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S2 Ep151: Curse of the Dead Gods
85 Plays5 years ago
Join Dave, Jake, and special guest Mike as they spelunk into cursed temples full of traps and barely make it out in this week's episode!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Meet Mike: A Sports Lover and Recurring Guest
00:00:53
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host as always, Dave. How's it going today, Dave? I am tired. You tired? Yeah. Late night. Yeah. For the guests that we're about to introduce, a long time listener, friend of the show. I went to college together all around bro.
00:01:21
Speaker
Love sports. He loves it so much. He came up to visit and we were hanging out, but we had a ridiculous amount of tasty food. And now my body is on Coast Autopilot. Welcome to the show, Mike.
Remote Recording and Playful Banter
00:01:43
Speaker
Hey, how's it going? I guess it's tired. It's a good thing that I'm doing all the talking this week.
00:01:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:53
Speaker
What was funny is based off that intro, it sounded kind of like Mike hadn't been on the podcast, but like Mike is a recurring. I do like the insanity of Mike was up. He doesn't live nearby. It's like two hours away. So he came up to hang out for like a day and then he drove back this morning and it's now recording with us. But it's not like you and I get together on the weekly to record in person right now.
00:02:22
Speaker
No, never again. I just like that we have our own remote locations, our own bases of operation. Yeah, I thought about seeing about, yeah, should I just bring my microphone and we can record there? Right. But you seem so adamant that I should go home and do this recording with you guys.
00:02:44
Speaker
Yeah, I put on a shoe so I could stomp my foot and say, Get out. It's really awkward when you like it's like mornings arrived. He's just like, Hey, you know, like, do I get breakfast or something?
Vaccination and Social Interaction Changes
00:02:55
Speaker
Dave's like, Wait, you still.
00:03:00
Speaker
I throw a couple nickels and like that'll cover the cab fare, right? No, it is. I am. So we've got to as a minor aside, have all of us gotten at least one shot of the vaccine? This is like the newlywed game. Right. How many people have been married for?
00:03:24
Speaker
I didn't want to suppose, right? That's just rude to be like, oh, you're probably vaccinated. Yeah. Yeah. No, actually we, um, both of us have gotten both shots now. Cool. Pfizer. Uh, Moderna. Oh, get out of here. You traitor. Right. It's like the Pokemon team in Pokemon Go. Yeah. It's just.
00:03:45
Speaker
That's good. Like we've got a couple more weeks. We just got the shot last, the first shot last week. So Pfizer and others. Um, and it's going to be, it's going to be weird. It's like you can actually interact with people again. Yeah. Um, for Easter, we went to see family who were mostly vaccinated. So it made it easier to do. Um, but it was surprisingly,
00:04:14
Speaker
It was surprisingly a very nice time and very low anxiety. Um, I was fully expecting it to be just a, a weekend of me staying as far away from people as possible. And instead it turned into a weekend of me kissing Annie's brother on the mouth. So, um, a whole weekend of that. Well, I mean, I did say it was once, but it was many, many hours in a row.
00:04:44
Speaker
That's pretty great. Yeah, I don't know. It's going to be weird, I think. I'm going to have social conditioning for interacting with people. There's been times I've gone into the office to do some work in the sort of room or something like that. And the IT's in there. And we're all specifically keeping this great distance.
00:05:06
Speaker
It's weird having those conversations being like, hey, what's up? All of that at a distance. But then it feels less natural to be closer now. They start sending off like, this is not what I should be doing right now, bells.
00:05:20
Speaker
It's like your personal space bubble has greatly increased over the past year or so. Yeah, exactly. I mean, are you guys going to be looking to, because you have your next shot in a couple weeks, right? And then it's two weeks after that before they say like, be hanging out with anybody. Right. Are you guys going to be looking to reintegrate into some degree of
00:05:43
Speaker
society or you still want to hold off until more people are vaccinated, healthy, following guidelines?
Gaming Habits and Pandemic Impact
00:05:51
Speaker
Right. We're probably just going to do the guidelines thing, which is if we're meeting with people that are also vaccinated, then don't have to worry about masks. Otherwise, we'll continue to wear masks until it's no longer advised.
00:06:07
Speaker
Just the peace of mind will be nice with the wife's illness and stuff. Which I'll just leave vague, I guess, because why not? She can't have too many marshmallows. But I'm looking forward to things like land party or Halloween party or just little social engagements and stuff like that. Yeah, it's going to be huge.
