We're back in the land of roguelikes for Rupeck Games's Caveblazers, a platformercurial (oh, I'm going to make that one happen, believe it) that's a bit more your classic roguelike - colored potions with unknown effects, shrines that provide random benefits, being lucky enough to find a better weapon early on, etc. - than either Flinthook (reviewed a few weeks ago) or something more instantly recognizable like Spelunky. As an adventurer armed with a sword and a bow, you reach a cave that is purportedly the entrance to a dungeon filled with untold riches only to be told by an ornery old man squatting outside the entrance that what you have is garbage and that you're going to die. He's not wrong. Even by the already brutal standards of 2D platformercurials Caveblazers is extremely difficult and arbitrary, with deaths occurring more frequently due to an unfortunate series of events than the player's mastery of the mechanics, or indeed lack thereof. You'll get your lucky breaks, finding great items early on and enough money to pay for those rare occasions when you're allowed to heal, but it's just as likely that you'll fall into a pit with a dozen monsters or land on some spikes while trying to jump up to a chest you missed.

All the same, it has a compelling enough carrot at the end of its stick, as you unlock new perks - which can be anywhere between a handful of bonuses to start you off right to a mode that completely changes how you play the game, my favorite being one where you start at half health but have powerful demonic weapons and can unlock useful Blood Shrine bonuses for a relatively small donation of health - and slowly see more of what the game has to offer. It wasn't long until, like Spelunky, I went from dying constantly on the very first dungeon floor to making it past the first boss (which appear every two floors) on a regular basis, and I can only imagine I'll continue to get better at the game; not just with the controls, which are actually fairly fluid and intuitive and include useful traversal-enabling mechanics like walljumps, but the risk assessment and patience needed to mitigate the deadlier scenarios of the game. I can also appreciate how the arbitrariness isn't so capricious as to completely ruin one's run, just make it harder, and also serves to provide a wide array of options and variations in how the rest of the run might go. For instance, you might find yourself acquiring a lot of magic items and gear that greatly enhances ranged damage, and being afforded the chance to rely on bows makes it much easier to whittle down hordes from a distance as well as making certain aerial bosses far more manageable. It's almost like a shoot 'em up, where the difficulty of the later levels is made more palatable if you happen to be armed with a dozen power-ups, from the weapons, rings and magic items you equip to the various "blessings" which provide permanent passive effects. For as punishing as it can be, and it is punishing given how much damage you take and how hard it is to recover that health, the right set-up can make all the difference.

I can take or leave the game's zoomed-out pixel aesthetic - I'm someone who thought Spelunky was greatly improved by its cute, distinctive artwork for its XBLA incarnation - but it does fine by the game's occasionally busy screens, where the color variation makes it very easy to identify dangers and enemies. This is opposed to Flinthook, where the overly detailed screens only served to conceal traps in a way that seemed frustrating and unintentional. There's a reason the roguelike genre as a whole is best known for its graphical simplicity: there's always a lot going on, so that visual clarity can be a godsend. All that said, the game is fairly drab and I wouldn't begrudge someone if they saw a few screenshots and kept on walking. The core appeal of the game is definitely more in how it plays over its presentation.

I'm not sure I'll stick with Caveblazers for much longer. While I'm good for the first few levels now, each successive zone ramps up the difficulty considerably and it becomes that much more of a hassle just to survive a single encounter with the types of creatures you find on the third floor and beyond. I've endured up until the second boss (which, like everything else, are randomly picked out of a small pool and can either be a lucky cakewalk or a fatal roadblock) about three times and beaten it once, and it came as no surprise that the enemies on the fifth floor creamed me almost instantly. From the in-game journal, which takes into account locations as well as all the enemies and items you've found, there's at least three more regions after that, so how someone's supposed to beat this game is anyone's guess. Probably those with far more tolerance of the unholy combination of frantic group combat and fickle roguelikes than I'll ever muster. A fine game, but perhaps not for me.

Rating: 4 out of 5.