Tangledeep does a fantastic job of mixing an old genre with new ideas.
These days adding the word Roguelike to your game is like a cherry topping on a sundae. It’s great, yummy, and just about everybody does it. Roguelikes are a very crowded market to say the least and it takes quite a bit to catch my attention. Tangledeep caught my attention for plenty of good reasons, but primarily its wonderful 16-bit era art style. It’s vibrant and wonderful with its use of color in sprites, backgrounds and animations – very similar to Secret of Grindea with how playful it all looks, while still packing in the detail.
That being said, this is a Roguelike first and foremost. Just in case you’re unfamiliar with that term, there are benchmarks when it comes to that genre: some form of perma-death usually, lots of random loot, and plenty of randomized dungeons. When it comes to the art, randomized environments are what you’re going to get more of than anything else. While the art style is still bright and pops, I found myself missing those areas that felt hand crafted. To be fair though, Tangledeep is still being actively developed, hitting Steam Early Access July 18th. How long will it be in Early Access? The developer wants to game to be done by November or December at the latest. The story is a major part of what’s coming in the next months. Possibly giving you a break from all the randomness.
One thing I can say for sure though is that Tangledeep is an addictive game. After picking one of the many different kinds of jobs(classes) and familiarizing myself with the controls, seven hours had flown by and I was up to my knees in loot.
Pretty much everything is as you would expect it to be in a typical roguelike. The standard you move, the enemy moves, sight based on perception of where your character is standing and randomly getting screwed over. Okay that last one doesn’t happen very often but I have gone into a new zone to greeted by several mobs and champions and die very quickly.
On the flip side there are some rather nice and refreshing ideas that Tangledeep brings to the table. My personal favorite is Adventure mode. This is the feature some will call a cheat on the ‘Roguelike’ genre. Adventure mode removes the aspect of starting back at square one if you die. You keep what you have managed to attain as far as levels, progress, and abilities and loot. Instead when you do die you lose all your job points, half your gold and have to walk back to where you were. So there is a penalty, just not one that makes you rage quit. Personally, I am very happy that the option is there. You can choose to play the traditional way and the game even mentions that is the intended way to play but it gives you options. I wish more Roguelikes might adopt this kind of mindset.
I do call into question the idea of it being the intended way to play though. Tangledeep lives up to its name, it’s deep! Aside from starting a second save file to see differences; my first file was a good six hours in and I only managed to get eight levels deep. Throw on top of that, Item dungeons, a feature that lets you upgrade items by killing a mini-boss in a micro dungeon and you have a REALLY long game. Thankfully there is save and quit feature but I have said it once and I will say it again. Rogue giveth and rogue taketh away. When it comes to randomized dungeons, you are going to get randomly messed over sometimes. Dying and having to start over again seems time consuming. Perhaps too time consuming.
Another neat feature that I liked was the tree garden. The tree garden is a persistent area between play sessions that grows random food stuff. These can be used at any time and even be cooked. Another feature, The monster corral, lets you capture enemies and bring them back to base for a simple damage bonus to that enemy type. I loved this idea and hope the monster corral is expanded upon in its use. Perhaps as a pet training ground of sorts? Progression does seem to be in the developers mind and you can tell by the games base camp. There is a bank to deposit items and gold. The base camp has its own progression and this was, again, something I found refreshing and hope is expanded on.
Finally, the job system screams Final Fantasy Tactics in the way it works. You start off picking any job you like and master all of its abilities gaining job points from killing monsters and treasure hunting. Jobs have passive and active abilities such as the, HuSyn, which is like an android class. Husyns can create runic crystals, has a photon cannon attack and an autobarrier passive which guards the first attack. Then I decided I got tired of that class and tried out the Spellshaper(Basic mage). Using either a job change scroll or paying a fee you can switch classes as much as you like. This lets you create some rather unique class combinations as suddenly I was a hurling fireballs and using Photon cannons the next. My only gripe is that the animations could be flashier.
Tangledeep gives you options, so many options, and that is what I got the most of during my initial impressions of the game. Whether it be keyboard support, controller support, perma-death or progressive style play. You have the option to play this game the way you want, and it all runs very smoothly. I am very interested to see how the story is incorporated into the game and to see how jobs evolve over the next several months. Like I said at the beginning, the developer is doing a great job of teaching an old dog new tricks. If you’re a fan of traditional roguelikes or maybe you’re looking for a dungeon diver with some new twists. I recommend keeping an eye on Tangledeep.
Be sure to check out the Steam page, follow the developer’s social medias and check back at B3 as this game develops.
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