Hieroglyphika

This game has so much potential but it's too slow to play, and balancing isn't quite right.
I wish it would get updated even if it seems abandoned for good.
Still had fun finishing my first run after many tries.

Brutal rouge-like, turn based, dungeon crawler with perma-death.
Learning curve starts way above player's head.
Whole game is super brutal and frustrating, but that's the charm of it, but the more you learn, the better it gets.
It's like dark souls on nightmare difficulty, but actually hard, on steroids, and set up against player. And it's normal mode in this game, there's also hard one, but it demands 5D brain to be played. My smooth ball-brain barely makes it possible to reach level 5.

Gameplay is heavily inspired by Legend of Zelda - forced top-down-like perspective, turn based move, traps, environment to interact with and to use against enemies.
RNG makes each run interesting, and you can't just memorise layouts. As for the enemies, on the right-side of the main screen there is a hint list, showing what each enemy does.
At first, items are a mystery. You start just like british and german grave robbers of the XVIII-XIX century, decoding on
the go, what your gear and enemies actually do.

To be honest, I hate this game because how hard and unpredictable it is, but also, it's a clear 9/10 tittle.
My only negative is for the slightly bugged or convoluted move/action menu, but once you'd get a grip of it, all is good.

Just buy this game and finally git gud you filthy casual scrub.

Chess inspired, it's named hieroglyphika, your supposed to make a little effort to understand what's happening here, the game is not forgiving but as you progress so as your knowledge on the various enemies and danger across levels... Nothing impossible here, play on the weakness of your foes hope for the best and try a bit played less than ten hours to beat the game, was on the edges to beat it several times before that...
It's charming, smart and simple at the same time, loved it, the pace is perfect for learning what's happening at wich moment and in wich order, little luck on the loot and certain aspects like the spirits, but the turned based insure a lot of control, so if you mess that up, it's mostly on you, that's honestly a stellar point in a landscape of swarming scrappy sketchy fast paced roguelites with action combat. Here you also need to learn the paterns, you also need to learn the gameplay but it's not in a reflex action way.

I've seen many comments complaining about the slowness of this game, as one of the key complaints.

However, i'm sure the dev has heard that so many times now. I really hope it hasn't burnt him/her out on developing games.

I want to actually appreciate this game for what it can do. I was hunting for that elusive "win hard" achievement over the weekend and by god was it truly brutally difficult.

But I DID it!

And you know what? That sense of satisfaction after quite a bit of "suffering" was TOTALLY worth it, and gave me something other games may lack, a sense of pride of achievement and also enjoyment at being able to master this games mechanics.

I'm a big fan of hard challenges and at first I thought "this game is really unfair". But actually it IS fair. To an extent. There are still moments where luck really screws you over.

But this game plays a little like chess. You have to stop and consider every piece on the board. You have to consider that your next move could be your last, even if you have been destroying everything in your path. Even if you have 99 hp. There are clear chain reactions in your actions.

Every time I got to a new floor, I thought I was on top of the world, but then the game throws a new set of challenges at you with new enemies and increased traps. There were tense moments where I didn't think i'd live, and somehow I held on through thick and thin. To create that in such a punishing way really shows just how well this game creates tension and release. The moment you stepped down to the next floor, its a sense of complete relief and a hyping of yourself up again, I CAN do this.

At first it feels like you're completely out of control. Enemies can reduce your impressive HP down to peanuts in a matter of moments. You could have traps going off in every direction, be frozen for many turns in a row as the chasers hunt your butt down, surrounding you from every direction.

But then you start to realise what dictates the AIs movements, how to manipulate them in the way you want. How to prioritise speed and elemental advantage, how to manipulate the flow of the fight, fast paced rushing for the exit or slow paced holding back to slowly wittle your HP back up or to outmanoeuvre the pieces on the board.

In that sense, the slowness of this game actually suits it well and I commend the developer for sticking to his/her guns. Yes it can feel agonising. But I think that's the point. Agonising is part of the experience. You're supposed to agonise over every detail of the terrain and the game movements. You're supposed to analyse the movements of your enemies closely. You're supposed to see how things play out one after another. Will the AI get their move before the trap kills them? Which monster will move first? All of this is critically important to master hard mode and the later floors. When staring down death, you may only have one move that allows you freedom, and having the knowledge of the way the AI behaves allows you to better decide what that movement may be.

I do wish it was faster at times, but it was not enough to stop me hunting for total completion of this game and enjoying the feeling afterwards. I was enjoying myself, and that's all that matters. It was worth my time.