Deep Dive into 'Curse of the Dead Gods' Game Mechanics
00:06:36
Speaker
The other thing is if someone comes over to drop something off, it's always like a nuclear exchange deal right now where it's like, all right, you put the thing on the ground, I put the thing on the ground. Well, both, one of us would go up, grab the thing, then the other person goes up, grab the thing. We have literal handoffs, not in person. I've done over the pandemic. I was given our friend, AJ,
00:07:04
Speaker
uh, SSD. I like had it in a plastic baggie. I placed it on the ground, stepped back, he stepped forward and grabbed it. And it's, it's, it's going to be weird to go from that to like, you should come into the apartment. I mean, that's just standard protocol with AJ, isn't it? Like non-pandemic times. You only got too close to him. He might bite you or something.
00:07:25
Speaker
Right. Start talking to you about Stellaris or FTL or something. No space games. Thank you. Space games are great, but you know, it's not a space game. What? What is it? Tell me. So Curse of the Dead Gods is what I hear. I don't think it's a space game at least. Correct me if I'm wrong.
00:07:53
Speaker
It is absolutely not a space game. It's good. All right. Shoot. One for one. One for one. End episode. Yeah. There we go. So I was going to start with the tradition I've been trying to continue, or at least start with staying the Steam tags first. Let me see if these are applicable to the actual game. Would you say that it's an action roguelike dark fantasy isometric action game?
00:08:18
Speaker
All of the above, yes. Okay, that's good. Yeah. Good job, Steve. So Mike, you've obviously played this the most and you're kind of bringing this as like the guest topic. What were your initial thoughts going into it? Like what made you pick it up? Is it like the isometric space? What drew you in?
00:08:38
Speaker
It was mostly the art style and just the roguelike gameplay. It had come out in early access and when it hit early access, it was pretty big on the Steam front page. Because it was early access, I skipped it. I didn't really look at it. I actually went to the trouble of adding it to my ignored games list.
00:09:08
Speaker
But when it approached 1.0, you know, it got a lot of good press. And so I went watch some, some content creators playing it and thought, Hey, you know, this looks really good. Looks like it could be akin to a game like Hades, but is unique in its own right. And it's just, yeah, it's really enjoyable to play. It's, it's hard, but it feels good when you do well.
00:09:37
Speaker
Does that sound like something that would interest you, Jake? Or are you going like, how close is it to Hades? Yeah, I mean, well, spoilers. I watched the trailer then I added it to my wish list this morning. But beyond that, it seems it seems like a little different than Hades to me. Like Hades is ultra action packed. Like everything cancels into everything.
00:10:00
Speaker
You can like start an animation and immediately be like, no, I actually want to dash across the screen right now. And this looked like at least with some of the heavier weapons, it seemed much more deliberate and like you were locked in to attacks. I don't know if that's actually the game or not, but at least based off of the gameplay trailer.
00:10:21
Speaker
It really seemed like it was much more deliberate, cautious sort of approach. Yeah. So a lot of the press that Curse of the Dead got got, at least post 1.0, there were a lot of comparisons to Hades, a lot of mentions of Hades.
00:10:43
Speaker
There are a few similarities between the games, you know, isometric action, rogue-like, but it's kind of unfair to Curse of the Dead Gods to compare it to Hades, and it's also a little unfair to Hades to compare Curse of the Dead Gods to it.
00:11:02
Speaker
They're kind of in the same space, but they are pretty unique in their own right. And as much as I hate to say it, the replayability
00:11:20
Speaker
is probably much higher in Hades than it is in Curse of the Dead Gods. Hades is very story-driven. Even if you don't realize it's story-driven, it is story-driven. Actually, how can you not realize it's story-driven? If you could mash through all of the dialogue perhaps. Most people keep talking.
00:11:41
Speaker
But Curse of the Dead Gods is very much not. It's much more traditional in the roguelike manner in that it's a very loose story, but it's not the focus. The gameplay is the priority in the game. Yeah. So is it still like a hack and slash like Hades? It is.
00:12:04
Speaker
It's a little more combat. I shouldn't even shouldn't even say it's more combat focus. Combat is more akin to something like a Dark Souls. So you can you can block you can parry.
00:12:19
Speaker
You can actually, there's a dash mechanic, it's rolling. And you can- Very dark souls. Yeah, you can animation cancel. So if you're in the middle of swinging a weapon and you realize, oh, I need to parry or I need to roll, you can do that. You're not locked into your attack animations, which is very helpful. It would be a much harder game if you could not do that.
