The dust from Sulfur‘s Early Access launch (October 28th, 2024) has settled now and I’ve spent a little bit longer playing it since we previewed it earlier this year.
Its always tricky to review a good run-based game because you always worry that you’re going to miss something magical coming out of its procedural generation on your next run. Sulfur remains a masterclass in funnelling both mushrooms and mayhems into its earliest levels, and feels a lot more balanced than the earliest versions I played of it.
For the uninitiated, Sulfur puts you in the role of a militant priest who has died in the pursuit of an evil witch, Bizarre magic is corrupting the area around your burned church, flowing freely from the depths of a cave network, and — through repeated revivals and clever returning-to-the-surface using a magical amulet — you must head down the tunnel, find the witch and stop them.
As I said, it’s run-based, and the cave systems are procedural — a roguelite affair featuring a lot of meta-play if you are smart enough to know when to deposit your findings or simply teleport back to the surface to regroup. You’ll be reset back to your revolver, priest’s garb and a handful of bullets (with some monetary donations from the church) if you die, so it’s worth learning, and learning quickly, that you shouldn’t be afraid of using your amulet charges to stash away income that you’re afraid to lose.
There’s a lot of items, upgrades and weapons to find and purchase through your misadventure. Oils can be used on your weapons, assuming they’ve levelled up enough to have them used, which serve as large mutators for the weapons; Doing things like spreading shots, adding a chance that ammo isn’t used, or having direct effects on the hit target. There’s also attachments which include the likes of scopes and more, and you can also use spells and magic to enhance your affects on the enemy. But, that’s not all, as you can also hollow out a weapon so that it takes a totally different ammo type. Add to that the ability to cook things, merge spells, and more and… well, there’s a lot that you can do.
Sulfur feels great to play too. Jumping and dashing around feels responsive and a lot of the levels feature little platforming tricks that you might not expect at first, for instance broken bricks, walls and mushrooms that you can jump from to climb to higher areas. It adds a feeling of exploration, and while there isn’t always something tucked away in these non-spaces, when there is it feels really satisfying.
There’s always a weakness though, and in the case of Sulfur it’s that its own procedural generation sometimes stacks things a little strange. I love that enemies fight each other when left alone, but I don’t like when an enemy gets a whiff of me and ten-fifteen of them run at me through a narrow corridor, cornering and overwhelming me. While it doesn’t happen often, and its not necessarily a guaranteed kill on you if you’ve improved equipment, etc, it hurts to be wiped out in the second area of a new floor. There’s also no ‘ledge catch’ mechanism there, in that if you touch the other side there’s no leeway as to whether you made it or not, meaning you might plummet to your death.
Sulfur‘s great artwork, great selection of things to tinker with, and fantastic lo-fi music all more than make up for most concerns though, and I’ll definitely be returning to this as it continues through its Early Access journey.
Sulfur is available now for Windows PC.
