How do you know if video games work?
In my opinion, one of the triggers to keep an eye on is the "I want to play one more game and then I'll stop, I swear" which has characterized immortal masterpieces such as Civilization, Guitar Hero o The Binding Of Isaac.
When a video game is able to generate that feeling it is probably on right way to deal with a quality title, thanks to the presence of a gameplay loop or thanks to the sum of a given number of ingredients which, as a final result, leads toabsence of boredom.
Crown trick is a roguelite that perfectly embodies this kind of gameplay loop, forcing us to repeat over and over again "I take another turn and then I stop".
Let's see together why the title has this effect.
One shift at a time until evening.
Crown trick is a video game developed by the unrecognized Chinese studio Next Studios and is a roguelite with role-playing ambitions of high quality, characterized by the presence of a cartoonish graphics of great value with a mouth-watering gameplay. The title it is not an action like the recent one Hades di Supergiant Games but it comes closest to static shifts of video games such as Etrian Odissey o the original Snape.
The title begins by putting the player in the role of the protagonist Elle, a girl who suddenly wakes up inside the Nightmare Realm; a place haunted by demons, monsters and ugliness of various kinds. Exploring these rooms and these corridors Elle ends up meeting a talking crown that explains the trend of things to her: in order to escape from this place she Elle she will have to fall asleep inside the Hall Of Reincarnation in order to be able to explore again those places and escape from the maze of troubles in which it has gotten itself.
In her explorations our Ellie will find herself ad interact with different characters, they too are wedged within this realm of nightmares; they can be helped and in turn they will help us players through it unlocking new mechanics, new shops and new points of view on the nature of the story.
Let's start immediately by saying that Crown Trick does not rely on fiction and what is there, while not exciting, is characterized by the right as not to be annoying. Crown Trick is definitely more committed to putting on the plate a playful alchemy able to captivate the player's heart and fingers, forcing him to play again and again.
But how many elements are there in this room?
Wanting to try to describe the title in purely analytical terms, we could put together the following definition: top down roguelike with role-playing elements in a dungeon crawler context. The player, in the role of the protagonist, will move within randomly generated dungeons by moving from box to box, attacking, using skills, collecting weapons and resources. The player will have the opportunity to exploit god-related abilities familiars that will be defeated in battle to the death from floor to floor, each with its own set of elements and peculiarities.
From death to death the player will acquire the possibility of dropping objects of certain quality, increasing some of its characteristics by paying in a specific currency. The more you progress in the game, the more healing elixirs you can take with you, the more money you will hold when you die and so on.
The abilities of the aforementioned pets can be combined: right in the first thirty minutes of the game we were able to use, with just under 300 points of mana:
- skill to create a barrel full of flammable oil
- blaze to explore the barrel, creating and igniting a 3 × 3 square by damaging enemies hit on hit and applying damage over time to them
- launch a magiare to group all the enemies present within a 5 × 5 square within the aforementioned flaming square.
- Throwing ball lightning which has the peculiarity of bouncing from opponent to opponent.
- Seeing this last spell repeat itself once again due to a relic that gives our protagonist 20% to cast the last skill used for free if this is successful
- observe an endless slaughter inside the room
- collect the charred remains of the opponents and empty them of all the gold there.
All of this was done with the resources found within the first thirty minutes of play, without the firepower needed to take down the second boss. The hard and raw gameplay is very closely reminiscent of a hybrid from the classic rogue and a more modern Divinity Original Sin 2, with numerous elemental interactions, a bang of weapons and a lot of skills to use.
To all this must be added the possibility for the player to use a teleporter to be able to reposition himself inside the room. Using this teleporter consumes charges, these can be re-obtained by bringing enemies to the breaking point; to do this it will be necessary to attack them a certain number of times, which will also make us gain damage and fill a special bar.
The dark souls of roguel- oh well let's stop.
All this good luck must then interface with the local fauna of the world of Crown Trick, made up of a plethora of enemies with their set of skills, their behaviors and their skills.
Le bossfight, both with familiars and with canonical bosses, they are everything except limited to "who first attacks first wins" thanks to presence of exclusive mechanics, between indestructible shields, hostile environments, minions that spawn continuously and curses that transform blocks into pools of lava and poison. All this meat on the fire, in a way, is definitely going to end up discourage the less accustomed player to the genus due to a difficulty level not exactly within everyone's reach.
Crown trick asks the player to die and die and die and die, over and over. This is because, as of this writing, the game still features a few balancing problem; some of the types of weapons present are practically unusable against certain bosses and some combinations of familiars can do nothing in certain situations. This does not destroy the experience but it certainly discourages those who interface for the first time with this genre of games.
Crown trick has longer than average runs, with good half hours that can only be eaten by the first two stages of the game. The mechanics present, the continuous combination of contents with always different implications and the level of difficulty calibrated towards the altino do not leave much room for the rapid pacing that can be found in more famous and noble productions.
La long-term longevity in any case is more than insured, given the considerable amount of hidden content between characters, possible builds and the general high level of difficulty, the more you enter the corridors of the nightmare realm.
Crown Trick is a little gem all turns and reasoning. The title is a classic-turn roguelite characterized by a particularly captivating gameplay loop and a certain variety of the action thanks to the numerous mechanics present. Between pets, elements, objects and a thousand other things it will be difficult for the player to get bored. To complete this already interesting package we also find a high quality technical sector that will help the player to survive the first, scorching, hours of play.