00:12:46
Speaker
Yeah, I was I was going to say it looked kind of like people were locked into it, but I wasn't sure if that was just an effect of the footage to the trailer. Right. Yeah. And I am very much a fan of not being locked into animations and any sort of like trap shooting lasers at you enemies with projectiles, bullet hell type game, even if I know it's not really a bullet hell game, but it feels like it when you don't know what's going on. Yeah. Yeah.
00:13:18
Speaker
It is
00:13:23
Speaker
There are a lot of nice little mechanics that they have added since early access that definitely make it a lot more enjoyable to play. It does feel like it's very much... I found myself a lot of the time saying, okay, well, I just died. Cool. Oh, but wait, one more run. Gotcha. There was a very strong sense of that.
00:13:49
Speaker
That's essential and a rogue like, right? Just be like, Oh, I got to get back in there. Yeah. I can fix that. I can do that better. Yeah. Like, you know, okay. Yes. The game is difficult. Yeah. If I mess up and don't play very well, then I'm probably not going to make it to the end of the game.
00:14:06
Speaker
But at the same time, it is enjoyable enough that you don't want to snap the controller in half and throw it against the wall. Right. Those are two really good marks of a good roguelike. So is the game like, is the core concept similar to something like Hades? You're going room by room, you're picking a path.
00:14:29
Speaker
like making your way up to bosses, like seeing if your build can make it all the way through. Yeah, so it's actually an interesting combination of mechanics from various games. So it is all RNG. But you have a map similar to Slate Spire. So there are different rooms with different end rewards for those rooms. And as you pick your path, it
00:14:58
Speaker
locks other rooms out. And then eventually you'll hit a champion, a mini boss, or the final boss if you make it to the end. The spire. Yeah. But in those, so on the map, those are rooms. When you enter a room, it's actually a series of randomly generated
00:15:20
Speaker
interconnecting puzzle pieces, basically. You do start to recognize rooms and connectors after a while. The number of unique rooms that they piece together, it feels like it could be more, but it's not so
00:15:42
Speaker
It's not so few that it's like walking into the same room over and over and over again. Gosh, yeah. Right, but you're saying you recognize things kind of like breakable walls like in Isaac? Yeah, yeah.
00:15:58
Speaker
there's really, there's no getting lost when you enter a room, uh, there were diverging paths, but those paths always lead to the exit. Um, if you go a certain direction, you might, uh, come across some, some trap filled rooms and you go another path, you might not see many traps at all. Um, same with enemies. Um, and you know, there are,
00:16:22
Speaker
Oftentimes there are better rewards for going down different paths within the room.
00:16:34
Speaker
So like it sounds, you mentioned traps and things like that. I know that was a minor part of Hades. Um, like there was environmental hazards is probably the better way to put it in Hades, right? Like, uh, just don't step here. You're going to take damage if you step here for the most part. And then maybe some sol blades, which is, you know, thanks to Indiana Jones has to be in everything.
00:16:56
Speaker
Right. But do they how do how do traps like play into this game? Are they like a similar role? Because this is it was sort of emphasized a little bit more in the trailer than I thought it would be. It had like a lot of gameplay space seemed to be this guy dodging away from traps. Like, you know, I would say falling or something. Yeah, I would say traps play a much bigger role in the game.
Strategies and Progression in Gameplay
00:17:22
Speaker
There's
00:17:25
Speaker
to sidestep that but then to come back. There's a light and darkness mechanic in the game. If you're in the light, you can see traps around you. If you're in dark, you can't really see them until you're on top of them. If you're in the light, you deal more damage. If you're in the dark, you take more damage.
00:17:43
Speaker
Ah. All that to say, you have a torch that is always equipped. If you have your torch out, you can see like the glint on traps or you can see traps before you get to them. So there is a fair bit of trap dodging.
00:18:03
Speaker
Which you can even, you know, use the traps to your advantage. Traps do damage enemies. So, you know, you lure an enemy that's on relatively low health to stand in front of a statue that is going to do an attack. That statue is going to kill the enemy for you and it makes your life just a little bit easier. Right. And you actually can get rewards for doing that.
00:18:28
Speaker
So what would the disadvantage be of just having the torch out at all times? Because you said having the torch out means you deal more damage in the light and you're not taking extra damage from being in the dark and you can see where the traps are. So you're less likely to fuck yourself over. So the thing is, if you have your torch out, you can't have your weapons out.
00:18:49
Speaker
I imagine one hand in one hand. Yeah, so you can use your torch to light sconces, various light sources in the map that may not be already be lit. Some
00:19:06
Speaker
Some areas are well lit. Most areas are dark, but most of the areas that are dark can be lit up by use of your torch. The Legend of Zelda thing. Get your Deku stick and run around. Yeah. As far as weapons in combat, you do have a two-handed system. You have your main hand and your offhand.
