Caves of Qud

A masterpiece - an endless well of emergent storytelling, deep simulation, and evocative, dreamlike worldbuilding. Its soundtrack can be a warm hug or hauntingly atmospheric. The geography echoes Israel-Palestine, with Qud’s lush east and arid west mirroring its real-world counterpart. The lore drips with Kabbalist mysticism, weaving esoteric themes of interpretation, transcendence, and recursion into a rich narrative. The game brilliantly combines fantasy and technology, with beautifully written descriptions and dialogue that immerse you in its world.

Steam Workshop mods add even more depth, with features like settlement building and expanded mutations and cybernetics.

Plus, you get to meet cute science bears, have an army of infinite clones of yourself, destroy the minds of esper hunters and absorb their consciousness, get swallowed whole by a giant sand worm, contract a disease from slipping and swallowing sludge, get high on extra-dimensional drugs to talk to a fungi... but most importantly - you can literally become a chair.

A must-play for anyone who loves thoughtful, unique RPGs.

Caves of Qud is genuinely one of the most immersive gaming experiences I've ever had, do NOT let the presentation or initial learning curve turn you away. The amount of tools this game affords you to address any roadblock or annoyance you come across is astounding. Wall in the way? Maybe you have the ability to just phase through it, or you can use clairvoyance to see on the other side then teleport yourself there, or maybe just dig through the wall. As long as you are willing and able to learn from your mistakes and recognize when you could've approached a poor situation differently, this game will open up to you and give you an experience unmatched by anything else.

Sometimes, you come across a game that doesn't have to be your most played, the most genre defining, the most addictive for there to be something about it that feels... special. Caves of Qud is a special game.

Playing it, you can feel the love put into it by its makers.

Caves of Qud breaks the mold of the roguelike genre

Live and drink.

I didn't know what to expect when I started playing Caves of Qud. I just died several times and lost my characters for good. I've accepted the rules and, well, died more, but those deaths gave my some glimpses of the story.

Wait, there is a story? Captivated by it's mere existence and bizarre concepts and creatures surrounding the player, I switched to roleplay mode to avoid losing another character. Still, I was trying to be extremely careful. The game clicked for me again when I got lost in some generated ruins 20 levels beneath the surface. It was scary as hell so I opened excel sheet to keep track of where I am. Those who are brave enough to roam further from the stairs might find treasures or death.

And a treasure it was! Hidden in a chest was a jackhammer that could open any "door" for me (you can call them holes in the wall if you like). I don't think I found any other jackhammer like that ever since so it was a real darling that I kept close to my heart. Now when I write this review I think "What if I hadn't found it?".

Eventually I found my way out of those god forsaken ruins. At that point I became an overleveled killing machine and didn't even pay attention to enemies because they were just motes of dust to me. I was bored for a while feeling invincible but it was a tiny period of time until the next curveball was thrown at me. Was it monochrome disease or a fungal infection - I don't remember. But I was able to get rid of it while saving the world (is it about saving the world though?). I should mention that removing infection or disease was a 3 hour long quest in my case.

Play Caves of Qud, create your own story, take your time to read the descriptions - they are phenomenal and create such a vivid picture of everything you inspect, touch and trying to talk to. Avoid looking up the answers on wiki unless you are really stuck.

Surprisingly, not that many people have seen the final credits according to Steam statistics. It might be a tough challenge in the classic mode or people don't really care about the end of the story.
Play in roleplay mode if you don't have that much time and get to the end game at least once.

While being relentless, Caves of Qud gives you the feeling of wonder that is quite elusive in games. Exploring, solving issues and poking the world with a stick (that is always covered is several layers of goo) is rewarding, fresh and totally worth the time you invest while seeing your character death screen over and over again.

Live and drink, Friend.

Look, I’m just a bioluminescent fungus who wanted to vibe in the jungle caves, okay? But Caves of Qud said, “Nope, here’s Grulk, a four-armed mutant with a machete collection and a grudge against glow.” Now I’m cornered, radiating panic-light like a disco ball at a funeral, while Grulk monologues about “harvesting my glands for grenades.” The procedurally generated terror is chef’s kiss—where else can you die as a sentient nightlight to a guy with more limbs than survival instincts? 10/10, would photosynthesize nervously again. PS: Tell my spores I died fabulous.

Nethack: The Roleplaying Game.

To be clear, this is not just open world Nethack. This game has a far slower pace and a lot of RPG elements, and a lot less in terms of outright trying to get you killed or throwing crazy scenarios at you, as Nethack does (although that can happen in Qud, it's not routine as it is in Nethack).

This might be a downer for some people. The action is less intense and less consistent compared to Nethack. It also means your character is liable to live a lot longer and you may feel a lot more invested by the time you run into something that does kill you. (Although you can play in modes that let you go back to a checkpoint rather than permadeath.)

If you ever played Nethack or Rogue and thought "I like the concept but wish it was a little more like an RPG rather than purely a hack and slash" then you'll probably enjoy this.

I do feel like Qud, despite its breadth and depth, lacks some of the creativity and complexity of Nethack, though, which often had multiple ways to do the same thing. This game has a fascination with "fungal infections" that I already find tiresome, for example, because the ways of dealing with it are so specific and limited, whereas Nethack would give you multiple routes of dealing with something similar. And I have yet to encounter anything that brings to mind the Orc trains in Nethack or the "zoos" or other scenarios where you feel like you go from "everything is fine" to "oh no" simply by turning a corner, but it's also possible I just haven't hit them yet.

Overall: thumbs up. I mean it is what it says it is. If you enjoy the genre, you'll probably get some hours out of it. If the graphics are a big enough turnoff then it's not going to get any better when you buy it.

Qud is insanely fun. It's full of great opportunities to adapt, self-express, outwit, escape, deceive, and gamble. The longer you play, the more tension builds on whether or not you'll get got by a brand new thing. When you do, that goes on the list of things to plan for on the next run. When you get good enough, that starts being a significant time investments, at which point I recommend roleplay mode for learning about mid to high level instant death dangers. There are many.
A lot of people I don't respect at all will lock themselves out of enjoying Qud by refusing to use roleplay mode. Be honest with yourself: you're not a roguelike enjoyer, you're a guy who thinks Dark Souls is hard. Play on roleplay mode until you figure out how to deserve death. Qud good.

This game is amazing!! Super recommended!!
It's a rogue like, a very traditional rogue like where you didn't get anything to your next runs, but this is just the mechanics of the game, don't get fooled about it! The world of Qud is amazing and exploring this world is something quite uniq!
Embrace the randomness of the game and start another journey, learn about the locals, do your jobs, try to survive!

