Kerkerkruip

Kerkerkruip is an acquired taste, and it took me a while to warm up to it. This is a roguelike along the lines of NetHack, which I've never been particularly good at. What I found slightly aggravating and confusing quickly revealed itself as a game of logic, math, and a lot of dice rolling.

To start my journey, I read the help menu and beginner's guide. When I got into the game, I could tell I wasn't very successful. I was rarely able to make sense of the items I found, and any enemies (particularly those daggers) would kick my butt in a second. Despite this, the feelings of frustration from losing rarely lasted, and I'd immediately hop in for another chance. It was impossible for me to stay mad at the game for very long.

A few playthroughs later, and I hit my stride. I found some good gear, was destroying enemies with relative ease, and I realized something: I had been rushing way too fast. There's no reason to treat it like a real-time battle to the death. The best thing you can do is check your enemy, their weapon, your weapon, whatever else you might have, environmental hazards, anything that may have been inflicted on you from previous spells or battles. Once I started playing more defensively like this, I was doing better. You have so much to take into account, so take your time and really plan out your moves.

Combat itself is pretty in-depth. The main mechanic is that you can attack, or "concentrate" to build up your attack power and increase the chance it hits. When an enemy attacks, you can dodge, parry, block, or roll, all of which have different effects and are better in certain situations (you wouldn't want to parry a big club if you have a small dagger, and dodging when you're on a thin bridge isn't a good idea). There's a bit of RNG with the rolls, but much of the battle is determined through item stats and what you've done beforehand. Every enemy also has a unique weapon, moveset, stat set, and power it gives you after. If an enemy's too tough for you, you can retreat; you get a free one upon discovering a room, so it never feels like you're being punished for exploring.

There's a big feature that really incentivized me to keep going. Every time you defeat an enemy, you get a skill (like a chance to immediately act after being hit, a piercing attack, or the power to stun other enemies), in addition to a max HP increase and some points to freely distribute into one of three stats. Only the latter is permanent; there's a complicated rigmarole you have to get through in order to keep the rest of your bonuses, which involves the order you fight your enemies in. This winds up being one of the biggest puzzles in the game. It's not something you should worry about for your first few tries, but when I was about to fight the final boss, I picked up pretty quick why it important -- and I had lost all my skills except one along the way. The second time I fought him, I planned my gameplay out so that I retained three powerful spells from earlier, which led to my victory.

Weapons and gear rarely feel like straight upgrades from others, and it's fun to work out a battle plan from what you have. The array of items you can have mostly amounts to types of grenades, from what I saw, but they have vastly different effects in play, some of which are unpredictable. Some gear will also be cursed and have negative effects, which you'll only know after you put it on. In this case, you can either live with it or find a way to purify it.

There's more to watch out for, too. The game has a religion and sacrifice mechanic, where you can sacrifice skills to different gods in favor of themed bonuses. You can find scrolls spread around, but most of the time you won't know what they do until you use them. However, you can find scroll analyzers or learn about them from other books. Some enemies will fight alongside others, and they'll either gang up on you or start attacking each other. You'll also come across different types of machines around the labyrinth, which you can experiment with.

It took me a little over two hours to finish Kerkerkruip for the first time. My victory was somewhat dampened when the game told me I had now unlocked normal difficulty, but the key point is that I was always having fun with it. Even a failed run felt rewarding, since I picked up on some bit of new information or thought of a strategy I'd want to try next. Now, I'm pretty excited to go back in and see what new stuff is added on harder difficulties.

This game felt different every time I played it, so I'd definitely recommend it. And don't worry about dying; it's a learning process!