Curse of the Dead Gods

Very intense tomb raiding while getting assaulted by various monstrosities under a daaark cuuurse.
The combat is very satisfying. The usual easy to learn and hard to master mechanics. Really love the importance of stamina management in fights and how if played well you can never have your stamina depleted.
Parrying can sometimes be too abusive, but occasionally feels janky with some attacks and makes it feel like the enemies just went through you.
The curses are the most interesting element because they can alter your run in significant ways. Some ignorable and some having you be cautious about every action.
Nice weapon variety, but I mostly ignored the two handed weapons because they felt more risky and did not feels as strong as they should be except on a rare occasion when you get a really powerful one.
Traps are cool, but most of the times they are only a real threat if you are being air headed while walking a corridor between the combat arenas. There are also traps in some combat arenas, but I wish they were inside more combat arenas because it is fun to use the traps against the enemies. The worst feeling is how often one of the enemies indirectly destroys them.
Light is also an important mechanic and to simplify it: stand in light = good, stand in dark = bad
3 primary elemental affliction you can apply to enemies or even suffer yourself which are fire and anything afflicted with fire also creates light and deals damage over time, but just a little. Lightning attacks can mark enemies with a lightning mark and then some attacks trigger the lightning mark and detonate them to deal damage and turn enemies on fire. Poison is just damage over time and the worst element to be afflicted by because it slows stamina regeneration.
Biggest complaint I have would be the difficulty progression where in the beginning I found it easy and was never scared of my curse build up. Then there is the golden middle where it feels just appropriately difficult. And then at the endgame it just becomes tedious. It is even worse because the later parts do not add anything new besides arbitrary difficulty bumps. Every single boss became a test of endurance and patience which made them super tedious. I did manage to get to the last run, but I never finished it not only because of how the difficulty made the experience tedious, but on many good runs I experienced this terrible glitch where I would end up outside of the map which forces me to restart the run and I could not be bothered to beat the same run with one difficulty augmentation.
This is a good game, but heed my warning about the downsides because they are not ignorable.

Nice game

gold is not needed in this game

Felt pretty hard. Art style is great and I really like how the character looks.

Very satisfying combat. Light/darkness mechanic is unique. Played it like crazy on my steam deck. Definitely recommending to people who likes isometric action games like hades.

It's a great game, but for a controller game not having the option to change the button layout to match with Playstation controllers is pretty unacceptable in this day and age. Especially considering the game has been out for 3 years now. Devs have had more than enough time for a patch, so there's really no excuse.

If you have an Xbox controller and you're used to using it then it's a great game and you should buy it. If you're like me and you only have a Playstation controller and for whatever reason you have a hard time wrapping your brain around translating the buttons then I don't recommend it. Skill issue I guess ^.^

Truly an exciting game with crisp combat mechanics. After 120 hours of gameplay, I am only disinstalling it because it gives me eye inflammation.

That's my first roguelite and i must enjoy the game as much time i need, Curse Of The Dead Gods is a game with one of the best potential that i've seen on my life

It is frustrating Steam still doesn't offer a 'mixed' review option. Curse of the Dead Gods is a prime example of a game that needs it. If you can accept this game's flaws upfront and are the right sort of person, I tentatively recommend it; There's diamonds shining in the dung pile.

This game does VERY little to cushion your suffering. The benefits you can earn to carry-over into future runs are minimal, and unlike other games of this genre, they give you no tools to reliably dig yourself out of a hole that the RNG put you in. Sure, the RNG might abruptly toss you a ladder to climb out of a pit it threw you into, but it won't be on your own merits and a clever use of game mechanics. I get the impression the developers think this is charming, but it really isn't because of the flaws I detailed below.

What I love about this game:

1: The combat is incredibly gratifying. When you're playing well and have a set of weapons that you really enjoy, it is some of the cleanest, best combat you'll experience in a game like this, bar none.