A very creative RPG that's oldschool in appearance, modern in function, and timeless in content. Qud is a world that is equal parts wacky due to its bespoke content and its procedurally-generated chaos. A land of cyborgs and four-armed, fire-breathing mutants.

You will be stoned to death by baboons, eradicated by neutron flux explosions, teleported 20 layers underground due to a bad case of the psychic jitters, and emit wax from your pustules. You will summon deadly plants with your mind (and then get set on fire by them by accident), remotely sunder the minds of your opponents, graft yourself permanently into a floating tech throne, and throw nuclear grenades (and accidentally die in the process.)

Qud is an RPG that, in its chaos, requires deft and physics-defying (and CPU-defying, in some cases) abuse of its mechanics to do the unthinkable in order to achieve success. Drink a Neutron to increase your armor (with a slight chance of instant death), permanently clone high-tier merchants for more chances to roll new loot, and drip static into the desert sands to transform rivers of salt into valuable liquids. The game is as difficult as you are prepared, and as you are clever. It offers several modes of campaign play, from the Hardcore (Classic) mode, a standard town-checkpointed mode (Roleplay), and several other modes for players with more specific desires for their experience.

The writing prose is fascinating and clever, with a significant emphasis on intentionally bizarre descriptors which borrow heavily from the realm of science fiction, to impress and confuse you as you embark on a serviceable sci-fi storyline to understand the nature of your bizarre surroundings.

The User Interface has been updated for the 1.0 release to be approachable in the typical RPG fashion, and the visuals of the game are strong for its choice of art style. However, its clever use of animated effects despite being a time-incremented game can sometimes get pushed a bit too far, resulting in shocking amounts of screen clutter. Performance is generally as one would expect for a game that looks like Qud does, though like Dwarf Fortress it hides its claws under its unassuming appearance, occasionally biting through your CPU and experience significant slowdowns as it struggles to calculate you and your 10 clones simultaneously summoning 100 various kinds of deadly flora, half of which then proceed to set your screen ablaze with smoke and fire effects for which you will pray for merciful self-immolation in order to end your confusion and restore your CPU to normalcy.

Caves of Qud is a title worthy of standing beside other long-time Indie sweethearts like Dwarf Fortress, Terraria, Starsector, and so on.

I wish I could give Qud a positive review but unfortunately, as many have said before, the game is not what it sets out to be.

The roguelike portion of the game is great but the grind to get back to where you were after you die is far too frustrating for what its worth, especially when to progression is so slow and the world so large. 9 times out of 10 you end up dying to an enemy that you cant see through all the shit cluttering the screen who one shots you instantly, or, you die to a high level enemy who exists in a low level area. The games concept is fantastic but the execution is not great.

On top of this the random generation is abysmal, none of it makes sense. Complete night and day difference between generated towns, NPCs, books and item descriptions compared to their pre-created counterparts. Town architecture is terrible and makes navigation a nightmare, rarely if ever will you see a coherent house design. Most places are comprised of walls that lead nowhere and furniture that dots random squares in any given room. Almost all NPCs are copy paste nothing-burgers who only exist to fill space and have only 2 dialogue options; Trade (80% of the time they dont have anything to trade) and Leave.

TL;DR or whatever:
Overall the game is not completely terrible and there are fantastic aspects to it.
But from a new comers perspective the progression is too slow to warrant the amount of punishment you cop for simply exploring.
And the random generation is terrible.

I was very on the fence about this game and was going to try it and potentially refund if it wasn't for me. I typically haven't played anything like this and i have absolutely fallen in love with this game. Coming from someone who hasn't played a game like this but was very interested but nervous about figuring out its UI and even understanding the game. Its far FAR less intimidating than it looks. If you can find fun in filling in the blanks and just taking in the absurdity a story that is happening to you, this will be an ABSOLUTE blast. I can play this for so SO long just in hopes to have stories to remember.

Here's a story that happened to me:

Deep in an abandoned facility with rusted archways and frayed electrical lines, i scavenged a keycard. As i delved deeper i came to realize i was only allowed to pass specific doors because of this little keycard treasure. Excited, i began to swing doors open in search for more treasures. If these doors were locked that means no others have been behind them! As i dispatched the few weakling boars that had taken the facility as home, there was one more door to open. I kicked it open, unafraid of what i would find. I heard a beep. I was looking down the barrel of a turret. Quickly and instinctively i swung. one, two three FOUR. All four of my arms swung Each axe. The turret dismantled under my tremendous double muscles.
Beep Beep. A second turret took aim and fired. I ducked back before i took any harm. If this room had turrets, there must be incredible treasure to be guarded by such mechanic beasts. Confident with how quickly i destroyed the first, i could absolutely do it again. I leaned in and swung again. the turret crumbled before my hulking body. Behind the turret was a chest with a musket inside. As i close the chest.... Beep beep.
A turret began blasting behind me. I felt a sting and thuds absorbed from my armor. I knew this victory was too sweet to savor. Quickly i lunge out of the room once more. Three... Three chests i saw. If a musket was in one of them. The others must be worth the risk. I set up camp next to the open door and tended to my wounds. bullet holes riddled the door frame. I pondered... The last turret seemed to be shooting a much larger caliber. This time i was less confident... Because it hurt. The Turret rested at the end of the room. a ways farther than the previous ones by the door. I was given a musket and this was CLEARLY the solution. I had a pocket full of slugs that i had saved up. I loaded the one chamber musket and walked to the door. BLAM! BEEP BEEP. The turret returned fire once again shredding the entrance of the room. Again i took a hit that was more painful than usual. Painful enough to not ignore. Again i took rest and tended my wounds. the musket did very Little and i should of known. I barely knew how to use the thing. For three days I repeated the same thing. Firing my single shot and plugging my wounds. I don't know if it was me being stubborn, Or i was consumed by pure curiosity and greed but i NEEDED to know what was in those chests. I decided i must delve deeper in this mysterious facility. Who knows what other treasures i would find in the lower levels. The first chest i found contained a mysterious artifact. With some miracle i was able to identify this as an explosive.... A plasma grenade...I grin. THIS is the solution! not this useless pea shooter musket. I run back up a floor to the room, I pull the pin with little hazard. In my mind i knew i had bested the brainless gunbeast. I throw the grenade and .... The whole wall separating the turret from the room explodes in my face. I did not account for the blast radius... Dazed, and horribly injured the dust settled... Beep beep. I was somehow standing next to the turret. In the confusion and panic i stood arms distance from the Disgusting Bullet hose... I knew i could not take another volley. In these seconds i thought of my options. The turret was barely affected by my onslaught. A swing from my axes was too risky. Either i dispatched it Right there and hope all four of my swings land true, Or it killed me where i stand. There... i saw a button glowing atop the gun. In passing knowledge i had learned the button usually will have no effect and infact make the turret more aware of your presence... I had no choice. I pressed it.....

