, absent ANY real attempt to smooth out the whiplash those unwise choices create. Awkward & Unusual controls, + difficult to use key remapping, which you can’t even do in game! A HIDEOUS UI, + No Way to minimize or turn it off! [b] Loud & Looping Music, + No volume options in the game, period! [/b] Huge Red Flags here, like honest feedback was not gained prior to launch. Or worse, was gained, yet not acted upon. It is unfortunate that it must come at such a late stage. But, better later, then never! [h1]4. This is the worst UI I have EVER seen in a game! [/h1] EVER. And I have played MANY games. Many. Worse yet, [b] YOU CANNOT RESIZE, MINIMIZE, OR TURN OFF ANY OF IT! Why?! [/b] Look at this mess: https://imgur.com/a/lrducot At highest resolution for the game:1920x1440 Really, take it all in. Absorb all that disgusting screen litter. What was the dev thinking? First off, why is there a giant + and – on the side of the screen, when the mouse wheel works perfectly fine to zoom? Or, the zoom key could be bound to ANYTHING else! Why does the game have to constantly tell me what “I” is, or what “q” does, or that the ONE ability I can actively use is tied to the spacebar. Why not allow me to toggle that reminder off? It is only 3 keys! I can remember 3 keys! That HP Orb could be MUCH smaller too! Also, a lot of the time that little message log, the ONE THING on the UI that could stand to be bigger, doesn’t keep pace with what is happening in game! So, you have to manually click that down arrow each time to get it up to the present. You can’t even hold the arrow down! ☹ If all those UI changes were made, there would be more room for the follower UI element, that 4 way cross of unknown abilities they have, while your character only has the one. Never a good idea to constantly make the main character feel envious & inferior to their 1 LVL buddies, or the enemies, and ShadowCrawl does both! It shouldn’t do either. [h1]Gameplay: [/h1] What you were waiting for right? Let’s pretend you can overlook all the above issues, I tried to, and IF the gameplay was good, I could have perhaps succeeded in that. Sadly, it is not. ☹ You see, [h1]5. You Cannot Put in your Character Stats! [/h1] Any of them! In an RPG Dungeon Crawler all about getting stronger & descending to the deep dark & facing whatever lurks at the bottom. You can’t even name your character. In fact, your ONLY means of Character customization is the race/class you select that the start, Which of 2 items you choose to equip, (which are retained after death) & Whatever shrines you stumble upon. That’s it. And I should mention that the Shrines are a binary YES/NO choice, & almost a false choice, as who says no to more power? And the classes mainly just serve as a difficulty switch, as the caster is MUCH stronger & can blast foes from 2 tiles away, while the fighter gets a stun that does no damage, & the rogues get a melee attack. Ya. Abilities are also used for FREE, with No COOLDOWN, so can be spammed, & there is no hunger clock or other timer pushing you forward, so you can take your sweet time & spam your overpower abilities to stunlock / blast everything away. The combat itself boiled down to just muscle memory space + key direction of enemy, no reason to mix it up. If surrounded, fall back to a corridor to chain stun & smash it to bits. No skill required, no thinking required, thus no depth present. I only died due to literal boredom as I was playing, the game could not keep my attention, so I gave up on the tedious back and forth, & just started bump damaging my way into groups, & got surrounded by hordes of little 1 shot wonders. That is the only real way to die in this; death by a thousand paper-cuts. And the monsters in this are a joke, no personality, 1 shot wonders ☹. They are ranged or melee. Ranged is tougher, & can fire right though anyone in front of them, so of the two main types, those are the ones who will hurt you more. Bosses are tougher, but can be stun-locked & kitted just like the rest, assuming you still have the inclination and patience to keep playing the game once you reach them. Also, ShadowCrawl is a 4 direction movement, not 8 direct movement game, so don’t think for one minute that you can do any “wild” things like move or attack diagonally! Only some monsters get to do that! Progression-wise, you gain Lvls as you descend, getting EXP as you reach the portal, & unlock character ability at pre-set lvls. But you do not choose any of it. ShadowCrawl is an RPG with very little in the way of player choice & thus player agenda, as even the much toted god/shrine system, is just MORE POWER, & what player says no to that? My review might have seemed harsh, but I believe it was necessary. Now, I would have gone easy on this game, except for the fact that it is NOT early ACCESS, and has been out for about 3 years, and the latest game update is from 2019. So Abandoned as well! With BASIC Issues left unresolved. It Looks LAZY, like the dev just didn’t care. So, going full bore on this one is MORE than Justified! Am I wrong? Let me know. And I will update the review if issues I highlighted above get corrected. Let’s hope they do.