00:19:29
Speaker
And then you also have a slot for two-handed weapons. So, but yeah, having your torch out to be able to see where you're going and detect traps ahead of time precludes you from using said weapons. And there is actually, there's a bit of a delay, but when you're switching between weapon sets, so you kind of have to prepare before you jump into the middle of the fight or else it gives the enemies an opportunity to get a couple of hits in on you quick.
00:19:58
Speaker
How dark is dark? You can still see like the room layout. And for the most part, you can always see the enemies, but traps will basically be completely invisible to you. Some statues will, like in a particular area of the game, there's statues that will shoot out like a lightning ball.
00:20:21
Speaker
And you can see the statue, but you can't tell if it's a trap or not. Some, some statues don't do anything. So that's, that's where having your light out makes a difference is that you can
00:20:33
Speaker
see the glint on the statue and know that it's a trap so you can avoid it. But like four spikes are completely invisible until they start their animation of attack and you have maybe half a second to react and roll out of the way. So I did find myself a lot like between fights, I would always have my torch out.
00:21:01
Speaker
Then in fights, I would almost always be fighting in darkness just because it's either too much of a pain in the ass to light the room up or some of your light sources can actually be destroyed. If you light up a sconce and then a big enemy does a heavy attack and destroys it, then you've just wasted a little bit of time.
00:21:23
Speaker
I wanted to mention the light thing because as you're going into detail on the torch, this keeps reminding me of Darkest Dungeon, actually. Both the art style looks very Darkest Dungeon to me. I get that cell shading is not new, but even within that, it seems kind of similar. And then the light just reminds me of that even more.
00:21:46
Speaker
Right. It's just like, oh, you have bright light. Here's your downside. You have like the little dim light. Everyone's freaking out and losing it, you know. Yeah, I would say that's actually probably a pretty good a pretty good way to describe the game is is a cross between Hades and Darkest Dungeon. Just you get things right. Yeah, you get the art style and you get the the.
00:22:13
Speaker
kind of the psychological elements from Darkest Dungeon and then you get some gameplay elements from Hades. So when you say psychological elements from Darkest Dungeon, see this is where my concern comes in because I don't know if I'm on record on podcasts or not for saying this, but like Darkest Dungeon is a game that in theory I would love
00:22:31
Speaker
But in practice, I cannot play it because it stresses me out too much. Like the characters are stressed and they're like having mental breakdowns, but I'm having it worse over here in my chair because I know that they could just die to a crit or something like that. So like how how does the psychological what are the psychological aspects of curse the dead gods? So
00:22:55
Speaker
the main gameplay mechanic that is constantly pushing you forward or is kind of your
00:23:04
Speaker
your risk reward mechanic is called corruption. So as you go from room to room on the map, every time you enter a door, you gain some corruption. Once it gets to a certain level, I think by default, it's 100. Once you hit that level, you will then gain a curse. Okay. Most of the curses are
00:23:33
Speaker
purely detrimental. Some of the curses are largely detrimental, but have a bonus that is actually pretty useful. And then there are actually a couple of curses that are just flat out more beneficial than negative. Those are examples? Yeah. So the one curse that I will always
00:23:56
Speaker
try to get and keep is all chests that you open are traps and you can parry them and if you parry them you don't take any damage and it has the chance to drop two rewards instead of one but if you don't parry it deals like
00:24:18
Speaker
100 or 250 damage to you. Your starting health is 1,000, so it's not an insignificant hit.
Challenges and Tactics in Roguelike Games
00:24:26
Speaker
Right. But what is a reward from a chest? Is that like a new item to equip? Is it a power up? It can be, yeah.
00:24:38
Speaker
it typically falls into three categories. You have your weapons, it can be pretty much any weapon would drop. It could be a relic, which is kind of like your passive pickup that can give you an additional
00:24:58
Speaker
It can give you an additional way to get a reward, say, for instance, one is 50% damage you take, you gain as gold. So you don't want to take damage, but if you are getting hit, you're at least getting something out of it.
00:25:17
Speaker
That would be very beneficial for players such as myself. And so relics can be, they can have one of those on them. They can have just a stat boost on them or they can have one of each. So that's how you kind of scale yourself. And then chess also just drop gold, just straight up gold. Actually, I think once you gain that curse, you no longer get gold out of a chest. You're guaranteed to get an item drop.
00:25:46
Speaker
Oh, okay. What would you use gold for otherwise? Are there shop nodes throughout? There are. There are two or three different kinds of shop nodes. There's a weapon shop, there's an upgrade shop, and there's a relic shop.