"Keycard identified. Turret powering down"

I walked out of there, hardly standing. Exhausted. With a brand new sniper rifle an assortment of relics and artifacts from the chests in that room. and..... and that little keycard treasure worth much MUCH more than its weight in water.

Explorer? Yes, Qud can scratch that itch. Big gameplay map, a great job of procedural generation that provides places, rumors, and histories that are fresh each time. Game modes that support checkpointing and reduced danger. Deep social systems to explore.

Optimizer? Yes. lots of gear and theorycrafting hooks (not limited to hooks for feet) to feed the possibility space. And that social system to exploit. And a savescum feature built into the ironman mode to let you tinker with your options.

Instigator? Phase out and let that fire-spitting pig shoot through you and hit the bat that likes to eat electricity. Duck into a corner, let everyone kill everyone else, and then just pick up the loot.

Collector? Perhaps you'd enjoy collecting one face from every faction in the game? Just slice it off, there's more than one way to do it. Yup, from robots too. Too gruesome? How about a geology run where you animate every type of wall and walk it back to a home base?

There's 17 years of love and madness poured into this game. If you suspect you'd be interested, you should indulge. If you're concerned about graphics, I'd ask you to consider that art direction is more important than graphic fidelity. If you're put off by rogue conventions, switch the game to roleplay mode and do just a little research to bootstrap.

One story, if I might. At the endgame, I piloted a great creature that took the form of a cat. During a pause in battle, my allies approached, and pet the cat-war-machine. Of course, the cat meowed.

After almost 400 hours, and likely more on the way, I have finally finished Caves of Qud. I wanted to wait until I finished the game for the first time to start to even think about reviewing my time with it. This game is nothing short of a work of art, and is, in my opinion, one of the most powerful and symbolic forms of media I have witnessed. At it's infantile core, Caves of Qud is poking around Joppa, blasting Snapjaws with a Musket, and giving ancient trinkets to a grumpy Tinker. The player is given nearly boundless options in how to modify their character over a run, such as adding Mutations or attaching Cybernetics that grant wildly different playstyles. Whatever the game throws at you, you can throw it right back. It openly invites you to dig through it's layer cake and not to feel bad about abusing its systems, because Qud will always claim you, in the end. Alternative modes such as Roleplay and Wander exist for those who want to play the game in a less punishing way, and that is completely legitimate. It is your world to do with as you see fit.

At the end of it all, Qud, to me, represents mankind's ability to change personified, yet it showcases the futility and lack of control we have as mortal beings. Your runs will always end. It will always start again. This was always how it was. It has completely changed my life in ways that cannot be truly defined with words. If there is a part of you that is able to see the depth underneath the 16x24 sprites through descriptions, and is interested in the potential story of a world knotted in thousands of years of lived-in civilizations, try it. There is always something new to see. It will be hard, and you will die. Qud is not a race, but a marathon on a path paved by the stones of your past efforts.

Live and Drink.

I found this game to be impenetrable and un fun. I tried and really wanted to like it. They said the story and depth were amazing. I played for a few hours and died many times and mostly just fiddled with my inventory a lot and tried my best to figure out where I was on a map. I tried internet guides to get started. I don’t get the appeal at all and I assume I “just have to play longer”. Eventually realized I have so many more games to play that are fun right away, graphics aren’t everything but they help when there is not much else going on. not worth my time to figure this one out.

An insanely deep RPG with thousands of options wrapped in an old school rogue like aesthetic, you can play it however you want (I recommend the roleplay mode!) and experience an incredibly deep story and world. Highly recommend!

I was playing an esper—mind control, teleportation, that sorta thing—and wandering around a cave when I suddenly saw the wall move. It was walking around! A sentient wall! Naturally, my first thought was: *I need this thing on my side.* Using my mind powers I "persuaded" it to be my friend. I named it Omet, a traditional fulcrete wall name.

Shortly afterwards, Omet and I found a security door we couldn't get through. I decided to try to blast through the wall by summoning a concussive force with my mind. I took aim next to the door and activated the blast—but in attempting to do so, my concentration slipped and I accidentally dented the quantum structure of spacetime, causing a couple of vortexes to appear. I ran away, not wanting to get sucked through a wormhole to Resheph-knows-where, but—unexpected luck! The vortexes tore through the wall and opened a path into the locked room! Omet and I could get inside and... Omet? Where are you? ...oh NO! Omet got sucked through the vortex! I had to act fast. Thinking quickly, I ran for the nearest vortex and dove inside before it could dissipate. I don't know where it would lead, but I'd never find such a powerful ally again... I can't let it get away!

The vortex deposited me 30 strata deep in an unknown place. I was in a very small cave with no exits at all, no stairs, nothing. There wasn't even anything to fight in here... I paced about briefly, trying to figure out what to do... when I suddenly realized, I could try using teleportation! See, teleportation has a degree of "uncertainty" to it... you select a spot to teleport to, and it puts you within X tiles. I could teleport right up against the wall, and maybe X would land me on the other side? I tried it and... pow! I was out! And—there was Omet! Surrounded by slimes, snapjaws, and every manner of critter—most of which were dead, stomped by Omet's mighty fulcrete weight. We defeated the enemies, and proceeded to look for a way out...

...but in the very next room, we stumbled into an encampment of high-level snapjaws. Some threw nets on us while others prepared to skewer us with javelins. Omet would be fine—but they'd run me through for sure! I had no choice, I had to make a run for it! I began to sprint—but once again, my concentration slipped, and two spacetime vortexes popped into existence! With one on either side of me, it was a dangerous situation. If I didn't move, I was screwed, but if I moved and they followed me? I had no choice... at least, I'd move away from the snapjaws. I tried to run away—

The vortexes collided with one another, creating a gravitational supernova with the force of a thousand suns that obliterated the monsters, the cave, Omet—and me. Game Over.

:D

10/10 Game of the Year 2024 (and maybe 2025, depending when the Lies of P sequel comes out)

Simply one of the best games one can play.

