A bare-bones dungeon crawler that, while not impressing anyone with visual flair, does still have some rather interesting design to its dungeon! The game doesn't have the best first impression: aside from the lackluster graphics, drab sounds, boring font and no music, the warning about not using keys led to me being constantly afraid about when to use them, so I'd much prefer if the game itself did the work to prevent an unwinnable situation from ever occurring, if possible. Furthermore, the warning about reduced exp from repeat kills had me believe that I should only kill enemies when necessary, such as when they block my path, but this worked against me since the game requires you to kill enemies to get exp so you can kill bigger ones (but there's no strategy to this because you can just respawn when you die for no penalty, so what's the point? maybe a separate difficulty would fix this?) There is a silver lining to the fact that I was so cautious from the start, however: I do like how the dungeon is designed in such a way that, unlike a typical dungeon where you go floor by floor, this dungeon actually lets you visit practically all of its floors from the start, upon which you can then work backwards to design an ideal route to get out. That's such a unique concept I haven't encountered before and though I haven't beaten it yet, I think it will be fun planning this route to get out!
Reviews for "Magirune"
For everyone who says it feels familiar or can't get through it - here is a link to playthrough from 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74ZlV-og0V4
Honestly this is pretty boring. Aside from the achievements, there's really no reason to avoid dying, and the fact that all enemies give 1 XP regardless of difficulty really breaks the game. Perfect example is that you can spam up and down between floors 20 and 21 and if you can kill that enemy without taking damage, you can farm levels infinitely (there are likely other places where you can do the same thing,) making the whole system kind of broken and also defeating the purpose of potions. Also, even if you're trying to beat the game without dying, you can just use a potion whenever you drop below 50% health. There's no strategy whatsoever as to when you should use one.
Once you get past the weird combat mechanics, the game is puzzle and exploration. Navigating 15 floor mazes is a bit confusing and often tedious, but the puzzle elements are decent, even if it's frequently interrupted by level grinding. Once I got the pickaxe (but couldn't figure out where to use it despite seeing "need a pickaxe" messages earlier) I figured it was time to hang it up and be satisfied with the fake ending.
Between the lack of music, balance, and overall sparseness of anything interesting, this game just feels really unfinished.
You should try hardcore mode. It removes the 1xp when the enemies are to easy. That's how the game was originally built.
Different and cool
It's fun, but a few levels in, the stairs and even the checkpoint wouldn't allow me to pass, which means I got stuck. That's a deal-breaker. I'm not going to play a game that makes me restart every time that something glitches or goes wrong.