2: The entire aesthetic of the game is great, the variety of enemies and dungeon designs between the three wings of the tomb is phenomenal (I especially love the Aztec-Punk technology vibe of the middle wing)

What I hate about it:

1: The weapon balance is terrible. Because they're so slow and clunky, roughly 50% of the weapons in this game will just get you killed if you try to use them past the first tier / floor of each wing of the tomb you're exploring, compared to the handful of weapons that are essentially the golden children of this game (Examples: Dagger offhand's incredibly generous I-Frames and the bow's consistent cheese-power). This is extra frustrating because there's so many cool and interesting weapons that you'll be forced to ignore and pass up because you know they'd just screw up your run, and if you don't land on the 'good' weapons your odds of completing a run are drastically reduced.

2: The game expects an enormous time commitment from you per run. A lot of the negative reviews for this game talk about the game being disrespectful of your time, and they are spot on. Progression to improve your odds on future runs is VERY slow, and the RNG can tank runs so easily that you can be 25 minutes into what might end up being a 45-55 minute run and know you're more or less screwed.

I'll keep playing this game because I do enjoy it and want to beat it (When I'm not seething at its circus act of BS, like a single hit in a string of projectiles locking you into taking half of your HP and another tier of corruption from ONE hitting you)

I really love this game , smart decision making and managing resources while handling debuffs . overall really you should give it a try if you loved hades . its quite different but inspired from hades

It's a very fun game. Great art and combat. Various weapon and curses allow different builds. The overall difficulty is a bit beyond me, and I'm glad I can lower the difficulty through settings.

This is an enjoyable rogue lite.
Positives:
- Snappy, responsive, and visceral-feeling combat.
- Bright, popping visuals with a unique aesthetic.
- Skill based combat gets better when you learn the timing.
- The FEEL of combat is what keeps me coming back.
- Weapon choices feel cool and blending the perks with weapons can give you that "I'm a genius for making this combo" feeling.

Negatives:
- It gets to be a bit grindy. It feels less about my skill and more about having a weapon that does enough damage. In looter shooters this is described as a "Bullet Sponge" enemy, and the bosses can feel that way.
- While the game in the first 4 hours feels awesome, it begins to feel much more grindy as time progresses forward and choices you make to get to a power level that feels appropriate for the third tier of bosses doesn't feel as good. You have to keep grinding to get drops that will actually progress you forward or really give up on other options that make you viable and it feels less like an interesting choice and more like giving up what you'd need to progress realistically... so keep grinding until you increase the drop rate of actually cool weapons or trinkets/perks.
- The time it takes to get through the first areas feels longer and longer the more you play. In other Rogue-Lites, I'll blitz through the beginning areas or unlock shortcuts, but this one keeps ya grinding.
- Not much in the way of story/narrative so it's relying heavy on art/combat.

In Summary: If you like ARPG Rogue Lites, this is a good one. Though it can be a bit grindy, the core mechanics are solid. It's made by a small team, it's fun, and it's not that expensive... just buy it and support games like this. :)

nice game

I've got well over 100 hours in this game on the Switch, maybe close to 200.

This game is such an underrated gem. The controls are incredibly responsive, on par with Hades, Zelda, the best of the best. It's difficult. You'll have to learn enemy attacks and prioritize evading over attacking most of the time.

When you get into a flow of perfect dodge/parrying once or twice then answering with a kill, repeat, it's so satisfying. It's one of the few games that give me that "whoa, is that me playing right now?" feelings.

I really enjoy this slower pace of combat. It feels like a rogue-like dark souls game.

If you got this on sale, its worth it.
Its a lazy and contentwise low efford roguelite.
But it was worth the price.
Devs should remove the stick from their rears and copy stuff from better games.

A game heavily inspired by hades.
And I found it quite enjoyable. So if you're into these types of games then you won't be disappointed.

good

Super fun rogue like, great artstyle and gameplay. Somewhat reminiscent of Hades (top down and artstyle but that's about it imo), Slay the Spire (with the way you progress in your runs). But the game has it's own mechanics and uniqueness wheter it be in terms of how it plays or the progression in the runs / the meta progression.
Can be frustrating sometimes towards the end imo.
I definitely recommend it, especially on sale !

Fun game!

Really good game. Very polished and quite hard.

Solid game

Pretty good

Overshadowed by Hades

Godawful. Feels like a crummy ios game instead of a rouguelike.