I left this game for around a year after I first tried it to see if it fixed any of its faults. It didn't. The game is a confusing mess. You pick from 3 races: Human, Trog or Nyn. They differ in 4 stats. Health, str, agility, tech. Health and str are fairly self-evident. Agi tends to vary from game to game. Tech is a weird stat. The game does not tell you what any of these stats do. Does tech literally just boost the classes skill damage? So you'd never care about it otherwise? Each gets a perk. The human tells you what his does... when you pick his class? What? Not when I pick race? Same for Nyn. Trog doesn't say what it does at all. Then you pick a class, with a difficulty rating and an ability. How is difficulty chosen? No idea. What do the abilities do? Well, for once, I have an idea; the game actually goddamn tells you something. If you pick the right race/class combo. Like Trog knight. Says shield knight stuns. But Trog Engineer? Just says its a 'battle mage'. Even though its not a mage. Doesn't say how its spell works. Once in game, I have an ability on space and an ability on 4. They both shoot 2 tiles infront of me with an AoE. What is the one on 4? No idea. If I equip certain gear, space changes, but given space stuns, space is my class skill. Not 4. 4 is something else. And there's no way to inspect it. Then you just kind of run around fighting hundreds of enemies that literally can't hurt you at all for the first like 3-4 floors, give no exp and seem to serve no purpose beyond dying in 1 turn each. Your skills have no cooldown and cost nothing far as I can tell so once you get the ability to move 2 tiles at once to constantly outrange melee by 1 turn most enemies become even more worthless. There are a few things you can do in the dungeon: -Grab items -Get annoyed because you can barely carry anything and every goddamn chest has like 3 items -Press tab to switch compass to tell you where to go to grab better items, find NPC's or fight a boss -Sacrifice allies on a pedastal for an item 1 time then never again because it seems to always give the same meh item -Touch the magic infinite shield recharge totems that appear to just make you invincible -Fight a boss, the only enemy in the game able to hurt you at all Anything else, I ain't seeing. Apparently you can worship a god. How? Why? Dunno. You'd think altars but they never seem to do it. If you spam E to make NPC's finally shut the hell up you can recruit them. They come with, so far, 2-3 abilities. What do they do? Game doesn't tell you. Again. I had a guy who could shoot an instakill beam or hit one dude in melee and not kill him. Why would I not just beam? Does the melee have a status? No idea. Had another who could shoot multiple beams. They all 1 shot things. No difference I could see and no way to see the difference. NPC's don't use your turn but function like an extra turn so they further trivialize non-bosses by allowing you to run away spamming lasers for free every single turn at no cost. So you just wonder around a remarkably bland world filled with items and enemies not worth caring about fighting with attacks you don't care about with NPC's you don't care about because it tells you goddamn nothing and as such damn near every attack and item feels functionally identical. I can't even get immersed in the world because so little of it has any explanation. My tech guy doesn't feel like a tech guy. His attack doesn't say he is one. It just says space.

How did I not see this game release on Steam ? What we have here is a true gem : an oldschool roguelike with modern ideas ! It starts simply enough : you pick between 3 races, then 3 classes, and off you go... but you'll quickly notice this isn't your typical fantasy roguelike. I'd try to explain the story, but I don't want to spoil anything, and... I also wouldn't know where to start. It's as weird as it gets ! References to the Necronomicon and the works of H.P. Lovecraft abound, and give this game a truly eerie feeling. The artstyle is amazing : definitely retro, but with a great sense of detail, and everything fits together just right. I feel like I'm playing an old dungeon crawler on my Amiga 500 again ! The soundtrack is somewhat limited but I love the chiptune. It does get repetitive after a while, and the dev is working on a sound preference screen to change the volume. As much as I like the music, I'd like it to be quiter after a while. The sounds fit the style of the game : retro and serviceable, with some sounds being a bit too loud / repeated each turn. Gameplay-wise, it's really good : it plays fast (for a turn-based game) if you know what you're doing, but beware ! The game can be unforgiving if you let yourself be surrounded, or if you don't pay attention to what you're fighting. The game plays equally well with a gamepad or keyboard, but I prefer the former, as it feels more natural. The UI is well-done and entirely usable with a gamepad. So what makes this roguelike different ? It's all about the setting, the choice of music, lore, weird powers that you can get (I started worshipping a meat god and became a demon !), the acid trip-like feeling of the whole game (reminding me a lot of Hotline Miami in that sense)... Crazy things happen throughout the game, like getting a warning about something you did affecting all your savegames (I'm not kidding !). Speaking of savegames, and that will probably make some roguelike purists frown, the characters are carried between playthroughs, levels and items. I like that design choice, as it matches the crazy theme of the game. The whole game feels like a very personal love letter to the genre, with lots of crazy ideas thrown in, making for a truly enjoyable roguelike experience. Greatly recommended !