00:26:08
Speaker
And because of the way it's laid out, you can choose to, okay, I know I want to upgrade my weapons, so I'm going to go to this upgrade shop, or I know I want to change out my weapons, so I'm going to go to this weapon shop. And sometimes there are random rooms that you sometimes have to go through, and it can be any room tile. So sometimes you'll just stumble across them in one of these random rooms.
00:26:30
Speaker
That's the worst feeling, I think. At least when I play Slay the Spire, I'm like, all right, I'm saving up my money. I'm going this path and I'm going another thing because I need to spend my money here. And that gives me a random question mark in that path of like, it's the shop. Yeah. I'm like, how would you like three shops just one night after the other? So yeah, so you use golden shops, but there's also alternate currency in that.
00:26:59
Speaker
the most common other currency, there's ways you can change the secondary currency, but more often than not, your secondary currency is going to be corruption. You can take on corruption to get something for free, basically. Ah, okay, devil deal. Like alone. Yeah, like a devil deal.
00:27:19
Speaker
Interesting. It sounds like there's a lot of mechanics for progression at play here. You also mentioned switching out weapons in the middle of a run. Up until that point, I thought it was still a Hades. You picked your weapon at the start of the run and that was just your type, but it seems like that's not the case. Yeah.
00:27:40
Speaker
More often than not, I found myself opting to stick with the weapons that I started with. Early on in the game, you have a set choice, and you don't get any other choice of weapon that you want to start with. As you progress, you can unlock different bundles of weapons. It gives you up to four choices of a primary, a secondary, and a heavy weapon. And you can choose which one you want to take.
00:28:11
Speaker
So as you progress, you can, you, you, you always have a main hand and offhand and a two-handed you'll.
00:28:21
Speaker
I shouldn't say always. Early on in the game, you may not start with a two-handed, but you always start with a main hand and an offhand. Sorry, I'm timing this poorly. Is the main hand better at damage, and then the offhand is better at something else? Or are they just like different weapon animations? You can be like, this will be my backup for fast attacks. This might be for room clear.
00:28:49
Speaker
Yeah, so typically your main hand is going to be like a quick weapon that can deal light to medium damage. Your offhand is going to be more utility, like it might be a shield. The shield isn't required to block, but shields give you like a shield bash, which can stun enemies, which is useful.
00:29:17
Speaker
Or it might be like a dagger that deals poison damage. So your offhand weapon is typically going to be more utility than your main hand. And then your two handed is going to be big chunky hits. Right. You're hunting horn. Every swing or every shot with a bow takes up a point of stamina.
00:29:40
Speaker
So that's the other difference between the main hand offhand and two hand, main hand and offhand. Your attacks are free until you finish a combo.
00:29:54
Speaker
When you finish a combo, it's called a finisher in the game. It consumes a point of stamina. So if you don't have a point of stamina, you can't finish a combo. You'll just like kind of weakly swing. And for my final hit.
00:30:12
Speaker
So it's kind of a trade-off. With two-handed weapons, you're getting big, chunky hits, and they're very satisfying, but every swing takes stamina versus getting a bunch of little light attacks in and then getting out of there for little to no stamina cost. So you could vary that up for the encounter. You'd be like, oh, this looks like a big guy, and if I get hit, it's going to be the end of me, so I'm going to stick to light options, things that save stamina. Presumably, it takes stamina to dodge to
00:30:40
Speaker
It does. Yeah, so a single point gains you a role. Depending on the timing of your role, I think the term they use is perfect dodge or something like that. If you dodge as the attack would connect, you actually get that dodge for free. And there's like a little
00:31:03
Speaker
a little aura effect that surrounds your player to let you know that that dodge was free, which is useful because most of the time you're not looking at anything outside of the periphery. Yeah, just the foreground. You're not checking. Yeah. From what I watch you play though,
00:31:21
Speaker
I do really like this stamina system as far as if we're comparing to a Dark Souls web, so you have a stamina meter where your actions will take stamina. But I never fucking know with Dark Souls how much it's going to take. Now with rolling, I can guess because I see it enough, but with certain weapon attacks or magical attacks,
00:31:43
Speaker
it just disappears a portion of my bar so it's hard to do an attack and then plan do I have enough to roll away to reposition or something else. It's kind of interesting that the bar in video games is the accepted standard now because it's
00:32:02
Speaker
it looks more aesthetically blazing than the pips. But certain games that never stopped using a pip-like system, like Legend of Zelda, for instance, still has the hearts. And you know, like, oh, if I get hit with this, I take three quarters of a heart, or I take two hearts, or whatever. So you can just mathematically know that, right? And Dark Souls is very much not that. They're all bars instead of pips.