This game is like if Hades took more design notes from Sekiro, and you played as grizzled dad Hades instead of his son. It's hard to recommend this game to people who liked Hades, though.

This game defines itself by its difficulty. In the News section for this game, you'll see that the devs asked for Steam Award votes in 2021, specifically in the 'best game you suck at' category. This shows a self-awareness to how tightly-tuned this game is to focus on timing, trigger reflexes, and the sheer frequency with which you die.

Grinding and progress is S L O W W W W, and that is part of what makes me hesitate to recommend it. As a rogue-lite, there are currencies that persist after death, spent at the hub, that unlock more options to find in runs. The only way to begin runs stronger is to unlock Altars and level them up, and there's no way to increase the currency drop rates. Not even after the cost jumps ten-fold. (There may be an option unsealed after defeating a level-2 run, but I have not managed that yet, not with how FAST the enemies are.)

There is a HUGE range of potential unlockable weapons, and the currency for THOSE is even rarer, but only spent in bouts of 5 or 10, not a hundred or a thousand like the other, so you WILL see the range of options on offer during runs expand at a pretty good pace. Your starting strength per run will remain stubbornly low for a LONG TIME, though. (If you know of a way the game lets you increase drop rates later on, or a good spot to farm for currencies, please share in the Discussion I started on grinding spots. This game would make BANK as a pay-to-win for these currencies, man...)

There's almost no story, no NPCs, no side quests, no voiced lines aside from combat grunts. Trade is done at altars in silence. No one else but the protag in the temple. Some background lore can be found in the journal entries on the monsters, but those only unlock after defeating 50 of each, 10 for bosses. So you won't know anything about them but their names for a looooong time.

In terms of accessibility, there are lots of options in the menus, as indie games tend to have. There is even an Assist Mode, where you can tune the game's systems to your liking, everything from increasing the parry window or giving you a tiny heal at the start of each room, to FULLY GOING INVINCIBLE.

The devs make the mystifying decision to smack a penalty for using ANY of these helpers onto the whole save file, which is not removable, and disables the gaining of Steam Achievements. The game can hold 3 saved games at once, so I highly recommend having an Assist Mode save and a normal save, one in which you can actually SEE the game's content, and one to pass the devs' stringent performance test to earn the right to actually display the badges you already earned elsewhere.

They KNOW the game is hard - they built in all these player-accessible options! But they also explicitly tell you, the player, that using ANY of them, even the most miniscule adjustments, renders the play experience invalid?? THAT'S some ableism right there. Offering help, then insulting you for taking it, AND limiting your opportunities because you took it? Harsh much...

But that's not enough to make me un-recommend the game in response, because... I'm just kind of used to it, IRL. That kind of harshness is just kind of how life IS, as a disabled person. At least here, appropriate options WERE on offer. Devs didn't force us to go search up mods, or learn programming to make our own mods ourselves. That's better than a lot of games in this genre, and in real life.

Further, the game functions best with button-mashing, which limits the amount of time the game can be played by anyone with hand strength limitations.

TL;DR - since standard gameplay feels like a challenge run, and there ARE options to tune down the difficulty, I would only recommend this game to rogue-lite lovers who don't mind a LONG time investment for teeny bits of progress, or if they don't mind just not getting Steam Achievements until AFTER a full first playthrough.

DISCLAIMER: This is a first impressions review, and NOT a full review

RECOMMENDED :)

Clunky, unintuitive UI and menus, non clear navigation, you can't easily compare weapons characteristics, texts are not easily understandable, because everything is hardly overloaded with graphics, styles, and it doesn't work as a system.

In total, very poor user experience, and play rhythm is very choppy, game always push you choose something.

I have a growing list of things I wrote down that could be tightened up a lot. It's a much less polished Hades with zero narrative or story elements.

There are too many annoying things about combat and the roguelike elements. I started to notice every time I would recognize a design element of the game I'd be mumbling in my head "that's fucking annoying." I can't recommend a game that continuously makes me think about not continuing to play.

