Alchemy Dungeon 9+

This game has a ton of potential. At first I thought it was one of the most interesting strategy games I’d ever played. But after I upgraded the characters a bit, the game got so easy that it became impossible to finish a game without forcing a loss, because I never had time to play a whole game while doing my best. Forcing a loss is a really unsatisfying experience, but with no save feature, the only other option is to walk away and lose all the accumulated coins. This seems like an easy fix, and maybe a save feature could even be monetized. But more difficultly when using leveled-up characters wouldn’t hurt either.

I do not leave reviews often, but I feel this game has some solid potential, and I really wish the creator(s) could recognize that. Play the game for five to ten minutes, and you can tell that this could be a VERY addicting game.

However, after playing a couple times you quickly realize that it's near impossible to make it very far. As you progress through the level, your objective is to craft weapons to attack/kill the creatures and score as many points as possible by collecting more items. As you clear a tile by either destroying the creature or merging items, you then have a blank tile appear at the top of that column. Unfortunately as you clear the initial stock of useful items from the screen, you get completely stiffed of items as you flip these new tiles. About 50 points in on almost every playthrough I would start to flip almost no items to help attack, just more creatures with larger HP. So you are forced to attack "barehanded" which drains your health.

Why play a game that gives you absolutely NO way to "win". Upgrades cost exponentially more gold, and with how little gold you acquire in a playthrough you either have to "pay to win" or you need to grind for almost no satisfaction and pure frustration.

This is really well made and a fun game. The rules are really unique and the difficulty is well balanced. My only complaint is that there is essentially no tutorial. You basically have to teach yourself how to play it, but that’s kind of fun in its own way.