October has arrived and with it, the macabre, the spooky, and the dark themes come out in spades. I’m the first to tell you that I’m a chicken when it comes to horror, but I do like creepy, dark games. Specifically, I like things that aren’t full of jumpscares and are more unsettling than “scary” in nature. I also am quite fond of Roguelikes, so Ring of Pain seemed like a great idea.

Ring of Pain is a dark (and I do mean dark) Roguelike that is different than most games I’ve seen in the card-based Roguelike genre. You play a nameless character as you go down deep through a series of dungeons. Each dungeon presents a ring of cards, with two choices in front of you. Clicking either card advances the ring on that side until you run out of excess cards and take an exit, take a premature exit, or perish in combat.

You have a variety of stats, which can be increased (or decreased) by various sets of equipment you find in the ring dungeons. It is a very unique style too because you have fifteen different equipment slots you can fill, assuming you live that long. There are tons of branching paths, lots of rooms, and to be honest, there is so much content that I don’t know if a single run could be done in under an hour and a half. I’m actually being generous there, my runs took much longer.

The equipment is vast, the cards are all designed in a unique way, but I have some issues with the game itself. Granted, I’m no stranger to difficult Roguelikes or dark Roguelikes. I have spent over 800 hours in The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth since it released, I’ve played over 300 hours in Slay the Spire, and I have recently been drinking the river Styx in Hades like bottled water.

Yet the difficulty of Ring of Pain versus the reward you get is excessive. The story (what little there is) is given to you in cryptic snippets from characters you stumble upon. You have no idea why you are there or who you even are. A solid run can turn to crap in a single move. Maybe I’m just bad at the game, and I’ll get Ring of Pain players giving me the good ol Dark Souls treatment of “Get good scrub!” but it just feels obscenely difficult for very little reward.

To compare it to some of the other Roguelikes I mentioned, Hades has a storyline that is fantastic. The Binding of Isaac trickles items and mechanics slowly enough that each run feels rewarding. Slay the Spire does something similar, letting you unlock characters and things over time that encourage you to keep playing. Ring of Pain tries to tease you with cryptic snippets of story and by letting you unlock equipment, but there is no sense of getting better at the game over time.

There is just enough chaotic randomness (beyond typical Roguelikes) in Ring of Pain that even if you do everything right, your run could still end because of one tiny mistake. Some people may like that and some people might be willing to bang their heads against the proverbial wall that is this game. However, I find it disheartening and tedious to get a great run going, only to find that something utterly chaotic and random tossed a wrench in everything.

Truthfully, you never feel powerful, which is something that most good Roguelikes provide every now and again. You get a solid build that rewards your skill and careful planning and are able to progress further as a result. Ring of Pain lacks that sense of power or punch. It is more like you are barely scraping by just to reach the next level of clawing for scraps.

Run after run of failure with no progress in sight doesn’t make for a fun experience. Even Dark Souls gives players a story, even if it is mostly environmental. I never felt like I wanted to learn what these cryptic (creepy) characters were telling me because I had no reason to care. That brings me to another point that may be divisive to some people.

The enemies in Ring of Pain are drawn in an art style that is meant to be creepy and unsettling. It works, but it also feels heavy-handed. All of the enemies are some form of disfigured, abnormal creature, but most of them don’t even resemble real things enough to be interesting. After a while of seeing disjointed creepy figures A, B, C, D, E, and F, it stops being interesting.

It feels like the art department went, “Let’s just go with creepy stuff! We don’t need a theme really, we don’t need it to be cohesive, just creepy!” I was really disappointed by that fact because a lot of other really great Roguelikes are visually distinctive even down to the enemies that you face. There is a lack of atmosphere in Ring of Pain beyond, “Oh look we’re spooky and dark! Die over and over because we say so!”

I’m being really hard on Ring of Pain but it is because, to be quite honest with you, I am disappointed. The gameplay loop itself is fun and I like the ring dungeon concept a lot because it feels similar to choose your own adventure style things or games like Reigns where you make choices with cards. However, there just doesn’t seem to be enough substance to the game’s atmosphere and aesthetic to really make it worth repeated runs.

I wanted to like Ring of Pain. The concept is great, there are some great ideas in the game itself, and if the story was a little more interesting and fleshed out maybe I’d feel differently. That doesn’t mean other folks won’t enjoy it though. If you like difficult Roguelikes and card-based games, then pick this one up. It isn’t horrible, it just isn’t my cup of tea. Maybe you’ll have better luck with it than I did, and you can tweet at me to stick with it or something.

A PC review copy of Ring of Pain was provided by Humble Games for this review.

Phenixx Gaming is everywhere you are. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

Also, if you’d like to join the Phenixx Gaming team, check out our recruitment article for details on working with us.

Phenixx Gaming is proud to be a Humble Partner! Purchases made through our affiliate links support our writers and charity!

Ring of Pain

$19.99

4

Score

4.0/10

Pros

• Great Concept
• Interesting Equipment Mechanic
• Ring concept is Great

Cons

• Story is Very Ambiguous
• Difficulty is Harsh
• Very Little Visual Variety
• Lack of Atmosphere Beyond "Oooh Spooky"