I wasn't sure when to write a review for this game, and I don't think 40 hours of playtime is enough to warrant a fair review due to the hundreds, if not thousands of hours worth of content that's available in the game, but I figured I'd just add to the positive reception Qud has.

Every playthrough of Qud is COMPLETELY different, generating history and creatures/people of legend with actual meaning and impact on the world with each new world the player generates, similar to something like Dwarf Fortress. What sets Qud aside though, is the fact that there's a main storyline keeping everything grounded and giving the player many handwritten adventures to pursue in-between, or as a main focus, their own unique adventure. Each playthrough tells a story of tragedy or triumph, and each playthrough can last anywhere between 30 seconds and 1,000+ hours.

What's unique about Qud, and sorely missing from modern games that rely heavily on procedural generation (think Starfield, No Man's Sky, etc.), is that procedural generation in Qud doesn't *always* feel like procedural generation. Admitidly, sometimes it is obvious, like in the case of generated quests, but the player will come across generated people and creatures of legend, similarly legendary weapons and gear, and even locations with deep history and mysteries to discover completely unique to the singular playthrough - all of which mentioned is procedurally generated and VAST. There's gotta be an infinite amount of ways the world and its lore can be generated in this game.

Not to mention the builds. Hitting the random button in character creation is the best way to play this game (as long as one is only playing permadeath) as pretty much every build is viable in some compacity and has their own challenges and playstyles. Character builds are just another thing that feel infinite and ever-changing. For those who want a more laid back playthrough, though, one can create their own character from scratch and play a gamemode with autosaving and more akin to the Elder Scrolls in terms of sticking to one character for a long period of time without the concern of permanently losing the character on death.

With a massive, sprawling and breathing world, turn-based combat mechanics that keep the player on the edge of their seats in heated and unfair battles, and infinite amount of storytelling capabilites, Caves of Qud is a game that I honestly believe should be played by everyone at least once. The price may seem expensive for this type of game (based off the screenshots, I guess) but in my opinion, there's hundreds of dollars worth of time and content here on an unprecedented level.

11/10. One of the most mind blowing and rewarding games I've ever played where I never feel like I'm wasting my time. The modding community for this game is on another level as well, though I only recommend really digging into mods after a few serious vanilla playthroughs as there's really no need for mods in order to enjoy what this game offers.

In a lot of ways it's the zenith of video game design, it's a clockwork masterpiece where every element comes together to create something beautiful in a fashion where if you removed any one element of it the entire thing would fall apart but as-is it is the quintessential "video game" (laudatory) and I think the entire medium is worse off for its release because what it does will never be topped.

This game scratches several big itches for me:
- Exploration
- Looting, taking everything that's not nailed down to sell
- Extremely powerful synergies, sometimes to the point of breaking the game
- A vast amount of things to learn in order to master
- Exploring an alien-feeling world, replete with culture, lore, and language
- Lots of small details, sometimes where you least expect them

I've finally completed the game, and this review is part of my way of dealing with a surprisingly profound loss of my character. If you want to learn the game, play with saving and loading enabled. Once you attain some level of mastery, play the intended way--permadeath! It makes the game stick with you longer.

9.5/10 game of all time, it's difficult to learn, the control scheme is ancient, it doesn't have the prettiest graphics (I like them still, though, and they don't detract from getting sucked into the world!), and there's five trillion ways of dying to things that feel unfair, but still, I love this game with all my heart. Live and drink!

This is an absolute must play for any roguelike and/or RPG enthusiast! The layers of complexity, storytelling and unique gameplay systems that are layered into the game are as deep as the caves. The 1.0 release made the game much more approachable for anyone getting started, so there’s no better time to jump in than now!

This is a no brainer if you like rogue, nethack, pixel dungeons, cdda, dcss, tales of maj'eyal, etc. Qud is a phenomenal achievement that combines immersive simulation with classic rogue gameplay. The world this team has created is begging to be explored. Every cave a new adventure. Every tomb a new danger.

Play. This. Game.

Watch out for invisible trolls though.

This game is not what it sells itself to be. There are some things you should know before purchasing. Browsing through the positive Steam reviews, there is a lot of undeserved praise which I feel the need to dispel.

This game is like playing DnD under a dungeon master (DM) who has one campaign with the same main quest and same main characters and same world map and same key items etc every time. These elements are NOT procedurally generated. The only procedurally generated elements are minutiae that you wouldn't care about anyway-- like random dice rolls, and the specific layout of battle areas, number of enemies, etc. The same enemies are encountered in the same locations in the world, and their loot tables are pretty rigid. Even the locations that the main quest-givers send you to are the same, and even the important encounters in those areas are the same. Heck, the DM even set things up so that you will likely contract a disease ("glotrot") from a specific place during a specific quest. Even that level of detail is micromanaged. Would you enjoy playing under such a DM?

The game design is internally strained. It's trying to sell a replayable roguelike experience when all it has to work with is a single campaign. That might have been possible, but the details which matter are railroaded. You're expected to memorise where all the traps are, literally and figuratively, and to account for them next time. You're expected to get through this DM's campaign no matter how many times you have to try. And don't go thinking you can come at it with your own playstyle or role play in this role-playing game, no no no! For my first run, I chose to be a psychic merchant. I had plans to travel the world and accumulate expensive gadgets and equipment through trade, and to recruit bodyguard companions. Turns out that it's not actually a viable option to play a character with a low Toughness stat-- you will get one-shotted by things in the starting area in a way that is completely outside your control (even if you proceed gingerly!). And for some terrible reason, the player is treated as the centre of the world: enemies will almost always make a beeline for you, even if you have three companions. The enemy AI is primitive, and this makes this play style untenable.

Going into it, I thought this game was about role-play, lore and a narrative-rich world. Bzzt. No it isn't. The lore is procedurally generated garbage-- it often doesn't even have correct grammar. It's like reading bad fiction from someone who wants to sound smart so they use lots of big words they've heard before without knowing their meanings (or in some cases, whether they're a noun or a verb etc.).

Since role-playing is not a real option, this just leaves the roguelike elements, combat and 'instrumental play'. Well then, you should know that some starting mutations are just better than others, and not to waste your time on psychic abilities. Why? Because if you spec into melee, then you can use your raw strength every single turn without a cooldown (attacking with a melee weapon). If you spec into psychic abilities, then you need to wait... something like 50 or 100 turns between attacks! That is just as unplayable as it sounds. Also, the inventory management is really tedious. It takes way too many clicks / keystrokes to do simple things.

