An absurd amount of videogame. It's the Resident Evil 4 of turn based deconstructed roguelikes - in that it plays so intense and it's so terrifying that I play one or two runs and have to go take a break, put my brain in an ice bath. It is one of the capital K Kinkiest games because it really makes me question, "Why am I enjoying this game making me feel bad so much?" Need more hours in the day so I can get good at this and claw my way out of the negative numbers of the online leaderboards! Michael Brough, one of a kind.

At 30 hours in, I've only begun to scratch at the surface of the game, but I feel safe calling it my favorite release of this year. It's a tightly-packed, intensely engaging puzzlebox of design, where no choice feels without weight and no feature is without unerring intent. You are always on the edge of a knife, never more than one mistake away from disaster, your obstacles machiavellian in their insurmountable simplicity. Every situation requires a brand new plan and reevaluation of your choices thus far, an endless balancing act where you juggle the comfort of relative safety, the power of immediate benefit, and the hunger for long-term gains; skill and luck will occasionally bestow a chance for two of those simultaneously, but you will never have the luxury of having all three.

That all this agonizingly delicious complexity is packed in such a compact form, a "coffeebreak roguelike" so condensed that it doesn't even have a "wait a turn" button, is no less than a work of genius. The basic layer of the hacking gameplay would be varied and thoughtful enough to carry a game by itself, but the addition of the overarching "campaign" creates a texture and flow unlike anything I've played. Many games exist where you'll play through a long series of missions or battles, broken up by visits to a home base or overworld map where you prepare for the next one; this is the only game I've played where those two layers feel completely inseparable, and where neither is the inferior. They feed into each other seamlessly, and choices in one have an uncountable number of cascading effects on the other, without ever feeling like an overwhelming mess or a nightmare of logistics and micromanagement: there's only a few buttons to press, only a handful of options to choose from at a time, but with a ton of weight behind each choice made. With the sheer amount of complications and gameplay modifiers to encounter (each of which feels like a new game by itself, even before you start considering their endless possible combinations), the complexity of the puzzle box feels genuinely infinite.

Traditional Roguelikes are a curious animal, as rare and colorful as they are harsh, their robust genes built upon the hobby-old foundations of meaningful resource management and methodical, thoughtful action within a complicated ecosystem. 868-BACK is an apex predator, a beast of absolute intent and purpose, honed by years of evolution to be as sharp, lean and vicious as possible. Don't be fooled by its humble size or its cute smiling face - this game is a killer, and beneath its fur you will find only muscle and claws.

Started playing 868-BACK, and oh my god.

It feels like I've never really played a real roguelike before.
Like the world knew only checkers, and then someone came and invented chess.

This will probably be my new obsession...