quite possibly the greatest roguelike ever made. i bought this game and bounced off it hard a few times. i'd come back after a few months and give it another go only to not really click and turn it off after a little bit. Eventually, though, after seeing all the glowing things my friends had to say about it, I knuckled down and really decided to give it a good, honest go, learn the systems and strategies, and try to get invested in the game and the world, and boy am I glad I did. There's so, so much here- Qud is a truly engrossing, unique, chaotic, esoteric, and beautiful setting that's both richly detailed and withholds just enough info from you to set your imagination on fire. the mixture of authored and procedural elements is done extremely well, with enough variety to allow wild and unexpected things between different playthroughs while also allowing all the benefits of having carefully designed, human-authored content where it's needed. (one time the six-day silt librarian spawned as a chrome pyramid, meaning I had to very carefully EMP her forcefields if I wanted to chat with her about books.)

I could go on and on about how much I love this game, but I think I'll leave it at this: if you like roguelikes, if you like science fiction, and if you like video games a medium, you owe it to yourself to play Caves of Qud.

quite possibly the greatest roguelike ever made. i bought this game and bounced off it hard a few times. i'd come back after a few months and give it another go only to not really click and turn it off after a little bit. Eventually, though, after seeing all the glowing things my friends had to say about it, I knuckled down and really decided to give it a good, honest go, learn the systems and strategies, and try to get invested in the game and the world, and boy am I glad I did. There's so, so much here- Qud is a truly engrossing, unique, chaotic, esoteric, and beautiful setting that's both richly detailed and withholds just enough info from you to set your imagination on fire. the mixture of authored and procedural elements is done extremely well, with enough variety to allow wild and unexpected things between different playthroughs while also allowing all the benefits of having carefully designed, human-authored content where it's needed. (one time the six-day silt librarian spawned as a chrome pyramid, meaning I had to very carefully EMP her forcefields if I wanted to chat with her about books.) I could go on and on about how much I love this game, but I think I'll leave it at this: if you like roguelikes, if you like science fiction, and if you like video games a medium, you owe it to yourself to play Caves of Qud.