But this isn't a great roguelike either. In roguelike games, you're supposed to have the opportunity to choose between alternatives as a way for the player to exercise their agency and build a strategy based on the random elements of the run. For example, giving the player a choice between three items. In this game, that role is accomplished by "unidentified trinkets/artefacts". However, they are unidentified in stores, so you can't know what you're choosing. That's flawed game design. (One exception: you can ask Tinker merchants to identify their items first, but that is not-at-all obvious in the UI.) And the most important items (like mechanical wings and "recoilers") are in fixed locations or are predictable/manipulable so that you can reliably obtain them.

The game is also a bit buggy: I checked the option to only colour character sprites according to their damage taken, but this setting is not respected. Then there are enemies that are "hostile" but won't actually attack the character.

So what is this game? Who is it for? The game isn't designed properly as a roguelike. But it isn't a great role-playing game either because it isn't balanced to allow the full gamut of play styles which it supposes to accomodate in the character creation menu. I don't know who this is for. It is one of the most bizarre games that I have played. Unfortunately, I don't mean that in an entirely positive sense.

-----

I don't mind magniloquent writing when it's done well. If I have to look up words and I find the writing satisfying, then great. Unfortunately, I think the various descriptions in this game are just bad writing. I think it's generated by a large language model with minimal oversight.

- Description of an enemy called a twinning lamprey: "A ribbon of scaleless tissue quivers in suspension beyond a mouth ringed with repeating triangle teeth. It extrudes a double through the mirrored planes of reality."
This looks like an eel-like enemy. Why would you say the body of the eel is "beyond" the mouth? That implies that the mouth comes first in some way. That doesn't make sense. And what does it mean to extrude "a double", let alone "through the mirrored planes of reality"?

- Description of an enemy called a plastronoid: "Chrome rondures sling themselves along the orbital paths of an invisible magnetic gyroscope. By inscrutable intervals, one pops out the transverse plane with violent momentum."
I think that should say "at" inscrutable intervals, and "its" transverse plane. Not to mention the other problems with this.

- Description of an enemy called a snailmother: "Out a pristine shell of rolling citrine, frozen azure, and polished jade, the goopy neck cranes straight up and loosens a throbbing egg from her gelatin clutch."
After looking words up, it turns out that "citrine" in noun form refers to a yellow-coloured variety of quartz, and "azure" is an obsolete way to refer to lapis lazuli (a blue-coloured mineral). What does it mean for the citrine to be "rolling", or the azure "frozen"? Why is the jade polished specifically but not the other two minerals? Here's a better description I'm writing on-the-spot: "This mollusc is housed by a multicoloured shell of minerals: orange, blue and green."

- Description of an enemy called a Mechanimist rummager: "His hunch-back is meadowed in tattered robes the color of slate. Strands of matted chin hair splay against his chapped lips, and his eyes dart at nearish trinkets."
According to the Webster's 1913 unabridged dictionary, "meadow" is not a verb. And if it is to be used as one, then tell me what it means for a hunch back to be meadowed in tattered robes. This is nonsense. Now the sprite doesn't show the mechanimist having a hunch-back whatsoever, so this description is just false. Also it says "strands of matted chin hair". Is it just a few strands or is it so much that it's capable of being matted?! It makes no sense. And how can chin hair splay against the lips? That seems implausible. Also the mechanimist has no visible hair: he looks to be wearing a mask and hood. Maybe that should have been mentioned in the worded description?

good roguelike
progression is slow, the mode with checkpoints might interest some people

You ever have a friend that plays some random game for endless hours and you just don't get it? Maybe it's Runescape, Mount & Blade or Victoria. Well, this is one of those games. You either love it or you don't and I can't imagine there being a large amount of in-between because the truth of the matter is not everyone wants to invest in combat where 2 jpegs dry hump each other while numbers pop up, so I get it.

However, if you can look past that what you have is a really fun open ended exploration game with an extremely good sense of discovery. It's the kind of game you slap on a playlist and explore with whatever abomination you decided to be. Maybe it's a 5 limbed flying monster with freeze ray eyes or a dagger wielding mutant ninja turtle that expels sleeping gas.

It's entirely up to you and the freedom of it all is what makes it great.


Now if you want my advice on it. I would say buy it and if in the first hour and a half you're not sold on it, then refund it through steam because I doubt it will change your opinion if you don't like the initial experience. Sure, the more you play it does get better but only if you like the foundational concepts.

While I understand why people love this game as it gives the illusion of having a fantastic amount of content, offers options for a wide variety of playstyles, and has unique world-building and storytelling I just couldn't get over the sheer tediousness of it. Combat gets incredibly boring after a few playthroughs of doing the same quests and fighting the same mobs. The language leans heavily into gobbledygook nonsense land. So much so that I stopped even reading most of the descriptions and text. Quests frequently don't provide enough information to figure out where you are supposed to go or what you are supposed to do, which means the only way of figuring it out is trial and error. That could be a lot of fun for some people but it felt like a waste of time to me. I really tried to like CoQ but after about 30 hours played each time I jumped into the game it felt more and more like work rather than play.

This is an utterly fascinating game with a vast sandbox of interactions and interesting mechanics... but it is a sandbox that doesn't paticularly seem concerned with quality gameplay. It's definetely not a case of "wide as an ocean, shallow as a puddle". Rather... let me give the example that made me choose to quit.

I was facing a dungeon of my level, that NPCs recommended to get some cold resistance for. Unfortuantely, no aspect of the game actually tells you how you can get that resistance, so I went in with what little I had. After facing a boss that was weirdly overpowered for what was supposed to be my level and cheesing it by spending a hundred turns gunning at it from a distance it wouldn't respond to, I eventually made it to a floor harboring two special types of enemies in paticular.
One had a freeze ray that seemed to be a guaranteed hit that would stunlock you for a good 60 rounds (less with that cold resistance I still don't know how to get), which is several times more than enough time for it to just walk up and nibble you for a guaranteed death.
The second came in pairs, and if you kill one, the other instantly respawns it at full health. To defeat it, you must either kill both in the same turn (requiring you to finagle them to low health and finish them with an AoE, which you may simply not have), or use Normality Gas on them (which is a very specific thing you probably don't have), or stun one with other specific abilities or consumables you very well may not have. The game threw 20 of them or so at me, with no information on which are paired up, or any ingame way to know any of the above. I had to wiki and savescum to stand a chance (and did not, because it was 20 and the "you are immune to harmful gases" aspect of my helm mysteriously is useless against stun gas grenades)

Between stuff like that, certain enemies being able to straight up remove limbs permanently on hit, and the damage mechanics allowing for unlikely extreme spikes of damage, I'm suprised this is typically played as a roguelike. Even the "roleplay" mode where you can save in towns can easily have deaths undo an hour of progress or more, which you are *unable* to get back as the places you were at are rerolled - sometimes into nonexistance.