Whether people agree or disagree, that's fair. All criticism is valid after all. But I hope that some others can agree too that actually this game achieves quite a lot despite its humble presentation and relative obscurity. I think anyone who enjoys strategy and tactics games could find something unique from this game, or at least enough to scratch an itch.

Thanks mhanka !

This game is on the verge of being good. If you are a person who has a lot of patience, or at least a lot time to sink into a smaller game like this, then it may still be worth picking up.

The reason it's a no for me is that the game has two major characteristics and they are counter to each other.
Characteristic #1: There are no words in the whole game. Technically there is perfect information in the pictograms but it's very much an iterative process to figure out what everything means. Understanding how enemies and the environment work is also a thing that one must learn as they go.

#2: The game is incredibly slow. In most turn based games like this you take your turn and all of the enemies take their turns instantly. In this game you take your turn, then every enemy unit individually takes it's turn, then the environment takes its turn. Granted, there's something to be said about actually seeing what the enemies are doing (it works in CIV games, for example)

BUT

When the game is only learned by doing and the doing is so slow.. it's just not an enjoyable experience to get your sea legs.

In my best run I died instantly from full health and am not sure why. The fact that I don't know, and it would take a lot of time to re-create that scenario makes me not want to play the game anymore.

Cute trad roguelike with bitesize runs. Uses symbols to explain what the items/spells do. In many games would be a flaw (just tell me what XYZ does!), but in this game is part of the charm. You're an adventurer digging up an ancient's culture's artefacts , after all. (You'll get them soon enough, tho ;-)). You see a lot of complaining about slow enemy turns. While there is some validity to this, I suspect those reviews were before an update that sped things up. Especially in the beginning the speed is fine. You'll be busy enough trying to figure out what's going on. Another small minus is that the game is mouse only.

Thought I would swing back around and make a contribution to the thumbs-up jar for this one.
First, the graphics are wonderfully stylized, and I thought the use of pictograms explaining how everything works was really clever given the theme. Sure, it may still take some trial and error to fully understand what things do, but that can happen even in games where you have text descriptions.
Music is good, sounds are great, and I also appreciate that any gear you equip shows up on your character model.
One of the most common complaints is the slow pace, but I find myself leaning more towards agreeing with the developer on this one. If enemies moved too quickly, you could miss quite a bit of what's going on. You need to be able to pay attention to how many tiles an enemy can travel so that you can learn their patterns, which panels they're stepping on, which traps they're triggering, the tiles the traps are affecting, and so on.
Given that the maps aren't that large, and once you advance so far, you then have guards chasing you from behind, it essentially forces you to pay close attention to your surroundings and carefully work out how you plan on making it to the floor exit. Whether or not you're going to skip grabbing some goodies because the guards are too close for comfort, or if you're going to risk walking into a trap zone because the consequences of staying put are much worse, etc.
This isn't an easy game, but I wouldn't necessarily say it's harder than any other rogue-like, just difficult in its own unique way, if that makes any sense.

I wish I could say I like this game. I really do. It's pretty, runs well and has a lot of potential.

But it's frustrating as all hell.

I can get over the overly stylised interface and obtuse item descriptions. It's actually kind of rewarding to figure out what the symbols and descriptions without words mean. You'll do several runs so you'll have plenty of time to get accuainted with the items. It also sounds good and is a truly beautiful game.

The biggest problem I have—which I share with most people complaining in their reviews—is how frustratingly slow it is. This is coupled with the fact that you as the player have one single action. You can move, attack, shield, use a skill or simply wait. Forget moving and attacking on the same turn or anything like that. Meanwhile there are enemies in this game who can move two tiles, position themselves perfectly and then attack you, doing massive damage.

This is further infuriating as the enemies often simply undo what you literally just did. Oh, you grabbed some health? No, this enemy just attacked you for just as much, if not more. Oh, you moved a step forward? No, this trap was just activated by an enemy at the edge of the screen who stepped on a tile and you were pushed back again. Oh, you readied your shield expecting this enemy to step forward and attack? No, he just stood exactly where he is and won't move for several rounds just waiting for you to step into range so he can fucking push you back again.

Meanwhile, in between every single turn, you have to wait for every single enemy on the screen to make their slow moves as well as every single trap to activate and show their slow animations and every single effect on every single tile to animate. There is so much waiting in this game.

The predominant feeling I get in this game is utter powerlessness: a complete lack of proper agency. That is not what you want to feel in a game. In this game I am at the complete mercy of the game in terms of what items I get, what the level layout looks like, what enemies are where and what they do—and like I said, sometimes they decimate you and sometimes they do literally nothing. I feel like I'm playing poker but I have to play the first hand I get. No exchanging cards. Oh, I got a pair of threes? Well, too bad. The game just plucked that third ace straight from the deck and slapped me in the face with a full house.

