Curse of the Dead Gods is a rogue-lite, temple raiding adventure game where you’ll be exploring mazes infested with a variety of monsters and traps. Developed by Passtech Games and published by Focus Home Interactive, Curse of the Dead Gods is a very challenging game with lots of interesting gameplay elements that sets it apart from other games in this genre. This game definitely isn’t for those who are expecting a simple experience however, as due to the nature of the game, you will be dying over and over again.

Your main quest in Curse of the Dead Gods is to explore cursed temples to discover gold, hidden relics, and powerful new weapons, and ultimately to face the God of Death in each temple. If you die before beating the end boss, you’ll be resurrected again and forced to run the temple all over again. No need to worry about repetitiveness however because each time you play it, it seems like a completely different game. What I mean by that is that the layout seems to change for each temple and the rooms you visit are also different. There are also branching paths in each temple, each offering a different form of powerup or weapon upgrade. So with all of this, it really is very difficult to play the same sort of game twice.

Curse of the Dead Gods also has a ton of unlockables, but you’ll need to play the game over and over again to unlock them all. First up are Blessings. These are modifiers that can give you an edge in combat. They include such things as increased damage, crit damage, the amount of gold you can find, and health upgrades. Currently, there are 21 Blessings to unlock. Next up are Forsaken Weapons which are basically regular weapons with some kind of stat modifier on them. There are 48 of these to unlock. You can also upgrade the number of Alters that appear in each temple as well as Devine Favors which grant a reroll of what is found in the alters.

These upgrades can only help so much though, as each Temple does everything in its power to kill you. The traps are no joke in this game and each can deal out a ton of damage. Of course what can hurt you can also hurt your enemies here, so maybe you can use those to your advantage. Another thing to worry about here is being corrupted. The further you go, the more corrupted you become and after a certain point, you begin to accumulate curses. Curses are basically modifiers that work against you and are given to you at random when your corruption gauge fills up.

What also keeps Curse of the Dead Gods interesting is the combat system. What fun is a game if the combat system isn’t any good, and luckily, it’s really good here. You have three main types of attacks you can perform. There’s a primary weapon, which usually consists of some kind of one-handed blade or hand weapon. A secondary weapon, which is usually a pistol, arrow, or whip and chain. And lastly, there’s a two-handed weapon you can pick up for power attacks. You can also attack with your trusted torch, though that doesn’t really do much damage. It does work for lighting up an otherwise dark temple. Speaking of which, if you’re injured in the dark, you take more damage, so make sure to light up any areas you can with your torch.

If you can get to the end boss, prepare for a challenge. This is because, by the time you get there, you’ll most likely have several curses stacked. Some curses are worse than others and it’s possible you might have all the really bad ones stacked against you. Not only that, you don’t start boss fights with full health either. You basically carry over what you have from the entire temple run. Lastly, try to get all the best relics, weapons, and power-ups through your run so you can use them on the boss. Most likely, you’ll be dying a lot before you even beat one of the bosses, like any good rogue-like.

Aside from the great gameplay, the graphics and the sound are really well done here. This is a really good-looking game with some great use of lighting and shadows, giving the game that atmosphere of dread and terror.

So should you buy Curse of the Dead Gods? Absolutely. It’s got everything you want in a game. It’s challenging, the combat is spot on, and each time you play it, it’s never really the same. That gives Curse of the Dead Gods great replay value especially since you are really going to want to unlock everything and eventually beat the game. You won’t even mind being cursed.

Curse of the Dead Gods is available now on the Nintendo eShop.

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Received game from developer and/or publisher for coverage purposes.
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