It takes a specific kind of person to enjoy a game that can undo loads of progress on a whim like this, with nothing to show for it except maybe knowing what the BS smells like for next time so that you can cheese it before it cheeses you.

One of the best roguelikes I've ever played. There is almost an endless variety of character builds to experiment with. There is a lot to learn but the depth of the game keeps you coming back. You can tell a lot of love and creativity went into this game.

I am almost 50 and have played games my whole life. This is one of the best games ever made. I played ultima 5 in 1988 and this game harnessed the greatness of old with the rogue likes of new. Any game that lets you imagine out of game and makes the world around you disappear when in game is true art.

I really want to like this game. The idea of it really appeals to me, and I loved my time with games like Tales of Maj'Eyal (ToME4) or Dwarf Fortress - roguelikes/lites that don't hold your hand and have a lot of depth. But for some reason this game just isn't clicking with me. The idea of all the character customization and stats sounds cool, but in practice I just can't find the fun in this game. The combat is dull to me and I'm not really sure why. (I like ToME4, so it's not a matter of bump combat being an issue)

I'm happy for the people that enjoy this game, and maybe I'll revisit it in the future, but for now I think I'd rather just boot up ToME4 again.

I felt real loss when the security door I had given life to fell down a chasm. I also cut off my own face and wore it on my face. Live and drink

When I started being involved in roguelike development, around 2000, I remember lots of very ambitious projects about games which used the simple presentation and exploration/combat system of roguelikes to challenge the player's imagination and make very complex, simulationist gameplay possible. Like ADOM, but better. Most of these developers never released anything... instead, eventually a counter-movement happened to actually release something, so we got lots of shorter roguelikes, focused on balance, which are great in their own right, but something was missing.

Caves of Qud is like these old dreams, but successful. Very complex. Very epic. Lots of similarities to roguelike classics (the general structure similar to ADOM, figuring out devices like in Alphaman). Amazing worldbuilding and writing. Hopefully it will inspire a new wave of great roguelikes.

(Edit: something is buggy with Steam playtime counting. When I originally wrote this review, Steam said I have played it for 52 hours which looks accurate, but then it changed to 32 minutes and the review also said that time. 3 hours of playing later Steam said 55 hours, I edited the review to explain that the playtime was inaccurate, and now it says 3 hours. Weird.)

I haven't had this much fun with a roguelike since I was deeply invested in NetHack in the early 90s. Caves of Qud captures the magic of classic roguelikes and goes far beyond that with its fantastic science-fantasy setting that borrows more from Book of the New Sun and Dune than the more typical D&D and Lord of the Rings influences. On top of that it boasts fantastic tile and sprite art, lovely sound design, and probably the most accessible UI/UX I've ever seen on a classic roguelike game -- quite playable with a controller (or on Steamdeck).

It's an interesting game. If you like Dwarf Fortress you'll like this, they are very similar. Caves of Qud is much much more approachable and playable. The tutorial could be a bit more informative since you'll find yourself googling a lot.

However, in no way is this game intended to be played on Classic Mode. You simply have too little control over what happens. You could be perfectly prepared and just get sniped by a freeze ray and that's it for you. This game is not randomized and different every time (good thing) so that means you'll just start ripping back through the same quests to get back to where you were. It feel's like you're speed running to get back to having fun.

I waited for a long time since EA to try. Sadly game visuals are too hard on my eyes, hope one day there will be option to get better visuals and more mouse-friendly interface, like in ToME for example. CoC seems to have a lot of interesting stuff, but being gated by this commitment toward "low-res" style kills it for me.

Got stuck in a trap, opened a spacetime vortex to portal out instead a creature of impossible strength came through it.
Created a clone to distract it while I escaped.
My clone shot me by accident and killed me.
10/10

this is quite frankly one of the best games ever made if not the best. the amount of things you can do and places you explore is staggering, the lore is amazing, and the random aspect adds a lot of replay value, while the main quest stays the same every time for some continuity. if you want to play a game where you can be a mind controlling turtle who can shoot lasers with their mind and see the future, play this game immediately

I rarely leave negative reviews and generally prefer to give a thumbs up while explaining my dislikes. But in this instance I will do the opposite and give a thumbs down and try to find the positives.

Most positive reviews mention how "deep" this game and that is entirely true. They also mention the simplistic graphics and complicated interface which, somehow, add to the game ... which I explain as a kind of exagerated/added complexity that is not necessary, but becomes part of the charm of playing the game, learning at every step. I guess I'm nostalgic for that kind of experience, like when I played ruthless games on NES and SNES as a kid. "Tutorial" is a word I've heard for the first time decades after I started playing games, so I usually enjoy the painful process of learning to master a complex and ruthless game that requires you to start over and over again, until you "git gud" enough to beat it.

But the Caves of Qud have beat me. Many of you will say that 5 hours is not enough for me to have learned enough about the game to "get good 'nuf" to learn to beat and I would agree with them, since for the first 2 hours I really enjoyed dying every 5 minutes. Then I enjoyed the next 3 hours when I actually took the time to read a guide, learn how to pay close attention to everything going on around my character, actually "look" at everything and I've learned ways to fight creatures I should have died to until I got to higher levels ... and then just hit another glass ceiling that I could have overcome ... but I kind of was tired and made the mistake of not noticing the differences in the enemy I was fighting.

And this is where Caves of Qud breaks me. I played a lot of roguelike games that made me run through lots of hoops, dying and restarting a lot along the way until I either figured it out or got a lucky run, then died some more until I figured it out. Where Caves of Qud earns a negative reviews is that I was expecting different runs, in some ways, but the caves just make me go through the same hoops, on the same map, with the same quests ... every ... time.

I do not believe this game earns it's procedural generation because I really do not feel in any way that any of my runs were really that much different. Yea, I might get killed by the score of different enemy types I have encountered and it's a crap shoot wether or not the generation decided to put an impossible challenge in front me right at the start, which forces me to maybe find a different way of levelling up (and hopefully that one I can tackle) but that's not even what really bothers me with the game.