I want to love this game, I really do. I just wish I didn't have to struggle with my impulse to rage quit every time the game turns my perfect run into instant defeat in one or two turns in a way that's completely out of my hands.

this game is made for the tablet, it's terrible to play on the PC.

Although I LOVE the idea of this game, I simply cannot stand how slow turns progress. Once you move, EVERY SINGLE ENEMY moves singularly, and slowly for that matter. This problem is so prevalent that I could not continue playing this game. In these regards, I cannot recommend this game.

There are some mechanics spoilers, and I haven't blacked them out, so if you don't want to see them, don't read any further.

I want to like this game, but it's too slow for the pay off. Being a roguelike game, there are obviously frustrating moments, like getting to level four only to discover that apparently some enemies can blast you against the wall at nearly full health and insta kill you. Well, FTL and Don't Starve have those moments too, but at least they don't seem as slow as this game.

I don't have a problem with turn based games--original XCOM is one of my favorie games, and some of those turns can be quite long. The problem here is, that it just isn't as fun for me. This isn't really objective, as some reviewers don't mind it. What I really find frustrating is that when you loot sarcophagi it can take you a full turn to equip the item, unless it's the first item. For example, if you loot a shield and you didn't have one before, it's automatically equipped. If you already had a shield, you now have to choose to spend a whole turn equipping it. The problem is the turn based system for this game. It's the whole design. It seems to be built around initiative, so you get our speed up and it seems you get more turns, but it still just takes way too long.

I really like all the different equipment and spells you can get: armor, helmets, amulets, defensive/offensive spells, and weapons. Probably my favorite spell is the vampire spell which allows you to take half an enemie's life.

There is a lot of thought put into this game, for sure, and I do enjoy trying to figure out the mechanics myself. Some enemies you kill will turn into white bat-like creatures that you can heal yourself with, or they may heal or kill certain enemies. There are also black bat-like creatures that can heal or harm you and enemies. There are certain conditions for that which you have to figure out. You can knock enemies into walls, each other, and various items and have completely different reactions. It can be quite dangerous figuring out what new spells do, as they can hurt you. There are different kinds of traps: acid/gas, fire, freeze, spikes, etc. and each level is random. There are a lot of different things going on each turn, and you can't stick around too long in the levels as enemies spawn in from the left, and you really don't want to face all of them.

I like a lot of things about this game, but it's just so slow. I may play it again, but I really can't recommend it, because I know a lot of people aren't going to like this aspect.

I can confirm what others said.

The game is turn-based and the turns take quite long with no option to speed things up. The entire game is controlled by mouse. If you like to play with keyboard or gamepad: Nope, not working. The "no text" gimmick is kinda interesting, since you have to figure out yourself what the stats and symbols mean, but the fun is killed quickly when the game pace is extremely slow.

Also, the music is mediocre at best.

Very challenging but rewarding. I found ther lack of detailed instruction frustrating at first but ultimately it adds to the charm of the game.

Although most of the negative reviews on this state that the gameflow is rather slow, I had no problem concerning this. The fact that there are nothing written adds depth to the gameplay and makes you feel you're discovering/identifying the items and enemies you encounter. However, once I will figure out all of them I wonder if the game will have the same appeal. I have been playing roguelikes for more than 10 years and yet to complete any of the traditional ones. With Hieroglyphika, on the other hand I have figgured out about 80% of the items/enemies and I have won on normal mode only in my 5th run. So I am not sure if it has the replay value of a traditional rogulike. Some extra content, items and ui improvements would be great. But it is still worth its price, especially when it is in discount.

Definitely worth the money if you like strategic puzzle-games.
The decision to have no text on the screen is both infuriating and interesting at the same time.
The first room is hell when you don't know what the various traps do, but once you start understanding the internal logic, the game makes complete sense.
It's still hard as all hell though.

This game suffers from a horribly slow enemy turn. You move one tile, then the enemy takes 3-5 seconds per enemy to move. With multiple enemies, it can take what seems like 20-30 seconds of waiting for moving one tile. It's a waste of your time. I'm a traditional roguelike player and have never seen such a poorly implemented AI animation/movement sequence.