I just got the true ending for the game today, so I feel like I have to leave a review now. Curse of the Dead Gods is a very good action roguelike with tight, deliberate combat and a high degree of polish. All the different weapon types feel distinct and are incredibly satisfying to use, thanks in large part to the sound design. As for how they're balanced, I definitely found myself gravitating towards the faster weapons like claws and daggers more, and found the slower ones like heavy weapons and bombs to be far too dangerous to use in the harder missions where Elite enemies are faster, but that could just be a skill issue on my part. I know a lot of people like the heavy weapons a lot, and they are definitely satisfying to use when you can pull them off. In terms of difficulty, the game starts out a bit slowly but once you unlock the hard versions of the temples it gets brutally difficult at times. I struggles with the penultimate exploration for quite a while, but the final one right after doesn't seem much harder, so the difficulty curve gets a little wonky right at the end.

The artstyle is cool and fits the dark themes of the game well, and the enemy designs range from decent to fantastic. The three distinct temples are gorgeous as well, though the Serpent Temple definitely feels less diverse and interesting than the other two, being underground. The Native American setting feels like a breath of fresh since there seem to be endlessly many games with European or East Asian inspired settings. The music is good but not mindblowing. It enhances the experience and is fitting with the oppressive atmosphere - I just wouldn't put it on my playlist.

As for story, it's incredibly minimal. There is zero dialogue whatsoever, so the story is told entirely through entries in the bestiary (which is overall well-written but has a few spelling errors), plus a couple of cutscenes right at the end of the harder explorations. This is pretty typical for the genre, but if you come in expecting Hades you will be disappointed in that regard.

On the whole, I can strongly recommend Curse of the Dead Gods to anyone who's a fan of action roguelikes, especially if you're looking for something with more deliberate and less "spammy" combat while still being pretty fast. As a product, this game is well worth the price.

Smooth controls, neat mechanics,
but repetitive gameplay and visuals

I usually hate rogue-likes, but this one is a thrilling roguelike that combines strategic combat, risk-reward mechanics, and an engaging progression system. The game's dark atmosphere and clever use of light and shadow create a nice and challenging experience. Though progression can feel grind-heavy, the challenging bosses and smoth combat make every victory satisfying.
I'd say its also enjoyable even if you remove the stamina-requirement.

I highly recommend it if you are playing on a Steam Deck and you got little spare time for gaming.

Dead Gods Good

Great game here. This game got me into roguelikes. The curses aren't all negative, some just make you switch your strategy, which makes each run just a tad different. There are daily events that change the way your run will go, although you can only run them once a day and each day they change. My favorite part is probably the environmental factors: luring the enemies into the temple traps, drifting between light and dark, manipulating enemies to break a wall if I cant do it myself, it's all very interactive and makes for a very fun time!

If I had to pick a CON for the game, it might be the RNG factor. I don't play a lot of roguelikes but as I understand it, you play a run 'til you die, then spend points (or something similar) to boost the power of your character. This game, you unlock more choices for starting weapons and more choices for weapons to spawn during the run, but completing runs doesn't take away bad choices it only adds good ones. This means that you can have 50+ hours in the game and still have runs that are crazy difficult because RNG says so (this does not happen too often but still). So your character doesn't get stronger perse, you just unlock more tools for him to use, but you're never guaranteed any one specific tool. (if this is how all roguelikes work then f*** me I'm a noob lol)

Overall insanely positive experience, 10/10 would get cursed again.

I like that the dude can take a beating unlike most roguelites but the levels leave me itching for something more. Some places have hallways and traps and you can explore, other wise its like haides. Unfortunately feels kinda stale 4 hours in

Great, engaging game. Gameplay's really well designed and fun, graphics are good, designs are good (though sometimes disgusting or annoying) and the general theme is very interesting. Replayability is also pretty high. Overall a really great, fun and well-made game

One of the best game that i have ever played, and def the best combat system. It simple but really versitile, hit impact is top notch. Enemy design and pacing of every threat is fine tone to perfection. Shame that it got over-shadowed by hades, i much prefer slower and meticulous combat system like curse over fast pace and spamming of Hades (not that hades is bad game, it's just my taste is much more geared toward Curse).
10/10

Highly recommend if your seeking a roguelike that doesn't consume you're mental health to play.