Nope, what bothers me is: every. run. feels. the. exact. same. Even when I encounter different monsters in different ruins ! Maybe it's the graphics, maybe it's fact that I do not have the patience to read some entirely home brewed lore with made up words that have no real given meaning and are just brushed on the surface without being expanded.

I really am not sure what my gripe with this game is besides saying that playing it feels like I'm trapped in groundhog's day, even though I have already tried every character (or are they classes ? I dunno) twice at least, trying to learn their differences ... without feeling much of a difference at all between different characters/classes. Even the choice of the starting world is a joke. It's a different village, always located in the same region of the map on a static map.

I feel like I was fooled into thinking this game had some replayability. I don't feel like it has much of that. Maybe I'll come back to it some day and "get the hype", but right now I can't say that I do.

I bought this game mainly to play on the Steam Deck.

I'll start with the negatives and mention that I refunded this game once but decided to buy it again.

First of all, the tutorial bugs out on PC. If you're playing with a mouse and keyboard, be prepared for the game to glitch—at least at the time of this review, on version 1.0.

Strangely enough, the process works perfectly on the Steam Deck.

Negative points for me:

I'm not a big fan of this type of setting, where the future feels more like fantasy. I would prefer a more serious tone, but I’ve managed to tolerate it.

I believe the graphics are part of the game's charm, but the UI is confusing. I think this is a recurring issue with roguelikes: they often have a lot of depth, but the user interface is always a tiresome learning curve.

I'm still figuring out some keys and buttons to get by. So far, it's working, but I haven’t yet experienced the freedom that many people mention. However, I have less than 3 hours of playtime, so that might change.

The music is terrible. Unfortunately, I found it repetitive and poorly composed, ruining the game’s atmosphere and overall feeling. I turned it off, and it was much better. Some areas lack ambient sounds, but when they’re present, the game succeeds in conveying a mysterious vibe and the atmosphere of an intriguing book.

Now for the positive aspects that made me repurchase the game, even after struggling with the PC interface and tutorial bugs:

The game works on the Steam Deck.

It’s almost surprising that a game with such a confusing UI can work with so few buttons, but it does. It takes some time to get used to, but it’s very interesting, and the game manages to hook you in.

It’s engaging precisely because it’s so vast. Each area is a surprise, and the difficulty isn’t as absurd as RPGs from the '80s or '90s. It gives you room to grow, level up, and even abuse powerful skills to deal with enemies.

Not to mention the roleplay aspect—the game has checkpoints, which breaks the roguelike mold and lets you retry. For instance, I kept dying to a red bear, but by using a skill like "STAREDOWN," you can intimidate enemies into fleeing, giving you time to recover and land a few more hits.

While I’d prefer a less fantastical setting, the game works well regardless. Its unique graphical style and the curiosity it sparks make you want to keep playing.

I’m still new to roguelikes of this type. I’ve wanted to play CDDA, for example, but every version I’ve tried is buggy or has a painful UI. I believe Caves of Qud is a unique experience that’s worth it.

The price felt a bit steep, but most roguelikes of this type are similarly priced.

I recommend the game. I don’t consider it perfect, but it’s different enough to spark curiosity and is great to play while lying down.

And remember: it runs great on the Steam Deck!

Thank you.

Qud is weird. It's incredibly interesting, hugely random (yet strangely repetitive, as random generation often ends up being) and, for all its far future mutant and science fiction oddness, rather more traditional than it pretends to be. As in, it's powered by dice rolls and many classic dnd/roguelike mechanics and has graphics that hark back to 30 years ago.

The writing is beyond purple into the ultraviolet. As a stylistic choice, I initially liked it, but it quickly became so much background-cruft. Yes, yes, I'm sure it's exciting that that this item "gleams with nanothings sundered from the spacetime braid" or somesuch, but should I equip it? Oh, no clue? In a game where a non zero amount of things will kill you more or less instantly without warning? Off to the wiki I go for the information that wasn't accessible to me in the game, then. Even though I have an implant that specifically exists to identify artifacts for me....

The multiple ending story is far too long for traditional roguelike play, in my inexpert opinion, as you'll probably maintain a run for double-digit hours to get near the end. It's a shame that you can't reload earlier saves to experience the multiple endings, since there's no way I'm making another character to do so. I thought the collision of inclusive sensibilities and old testament references in a weird post future world was cool, not that the story does especially much with any of those things.

One thing worth mentioning is that this game wants you to break it, or even cheese it. There are dozens of ways of breaking the economy, and five or six different ways of basically becoming borderline immortal (not that the game won't randomly spawn enemies that will straight up kill even extremely strong characters without any warning -you have to look at everything you haven't seen before and consider "should I hit the bricks rather than find out why that thing has an "impossible" rating?" If you're not ending the game with a small army of clones of yourself or wielding enough weapons that you resemble a battleship, you're doing something wrong.

Now that I've completed the story, I feel like I've seen 90% of what it has to offer. For a world with almost infinite places beneath the earth, I don't feel the need to see any more of them, particularly. It was a lot of fun, and I'd recommend giving it a go if you think you might enjoy a combat-heavy, deliberately strange turn-based game.

if you want to play, like, nethack but accessible and modernized then qud is a great choice, but i think its the world and tone that really makes it stand out.
its so beautiful and considered and empathetic towards all creatures. qud's view of the post-apocalypse is like if you lifted up a big flat rock and all the roly-polys had built a little vatican to have little roly-poly papal disputes in and then one shot you dead with a handgun. it rocks

my game of the year and one of my favourite games ever made. so many things keep me coming back even after hundreds of hours (by no means an exhaustive list):

> gameplay is accessible & user-friendly by classic roguelike standards, while still having absurd amounts of depth. you can take builds in so many different ways (unga bunga cudgel builds, gun builds, espers, even minion/follower based builds [especially with some qol mods]).

> aesthetic is incredible - music/sound design are extremely immersive (wrt sound design even simple things like smacking an enemy with an axe FEEL good because hits feel/sound weighty due to sfx + vfx), and the OST is amazing too. the minimalistic pixel-style graphics also look really good (IMO).

> setting/lore/storyline have lots of personality and interaction with gameplay (e.g. the faction system is lots of fun from both a gameplay & story perspective).
n.b. a lot of the setting is told in a somewhat obtuse fashion that i can lazily describe as "souls-like" (item/npc descriptions are extremely informative), so it's not for everyone... likewise, the dialogue can be very dense and difficult to read (theres literally npcs who straight up speak middle/early modern english).

if you are at all interested in classical roguelikes / sci-fi ish CRPGs i cannot recommend this game enough.

