Saturday Morning Gaming: Curse of the Dead Gods

I *LOVED* Hades. I loved it. When Hades II was announced, I was excited and tried to hold off on getting it until it was out of Early Access but, dang it, I’m weak. I beat The Big Boss a handful of times and, going the other direction, went as far as I could and got the dialog with Hecate where I said “it was like there was a void” and Hecate told me “like the mortals, we have to wait”.

And now I have to wait! Augh!

Someone told me that if I was interested in playing Hades-but-different, I should check out Curse of the Dead Gods.

An Action-Roguelike… yeah, I like that genre. And then I saw that it was 75% off (only five bucks) and, okay, that sealed the deal.

In this game, you’re a treasure hunter, I guess. Maybe an archaeologist. Maybe both. It doesn’t matter. You’re in The Ancient Temple and it’s cursed and the only way out is through.

It’s an Action-Roguelike that plays a lot like Hades. Hit with your X button, alternate weapon with your Y button. Now, they make you dodge with the trigger instead of with A (which, seriously, is messing me up) but you have most of the gameplay down right now if you’ve played pretty much any game like Hades.

Here’s where they mix things up:
1) A darkness mechanic
2) A curse mechanic

The darkness mechanic involves you having a torch in addition to your weapons (that’s what they use the A button for). You can either hold your torch (and use it as a weapon) or hit with your X or Y buttons and fight in the dark. There are braziers, occasionally, and you can light them with your torch and fight in the circle of light around the brazier. Why does this matter? Well, damage is increased in the dark, both yours and theirs. It might be better to fight in the dark! Well, if you remember how to dodge.

The second mechanic is the curse one. Every time you walk through a door to the next room, you pick up 20 curse points. Some monsters hit you with curse points. There are healing fountains that heal you up, sure, but they give you curse points at the same time. At 100 curse points, you pick up a curse. Perhaps you’ll find yourself at a place where you can buy or upgrade a weapon and you don’t have enough gold… well, you can always purchase it by picking up some curse points.

The curses are probably better explained as “mixed blessings”. There’s a curse that has you do more damage in the light, for example… but every time you get hit, you blow out any nearby braziers. Another causes there to be more gold in chests… but opening a chest gives you curse points now. Stuff like that.

Don’t get *TOO* excited, if you get a fifth curse, you get something unequivocally *BAD*. Your health drops until you hit 1HP.

You don’t mind one or two curses, depending… but right around three, you should start to get nervous… but if you walk into the boss’s room with 4 curses, heave a sigh of relief. Beating a boss removes a curse.

Of course, much like with Hades, you’re going to spend a lot of time dying and going back to the start where you’ll be able to swap weapons and spend some of the different kinds of currency you’ve accumulated.

You can unlock buffs, unlock new findables as you explore, and otherwise make the next run easier.

Is it as good as Hades? No. But it’s five bucks and Hades II isn’t done yet.

This will help you scratch your itches until it is.

So… what are you playing?