00:32:28
Speaker
At least for FP or stamina consumption, I feel like depending on what you have slotted, it should maybe indicate like, hey, it's going to take this much of the bar. And you're like, cool, I know. Or maybe it's an option to bar. Yeah, exactly. This is how many rolls you have. Something. Yeah. Obviously, it can't calculate damage per. That would be weird.
00:32:57
Speaker
There are 13 enemies nearby. You have 13 extra lines in your bar. If one of them hits you, this is how much damage it will do. That'd be a little bit nuts. But I was going to say the pips for the character are on the character. So you don't have to kind of look in the top left like how we do in coach. Yeah, so the way the UI is laid out.
00:33:19
Speaker
Like mid-combat, most of your relevant information, which is your stamina, is readily available on the character. Your health and your corruption are bars at the bottom, but you aren't really focusing on those in combat so that those are good places for them. Right. You either have enough health or you don't, let's be honest. Right. Yeah.
00:33:44
Speaker
That's his life. I will say though, I also, in watching Mike play, there were times where he did look at his health because he was looking to get hit by things that would give him curse.
00:33:58
Speaker
Yeah, that is 100% a mechanic. So with the curses that you get, like the double rewards from chest, when you defeat a boss, you have a chance to lift one of your curses. And if you only have one curse, it just chooses that curse that you don't have the option to keep it. Gotcha. You have to lose a curse.
00:34:23
Speaker
So if you get that early in your run and you get to a boss or, you know, a boss is coming up and you don't want to lose that, that curse that you you've cultivated. Um, yeah. A hundred percent just let enemies give curse to you until, or give corruption to you until you are going to gain another curse and then throw that curse away. Um, there are very few curses that just outright will screw you over. Um, I think there's,
00:34:53
Speaker
There's definitely one, but you really have to really, really have to try to get there. You have to try and screw yourself before it screws you. Yeah. So it's, it's the quote unquote final curse. If you, you can... The killing curse. Right. You can get four and remove those four. But once you get the fifth curse, the fifth curse is you just gradually lose HP until you're at one HP, which is a huge, huge pain.
00:35:25
Speaker
So yeah, there's very few curses that will actively just make the game impossible to play. So it's very much a strategy of, okay, I really want to keep this curse. Let me gain another one. And then hopefully that's not one of the really, really bad pain in the ass ones. And then I can just use that as fodder.
00:35:46
Speaker
I like those systems. I think actually we we all do I know like so I have more familiarity with like Katie's than binding of Isaac, but they all have a system like this like Chaos rooms right like I'm just like hey, how's it going master chaos? Let's get this rolling. You know yeah, yeah, I'll move at
00:36:08
Speaker
negative 90% speed through the next five rooms if I get double money. That's what we're going for here. Dashes constantly. Exactly. That's the only form of movement. I really like systems like that because it kind of lends an extra layer of
00:36:29
Speaker
Like engagement to the game like if you're getting used to it if you're not confident in your ability to clear Then you can like avoid those sort of like optimizations like purposely getting a negative curse or something like that They might have a good trade-off. I feel like Dave could speak to binding of Isaac better than I could but I know that game also has a lot of Trade-off like abilities. Yeah
00:36:53
Speaker
Um, it definitely does. I haven't played in a bit. I know they added a lot of new content with, um, repentance, but I think typically if you're getting an upgrade, it has a bonus. Occasionally there might be some downside like cursed eye. You can charge and save up to like four shots and then let them all out at once. But every time you get hit, there's a chance that it will teleport you somewhere else. So if you have that, and then you're doing a boss encounter,
00:37:21
Speaker
Um, you might fail constantly because you can never actually get through the whole thing without being hit once and that triggering. Right. Yeah. I also know like devil rooms were a big thing. Like I mocked Azazel and I only played Azazel, but you could get similar effects from devil rooms. But yeah, that's giving up some of like your max health or something to that effect to gain a power bonus. Yeah.
00:37:46
Speaker
But like early on, if you're a new player, you definitely don't want to give up health because that's your way of moving forward. But then as you get more accustomed to the game, more confident, you're like, I'm not going to get hit. Three hearts is fine. You're willing to take on that risk.
00:38:03
Speaker
Do you think like there, it's a similar corollary to a curse of the dead gods here. Like there was mechanics you didn't necessarily want to engage with, or maybe they weren't even unlocked. Like when you start the game that eventually you're like, all right, now that you're an optimization pro you're engaging with them more. Yeah. Um, yeah, early on, like.