I'm surprised to find myself writing a negative review. I thought this game would be right up my alley.

I picked this game up after playing a lot of Tales of Maj'Eyal. A friend recommended it as a similar game that they thought was better than ToME.

I enjoyed my first few hours of Caves of Qud, trying different characters and learning how to survive the first two quests in Classic Roguelike mode.

However, once I figured out my strategy and consistently made it past the starting area I found the rest of the world to be... more of the same. My overall impression is that this is a game with lots of breadth but, ironically for a game called Caves, very little depth.

The core gameplay loop is dull. You explore the World Map, descend into a procedurally generated cave, clear the cave of generic procedurally generated monsters, find some loot that's exactly the same as all the other loot you found in all the other procedurally generated caves, then move on to the next cave.

First, character progression is linear. The skill tree is exactly the same every run. You level up, and you add points to your Mutation powers, giving them a marginal increase in stats. This progression is the exact same, every run. There is no exciting or interest variance to this progression. You increase your stat points marginally with every level up, which marginally increases your combat abilities. Which leads to my next point:

This game lacks core elements that make Roguelikes engaging. There are no cool unique items or artifacts. Every run, you'll find the exact same bronze->iron->steel weapons with marginal stat improvements on the previous tier. Maybe one of them will be "painted" and give you +50 reputation with one faction or another.

There are no interesting encounters. There are few types of random events. Primarily:

Stumbling upon procedurally generated ruins that contain procedurally generated books that are full of procedurally generated gibberish.

Stumbling upon a procedurally generated Lair that has a purple text NPC from a random faction who you can 'purchase' procedurally generated 'secrets', conscript into your service, or sells a 'unique' item(read: gives you +1 to a status point).

Conscripting the NPC will give you a bunch of +/- to various faction reputations and and they follow you around like a pet. That's it. No further interesting interactions. No quests. No unique dialogue.

My final major issue with the game is the procedurally generated lore. I was excited to get into the game's lore, but quickly lost enthusiasm after reading 9 pages of meeting minutes from the Wardens and realized that the 'lore' is all procedurally generated purple prose gibberish that reads like it was written by a lawyer. I continue to skim the books to see if there's anything new or interesting, but am disappointed each time.

tl;dr: A wide range of shallow features and poorly implemented procedural generation. Go play ToME, it does pretty much everything Caves of Qud tries to do, but better.

A very deep, procedurally generated game with lots of lore. You have to go into it with the right mindset -
Its a roguelike.
You will die - a lot.
You are not trying to "win". The first time I played for several hours then got an incurable disease. I was pissed because I was trying to win.
I have now played in RPG mode, as a non-mutant kin, and also as a mutant - I now have like 6 arms.

The lore is amazing. The skill tree is deep and each level gained requires quite a bit of thought on what I will spend those skill points on. Many items have significant faction bonuses (suddenly the apes don't attack me).
I like being an Argonaut Tinker and recharging the power cell of my flaming steel long sword.

I have barely scratched the surface. Now I need to explore the ESP/EGO skill tree.

Step 1: Make character
Step 2: Wander around
Step 2a: Die by some random animal
Step 3: Make character
Step 4: Wander around
Step 4a: Die but you're not sure how
Step 5: Make character
Step 6: Be confident that THIS is the time you'll make some progress
Step 7: Actually make some progress
Step 7a: Die seconds later
Step 8: Make character

Hard to get into at the beginning, but it hooks you after few hours. Very strong "just one more turn" vibe. Also - I have never played traditional roguelike that plays this good on controller. If you are looking for this kind of game for Steam Deck - there is nothing better.

This game is largely what you put into it I feel. Depending on your interests, this can be a deep lore experience into a sci-fantasy world, or it can be a thrilling "make one misstep and it's all over" rogue-like, or it can be a complex character building game in the mold of D&D, or it can be all those things at once even.

But you don't HAVE to interact with the lore, play it with only 1 life, or pay a ton of attention to crafting the best possible character either. There's a ton of options to craft the game experience you want. The genius of this game is that you can do, or not do, a whole range of things and still have a really enjoyable time in this game.

I will say this game is probably more fun to people who are willing to "roll with the punches" so to speak, and are willing to do things on a whim, and try to not have the same run, but better, every time. This game practically begs you to try new things you have not done before. But it still provides enough structure that not every play through has to be a wild ride into the complete unknown, and that there's still an amount of predictability if that is what you want.

Up to you what you choose to get out of this game.

I'm so happy that at 42, games like this can still draw me in and keep me playing until 3am if I'm not careful. Qud is very hard to put down because there's always something else juuust around the corner. The world is unique and fascinating and deeply entwined with the games mechanics. Truely wonderful! Live and drink!

Sometimes I lose perspective on everything that exists beneath all the layers of Qud's procedural generation and mechanical intricacy and capital-g Gameplay—I gradually stop suspending my disbelief until I realize I've been autoexploring every screen from a bird's-eye view and instinctually hotkeying through all the main-quest dialogue trees I've seen a hundred times and passively watching the numbers roll up with little regard for narrative context. Once I have that realization, I crack open whichever of the rare in-game books with non-generated, lushly-written text I've acquired most recently—it's almost always one I've never found or read before—and within a paragraph (or stanza) or two I'm fully back in it. I'm back to reading the dialogue, the character descriptions, the item descriptions, the location descriptions. I zoom the camera back in and move my weird character around the environment with intention. Once I'm back in that mindset, paying attention to what Caves of Qud really is, the spaces left between the astonishingly beautiful, complex, mysterious worldbuilding and the dense game systems and the just-abstract-enough visuals and (of course!) the writing are bridged by my imagination and I remember that this is pretty much the best game world ever—and what a treat it is to get to explore it, a slice at a time, through the lens of some of the most compelling roguelike and RPG mechanics out there.

Sincerely, I want to like this game. But I don't. The setting seems interesting and the mechanics might be fun but I've purchased this game twice now and have refunded each time. I can't seem to find the fun. Not saying that this game is bad! Clearly, a lot of people really like it but I just can't seem to grok the fun. Don't mind the low fidelity of the graphics but I do mind how difficult it is to just navigate the UI. I am constantly doing things that I didn't mean to do. That's bad UI design. Picked the game up again when 1.0 came out thinking that these issues had been addressed but they haven't. Just not my cup of tea.