The game looks beautiful, has some interesting language mechanics. It's a shame the slow AI turns make it not worth the wait.

great for everyone that enjoy hard games....hoever be warned this game is REALY hard and the smallest mistake will result into your death.....

the rng is fair.it plays still a important role like in any other roguelike but most damage you will take because you made some dump actions like walking into a trap or let you surround by multiple monsters

the game hoever is a little bit slowpaced...you should realy think alot before you do somethink(but hey...that should be the case in any good turnbased game^^).

if you like hard games that require alot thinking....buy this

This is a quite clever and enjoyable game that I see as a slow-paced puzzle rogue-like (turn-based, procedural levels, random loot, permadeath).
The premise: you walk from left to right, killing things, avoiding traps and looting other things until you go down the stairs at the far right and the difficulty ramps up.
Everything happens in turns, order is determined by a speed stat that mainly depends on your equipped gear, and traps give a tell before they go off.

The puzzle aspects start to come in to play when you find loot and try to figure out 'what does it do actually?'
All aspects of your gear are visualized as pictograms and while you get all information about its effects, you have to figure out what these pictograms mean in the first place (which isn't that hard if you experiment a bit when you find something new to you).

Examples: a new dress may restrict your movement to the 4 cardinal directions instead of the usual 8, but boost your speed and defence and further increase your speed when you stand in sand tiles instead of reducing it. Headgear may reduce or nullify a certain damage type / effect while making you more vulnerable to another type. With the new weapon you may be unable to attack now and then due to cooldowns, but it extends your reach and hit chance while dealing a damage type this particular enemy is weak against... and so on.

While often things feel at first like flat upgrades to your ability to deal damage or get faster, you will come into situations where you'll have to skip some turns to swap items (each equipment change takes one turn, and spells and such start with cooldowns when freshly equipped) - and that along to changing your own movement or attack patterns give it a surprising amount of depth.
Enemies come with abilities as well and may push you around (beware of holes in the floor after the first few levels), freeze or poison you and generally keep you on your toes since new enemies are introduced every level so far (made it past lvl 5 of 9).

Just to extend on what kinds of things you have to keep in your mind:
- your general stats: life, speed, defence, attack strength and hitchance
- attack pattern of your normal and special attacks, damage type, additional effects when attacking, attack cooldowns
- spell effects, patterns, cooldowns
- your and your enemies resistances and vulnerabilities
- traps, their types and patterns, and with your current speed, will you make it past them in time - or can you even use them against your foes
- your own movement pattern (may need to change your suit to get out of a dead end)
- and also how you deal with +/- health ... uhm... flying things(?); your shield may reverse their effects for example

As for the graphics: Just look at the screenshots and form your own opinion. Npc/trap turns take a few seconds so it's a bit slow going but the important part is that you can always tell what is going on - it could lose its readability if sped up further.
Equipped gear is always represented on your character sprite which is nice, but there are no animations bar some 'swoosh' lines when attacks are dealt.

Also, a codex of some sort would be nice where you could unlock a view (with the same pictograms) of what you are up against, so far it's all about observing and memorizing and quite some guesswork - which isn't bad per se, but e.g. after I've killed the same bugger 20 times it would be nice to take a closer look into his actual stats.

Can't comment on technical stuff, I've experienced no problems like crashes at all. *edit: about half an hour minutes after writing this it crashed for the first time. Well... *edit2: and an update that specifically targets that crash came within one hour. On a sunday.
It's good.

Hieroglyphika is a fun, new Egyptian themed, Turn Based, Roguelike with old school sensibilities. With no item descriptions to guide you and no text in the UI, your first couple of runs will just be figuring out what you can and can't do. Your next few runs will be trying to figure out the various pieces of clothing and equipment that you'll find strewn around the pyramid and why those nasty big critters start chasing you for taking to long. Then finally you'll be making the most of what you have learnt to try and push deeper into the underground to inevitably die at the hands of a newly encountered enemy type.
It's this learning process that will either keep you playing for the first 2 hours or put you off of the game. I personally loved it and am now slowly chasing the achievements for each new floor I manage to accomplish.
**the game has had some updates since my initial review adding more enemy types (some quite annoying) that I feel have altered the pace and feel of the game.

It's good!

It is quite good actually. Unlike the other popular rougelikes, you cannot sit idle and farm like crazy in this game. You have an urgency to get to the end of the level before long or bad things happen to you, which I enjoy. I have not played too much at this point but from what I have seen, the weapon/armor sets are exactly the same in every playthrough. This is not a bad thing however, as the game presents you with a lot of items with drastically different effects. And the ability to change items/weapons/armors at will once you get them, creates an amazing utility that doesn't exist anywhere else.

While I believe the game can be further improved with the addition of randomness to the enemy spawn and other small fine tunings, the game at this point is fully fleshed out and complete.

As for the price, I think 9 dollars is more than fair for this game. It offers numerous replayability options and probably over 50 hours of gameplay before being any kind of bored. Which better than anything I can say for the most A+ titles.

Buy it, no brainer.