Ah, we've once again come upon a certain recurring theme of Indie Game of the Week, wherein Mento is so entranced by an RPG's mechanics and/or gimmicks that he neglects to notice that the game is a clearly defined roguelike, and an insistent one at that. It's like buying a brand new chocolate bar because you were wowed by the packaging without reading the fine print that says "contains mint", and the last thing anyone wants from their candy is the flavor of toothpaste reminding them that they're rotting their teeth. This is all just a roundabout way of me admitting that I've fucked up again: while I love Kingsway's concept as "the Mac RPG to end all Mac RPGs" (though aesthetically the game's desktop is closer to Win95), I'm really growing tired of roguelike concepts dominating every Indie RPG I pick up these days. Again, it's hardly Kingsway's fault if I fail to notice the "roguelike" tab on the game's storefront page, but I really should know better by now.

Kingsway, to back up a sec, is an RPG that finds its nostalgia in an archaic interface, notably that of dozens of little window pop-ups for each individual aspect of the RPG experience: the map screen, the status bars, the inventory, the character's paper doll for equipment, the quest log, and so on. There's not nearly enough room on the screen for them all, so you prioritize by keeping the windows open that you need at the moment and either closing or minimizing the rest until they're required. The game knowingly compounds this window confusion by adding several extra for moving around the world map, fighting enemies, investigating an enemy's loot, and the occasional trap that forces you to tap "dodge" on a small but quickly-moving window before the trap (or spell, or enemy special attack) hits. You can also find yourself in multiple combats at once, each with a separate attack window floating around the screen demanding your attention. It's sort of like if someone took the experience of de-virusing an elderly relative's laptop and turned it into a traditional fantasy RPG. Of course, the one detriment to creating a deliberately trolly game is that you have to be a willing recipient of that trolling in order to play it.

Unfortunately, the game isn't content to rest on its windows gimmick alone. It also insists on various roguelike hooks, up to and including a strict time limit for your adventuring, a permadeath state with no capacity to save, items that can be passed down from adventurer to adventurer as well as the occasional permanent "starting gift" unlock (making the game more of a "roguelite" in practice), and a certain game design philosophy that has you learn by dying. For instance, the big story quest of the game is to light three beacons - each guarded by the ghost of a powerful knight - and reach the King's castle before the time limit expires, which resembles an ominous tentacled shadow coming in from the west (though at no great alacrity it must be said - unlike One Way Heroics, there's still plenty of time to loot and dungeoneer to your heart's content). Knowing that time was of the essence, I made a beeline for one of these beacons after a dungeon or two brought me up to a respectable level 7 with an almost full set of magical equipment, and I was completely trounced. Escape was impossible for whatever reason, and so I faced the end of my run after about an hour of building this character up. No "you should be this tall before fighting this boss" warnings, no indication as to a level requirement; the game simply assumes that you'll learn from this experience and try a different tactic the following run.

And that's what's so tiresome about roguelikes. You're seeing the same content over and over, starting from scratch every time, and there's no real sense of progression because it can all be stripped away from you at any moment. Maybe it just speaks to how I enjoy RPGs - I love those early sections where you're fighting a rat over a half-nibbled set of leather gloves because it's better than your current situation of wrapping poison ivy around your hands for protection, but I also like being that end-game badass who is stomping on everything they come across on the way to the final boss. Having to build myself back up after every unpredictable defeat is a major bummer, especially with how many games I want to get around to this year, and so I find myself joining that unlucky level 7 heroine of mine in leaving the game forever. As I've stated many times before for this feature, I ought to pay more attention to when a game tells me it's a roguelike; I learned this lesson quick about tower defense games (which I also hate), so why is this one not sinking in?

Rating: 3 out of 5. (Feel free to add a point if you're a roguelike fan, though. I think the windows concept is neat.)