Honestly did not expect this level of polish for this relatively unknown game. I went into this expecting a Hades clone or something similar but it was its own thing. It’s more of a isometric souls-like where you rely on dodging and parrying a lot and the combat isn’t forgiving, specially on higher difficulties.
The downside though is runs take a bit too long and the meta progress is too slow, also there’s not really a lot of build diversity or any specific build you can do, there’s also no agency with the weapons and upgrades you get which is a huge downside, instead of encouraging you to play another run where you want to try better you instead feel like you want to quit the run because you didn’t get the weapon you like or after upgrading it you got a useless affix with no way of changing it.
The boss fights tend to get super annoying at later difficulties specially when there are slight timing changes depending on where the boss is looking (might be just me coping for dying to the attacks :p)
Still it’s a worthwhile game to play at least one full run.
Overall Score 7/10

Very challenging game. Give it a go, its worth! I just feel to finish 100% of the game is pretty hard. Cause you need to do everything but on hard mode.

Still good game!

Frustratingly difficult at first but once you get the hang of it this game shows good balancing and very interestng mechanics. It´s hard but its fun!

9/10
Really really good. There are balance issues though. I spent about 10 hours trying to get past a single level!!!

Enjoyable fusion of action and atmosphere with underlaying story. It can provide hours of challenging or plain relaxing slashing of enemies and timing of boss attacks. I recommend this at leat for a try of few hours, let's see if it catches you.

I've played pretty much all the big title in this genre, and CotDG is by far the best action rogue-lite of them all. Nothing comes even close to this, it's an absolute masterpiece imo.

This game just feels so empty, and boring to me... I continue to play it hoping there's more ahead once it opens up with progression.

The game play here is fine, it's ok, but it's not good, it over relies on parries to make the game fun because of the stamina system but then goes ahead and make dodges better to use overall so you'll probably end up dodging more and not enjoying the combat as much.

Biggest thing that turns this into a Not Recommend for me is the the light and dark mechanics because if you're playing in places with glare you're kinda screwed because the game doesn't have a Brightness/Contrast/Gamma setting that I could find so I was just out of luck to playing this during daytime since I couldn't see almost anything on screen.

The use of three weapons that can all be melee or ranged feels very weird. All the weapons are locked into these three slots but the slots don't really make sense when they all can be anything. The weapons are also really unbalanced, some are just better than others which is not fun.

There is no story, which I guess may be ok for you, but just seems kinda lame here for some reason because this game feels like it could have added something pretty easily.

The items you find kinda suck and the economy to get them doesn't make sense. In most roguelites like this you want to go to places where you can find new weapons or upgrades, but here you don't want to bother because most of the time they just aren't worth it.

The corruption systems is interesting but occasionally just breaks your run if, let's say, you have a build that works with you abusing Perfect Dodge mechanics but then you get a curse that takes this mechanic away, that's just not fun and this mechanic would benefit from getting curse "options" when you're cursed or easier to get curses but also easier to get rid of them.

Overall if you get this on sale for $5 you'll play it probably 3-4 times and then drop it so if that's worth $5 to you, go for it. Definitely don't buy it at full price.

Very nice so far. Everything seems polished and well-executed. The atmosphere is on point. The only thing holding this game back is a lack of story and other characters, with whom be could bond and get actually emotionally invested (see: Hades. There is no way of not comparing it to Hades, since it's the same formula, just with a removal of storytelling and all its emotional layers)

It's quite a different take on rogue-like genre, it's more of you choosing what exploration you want to take. It starts of pretty easy, so you have time to learn how the game works and prepare for each boss, and I think that's quite neat, though some people might consider it repetative. I loved the mechanic of curses, which don't just nerf you down completely but actually balance it in a fun way. What I had issues with is the difficulty spike once you get further, which eventually made me quit the game. I have to say that even though I was failing many times, it still felt fun and I always could tell what my mistake was, so I think it's fair.

Good game, bought it on sale, worth the buy.

Combat is solid, and corruption/darkness mechanics are interesting.

Good and fun. Nice pace. First run wasn't super challenging-maybe I just got lucky. I like the early blessings. Definitely want to keep playing even though I have other work to do. Got a nice addictive pull to it.