The Origin of Madness: A Lovecraftian roguelike review

approaching The Source of Madness review We have experienced a range of different and conflicting emotions, we must admit. Anyone who knows even the name of H.P. Lovecraft only laterally knows how much his work has influenced the horror imagery that now pervades all genre productions, or nearly all genre productions.

There’s no denying that we were pleasantly surprised and enchanted when we saw the first stills and first trailers for Source of Madness. The procedurally generated sprawling creatures caught our attention as well as the general mood, but there’s one huge but, we needed to figure out if the good premise was actually met in the finished game.

Let’s also add a bit of Bloodborne dressing that doesn’t hurt at all in terms of track and light usage, and you can see how much anticipation we’ve come to play with it. Let’s get started right away: the game isn’t perfect and full of flaws, but it’s definitely fun and like all roguelikes it’s a game. repetition value bordering on obsessive compulsive.

men Transport Fortress They did a great job especially considering it was a very small team of 3 and we would like to commend what has been done for the difficulties such a small group of programmers faced during the development stages. However, we must try to put all the points in all the “i”s of this Source of Madness.

Date

land of Crete It has been invaded by monsters and terrifying creatures, and we, as Helpers of a mysterious sect, must reach the source of the madness to understand what’s going on, we will try not to go crazy along the way. The facilities are simple and the priest’s path is littered with traps of all kinds and types.

we will wake up inside Tower of Madness displaced and not understanding what to do and where to go. As we begin to explore this place, we will first find different characters that we will have to deal with during our adventure, and then finally, the door that will allow us to access the disturbed world that awaits us, will offer us an incalculable amount with open arms. your deaths. The character’s background is deliberately drawn for a simple reason: every time we die we’ll have to say goodbye to that particular hero (with date of birth and death), and then we’ll get another sidekick and have to start over. our journey.

gameplay

“Death and rebirth” isn’t exactly the most appropriate catchphrase for the Carry Castle title, as stated, we’ll never have the same playable character. We explain it better: after he dies, we will take control of another sidekick, male or female, with exactly the same appearance as the previous one, thus adding continuity to the game. Frankly, like everyone else rogue even here it is respected, when the run is over, all the collected equipment will be lost, as it will have to start “cleaning” from inside the Tower.

The strange thing is that we will always carry with us the currency that we managed to get in the previous attempt to unlock some kind of bonus. spherography in the main centre. These consist of passive skills, active or advanced starter equipment, and even special classes that can be unlocked after visiting the respective altars during our happy raids. Each class obviously has its own characteristics and special abilities: the fire mage, for example, releases a fireball that explodes a few minutes after firing, inflicting damage on us as well as the enemies.

Speaking of skills, they are what differentiate each game. equipment and the inherent abilities of each class; We will have some slots where you can place evocative mechanisms that will assist us by shooting offensive or defensive objects such as rings, headdresses, stones, or even magic shots by following us or positioning them as defensive towers. All equipment is divided into classes from common to legendary, with a fairly generous drop rate, especially from the second part of the game.

There are checkpoints at the end of every road. nine biomes Available where you can save the game and fill healing bottles, also can be unlocked from the skill tree. During our “experiments” we will not take a moment’s rest except for those happy little islands represented by the various islands. shops scattered around maps, often before bosses or mini-bosses. We will be able to buy equipment from them two traders, one regular and one “special”, use the same coins as currency, which we then need to use to buy upgrades. Certainly this is one of the most interesting mechanics: we will have to decide whether to save on the purchase to get upgrades after the next (definite) death or, conversely, whether to sell everything we have to get those 2 or 3. Upgrades that will allow us to defeat the boss and continue the story, which, incidentally, will take between 8 and 12 hours depending on our abilities.

Technique and style

Every single pixel in the game radiates Lovecraft and his love for his work. All enemies are procedurally generated and this constantly faces different dangers to approach differently.

procedural it is also used to create game environments and best of all certainly gives in open spaces or in any case with buildings, really interesting and fun to explore, intensely showing the side of criticism when it comes to caves and confined spaces. caves. A bit of originality and diversity is actually lost here.

Clear from the design and combat system ideas, we unfortunately have to point out some issues that greatly impacted the experience. The first is definitely one of the strengths, and that’s the random generation of enemies. The idea behind the artificial intelligence that creates the monsters is very interesting, but unfortunately it is so “tentacled” that it is often not clear from which side the blows you take are coming, and it is frustrating when we find ourselves. 3 or 4 of them are on it and you cannot act without a specific reason.

Additionally, we should point out that minor characterization of these monsters that are exactly the same. Perhaps adding some “special” monsters apart from bosses, other than procedurally generated ones, would have benefited the overall experience. Aside from the overall quality of the sprites and effects, it’s not exactly the best compared to the title’s overall bill, but it’s more than acceptable. Almost all of the maps are at a decent level, even if they don’t scream a miracle, given the random generation, the development team certainly did a great job.

A separate discussion for the main hub, the Tower of Madness: absolutely huge and empty, few possible interactions, and spaces very far apart. We may have gotten very used to it in recent years, but shortening the distances to reach various characters and doors would definitely help with the pace of the game. Perhaps another negative note should be added to the overall game, with our assistant being a bit too “light” and not perfectly animated. Then his jacket almost seems to shuffle through the various animations that give it a not-so-pleasant sketchy feel.

from perspectivesound we’re not satisfied with the soundtrack, which is still nice, but the monsters’ voices and lines are the only catchy thing, it’s completely out of proportion in terms of sound balance; we had to put the earphones away too often to silence the screams of the creatures.