00:38:28
Speaker
you, at least I tended towards never taking, never buying something with corruption. Like I would always buy with gold. Right. Early on, you know, I would prioritize taking weapons over stat boosts. And so yeah, that optimization of, okay, well,
00:38:50
Speaker
If I really want to get to the endgame, then I know I need to get to a certain point with my stats. So I'm going to prioritize stats and relics over weapon rooms. And you get used to...
00:39:06
Speaker
knowing where your stats really need to be like, okay, I have enough of this stat, I can focus on other stats, or I have enough of this stat, I can focus on picking up a relic instead of more stats. Attack, speed, and life steal. Probably not even stats in this game, but it doesn't matter what the game is, go attack, speed, and life steal. Yeah, you have three stats. Constitution, dexterity, and perception. Perception is basically luck.
00:39:35
Speaker
The more you have, the more gold you find, which is useful. But once you can get it to a certain point, you don't really need it anymore. I like the idea of that. Like you go into a chest, you're like, I got a loot chest. And you just grab like three coins, you're like a handful. You just kind of like lightly put your hand nearby without like fully opening the chest. If you just freak it open, touch it quick and go. And the more perceptive opens the chest.
00:40:02
Speaker
Oh, I got a whole bag of money. Right. Just open the bag, grab some coins off the top and go.
00:40:11
Speaker
Yeah. It's your magic find or greed stat. Yeah. It's, it's kind of, it's not super intuitive of what it is, what exactly it does. It, it tells you if you look at the UI, but that's it. Nobody looks at you. Yeah, it's in a moment. And the way it's worded is it's a little confusing. It's, um,
00:40:35
Speaker
a X percent more treasure find or something like that. Instead of you find X percent more gold. Gotcha. I did want to ask while this is going on, so the make or break for me with Roguelikes is like, is there a meta progression system that is like
00:41:00
Speaker
sturdy enough or robust enough, I should say, to accommodate for someone who doesn't play that good, such as myself for games like Hades. Because like the reason, like I don't usually play that many roguelikes, but it shows. I know. Right. Right. Like, well, the rest of this argument statement really shows it. But I played like 70 hours of Hades or some nonsense. And most of that was in like two weeks. It was insane. But
00:41:29
Speaker
The reason was because I was constantly unlocking things that made the game more accessible, more diverse, and also easier actually, if I'm being completely honest, because the character just got better. What systems like that exist for Curse of the Dead Gods?
00:41:51
Speaker
When you beat a boss, you'll gain a currency called Jaguar rings. As you're defeating enemies and you defeat a boss you'll also find crystal skulls and these are your two progression currencies.
00:42:06
Speaker
There's a few different kinds of unlocks. You can give yourself more re-rolls. So if you get to a shop and you don't like what's on display, you can re-roll with Divine Favor. And you can, I think, gain up to 10 re-rolls per run. That's a lot of D6s.
00:42:25
Speaker
It is. There's a lot of weapon unlocks. As you find weapons, as you're going through your run, there are some hidden weapons that you have to meet very specific requirements for and even then it's a chance drop.
00:42:42
Speaker
But they're probably 60 or 70 different weapons. Most of which you get for free because as you find them, you just get them. But there are enough to unlock that. As you unlock these weapons, the weapons are usually more powerful.
00:43:04
Speaker
It gives you a little bit of an edge. Are those permanent? Those unlocks when you're saying you're buying weapons, you're finding weapons, those are just going back to the shack. Or is that item pool? They go into the item pool, yeah. Okay, gotcha, gotcha.
00:43:21
Speaker
You can improve like your array of starting weapon choices. So like I said, when you start the game, you have a machete and a shield, I think. It's like left fist, right fist, getting that game. And you can unlock up to like four pedestals that have an assortment of three weapons on them. So that is usually beneficial because, you know, better starting weapons.
00:43:49
Speaker
And then there are pretty much, I want to say passive modifiers that can range from like you start with a certain amount and a stat or a certain amount of gold. One of them that I keep on always is every time you parry, it refills your stamina.
00:44:13
Speaker
Oh, and before I miss a lot of parries. Yeah. Yeah. That is, that is one thing about the game is it, it really wants you to parry, but sometimes you really cannot. Um, which I guess is where the role comes in, but I always try to parry anyway, and then just take damage incoming laser beam. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so yeah, you've, you've got your, your,
00:44:42
Speaker
run modifying passives, you've got your weapons, you've got your starting choices, and then you've got your in-run re-rolls that you can gain more or more varied choices for. And that typically, it does help make the runs easier. Right.
