About Demonfall:
This game crashes more often than Skyrim with 1,000 mods. The devs don’t seem to have any interest in balancing the many broken mechanics (both good and bad for the player). Every now and then, they patch in some obnoxious event that makes it even worse for a few weeks, and ignore the community begging for them to end it (look at the forums and comments on the recent Summer 2021 event). I would love to give an accurate review of the new arena multiplayer mode, but since the servers are down seemingly 90% of the time, I’m not even sure it deserves its “Beta” status. What sucks the most is that when this game is fun, it’s really fun. I’ve put a lot of good hours into it, but in it’s current state, there’s no way that I could ever recommend this to anybody. Even if you like minesweeper, even if you like roguelikes, avoid buying this game unless something changes. Update Edit (October 21): Another event patch, and so much of it is bugged. Crashes happen almost every run. There’s still no way to disable event content. My disdain for this dev grows. Demoncrawl puts the Rogue back in Roguelike. Having a good run, but suddenly have a 50/50 chance of dying at the end? That is intensely old-school Rogue. The next run you get 5 omens (curses), and the run after that you get some insanely powerful combo that breaks the game entirely. It’s upsettingly addicting. I love this game and have spent way, way too many hours on it. If “minesweeper roguelike” sounds like a fun idea to you, you’ve probably already bought this, but know that there is so much content in this game, and the devs are constantly adding more content and more unique events that you’ll never run out of new things to see or do. If you’re on the fence, here are a few reasons not to buy this game to save you from the same fate of addiction and lack of sleep I have endured: “Breaks the game” – I mean that literally. This game crashes a lot. You can get a series of abilities that will spawn minions to run around and clear the board for you, but if you pass too many turns at once to let them run about the game will crash. If you make too many elemental squares, the game will crash. If you use the ectoplasm item, you will either get an automatic win due to how buggy it is, or the game will crash. The hundreds and hundreds of items in this game are all very clever, but with so much content comes so many edge cases that can crash the game, so be prepared for that. “Addicting” – Action roguelites typically have 20-60 minute run times. You can sit down, have one solid run, and walk away because you spent so much time on it. Each stage of Demoncrawl takes 1-5 minutes, and while a quest has 8 or so stages, each stage is its own game of minesweeper. This creates an intensely addicting loop where, after every death, you can hop right back in because your next “clear” of a stage is less than a minute away. If you have ever considered yourself to be “addicted” to a roguelike game, Demoncrawl will be that experience multiplied by crack to the power of meth. Buyer beware. That’s a lot of text dedicated to criticism, so I would refer you to the blue thumbs up adorning this review as a reminder on my overall thoughts. I love this game, and I hate what it did to me in my time with it, and I love that it did it.