00:45:05
Speaker
That's good. If you're struggling with, you need to buy stats early or buy something early, throw on the gold, the one that gives you a thousand gold to start.
00:45:18
Speaker
If you're having a hard time dealing damage, there's one that, as you build your combo meter, you gain damage. But as soon as you get hit, your combo meter gets reset to zero, so then you have to build it up again. That's a trap. That's the type of thing where you're like, I could see this being pretty good, but then you play like I do, and it doesn't ever provide you a bonus. Right.
00:45:44
Speaker
Even technically, if you hit somebody twice, you're doing more damage. So it's still like a net benefit. It just might not be as impactful as you would have hoped if you're getting it kicked a lot. I play turn based though. So I need to hit them. I give them a chance to get a fair swing in. RuneScape rules, boys. Nothing below the waist. And the way the combo system works is normally like between combats.
00:46:13
Speaker
you, like, as soon as you're out of combat, your combo meter's winding down. Right. Batman rules. Right. But that same modifier will actually keep your combo meter between encounters. So you can do really well in an encounter, build that combo meter up to 10 or 12, and then go into the next fight with 12 or, I think it's 1% per
00:46:42
Speaker
per counter. So you would enter the next fight with 12% extra damage. So it's not bad. And then there are modifiers you can get to like slow the wind down. So there are, it does encourage you to build your combo meter and keep your combo meter up. So tempo plus precision basically. And then avoidance, which
00:47:11
Speaker
So what would be your ideal run? Do you have an item or passive or curse that you're looking for every time you play?
00:47:22
Speaker
It could be whatever, but I would love if I got these items. What makes you lean forward? Yeah. When you get your starting weapon choices, if there's a pedestal that has a crappy main hand and a crappy offhand, but a really good two-handed, I will almost always take that.
00:47:44
Speaker
There's a couple different classes of two-handed weapons that let you break walls. Otherwise, you have to get enemies to break the walls. So if I can choose to break the walls myself, I will always take one of those heavy two-handed weapons.
00:48:00
Speaker
Curse-wise, yeah, I'm always looking to get double rewards from chess. It's just it's too good. And then pretty much anything that gives you life steal. There are a couple weapons that give you life steal on crit, and there are a couple weapons that
00:48:16
Speaker
I should say there's a couple relics that give you life steal on hit and there's a couple weapons that have varying ways for doing crits like all the time. So it'll be like 5% of a crit will heal you.
00:48:34
Speaker
Hit for 10, you heal for two. I think it's pretty much the meta for making it to the late game. You have to have life steal somehow. Okay. I assume that's probably the only way to regain health, because typically rogue likes give you very few ways to gain health back.
00:48:59
Speaker
Health is your quarters, if this is an arcade analogy. Yeah. There are actually healing rooms. I think they're guaranteed after each mini boss. But to heal, you gain corruption. So it's not free.
00:49:18
Speaker
So another mechanic, and this relates to healing, when you come across a new drop, say a weapon, a relic, you can look at it, and if you don't think it fits your build, or you just don't want it, or the boon you gain is too good, you can sacrifice it to the gods.
00:49:44
Speaker
So as long as you haven't equipped it, when you look at it, you can sacrifice it to the gods and it'll do things like heal. I think the maximum is like it'll heal 12% of your health or it'll take away like 12 corruption or it'll give you a permanent stat boost, which those are the ones, those are the really good ones, the permanent stat boost.
00:50:11
Speaker
And then there are just, there are some relics that will just flat out as you pass through a door, you gain X amount of health back. And those are usually good to have at least one of those is usually good to have. Um, they give you options, but not all of the options are convenient, convenient. Yeah. Um, at least with the healing rooms, you're always guaranteed to have an opportunity to heal, but you do have to pay a price for it. Um,
00:50:41
Speaker
There's no, there's no, uh, Haiti style. I made this purchase for diamonds and now there's just free health rooms and throughout, uh, as a doll or whatever. Yeah. And the thing is, you know, if you're finding drops and you really need health, usually you're going to, any drop that is going to heal you, you're going to immediately sacrifice it because
00:51:07
Speaker
Okay, this weapon might do 10 or 15 more damage per hit, but if I'm going to die because I have no health, then I'm going to sacrifice it and take the health. So I guess that does have an associated cost with this could make you stronger.
00:51:24
Speaker
but it's not going to restore your HP at all. I usually picked whatever decision path resulted with not having any health for the encounter where I needed health. I was just like, oh yeah, just keep giving the upgrades to me, max health and don't care about that. It's called the full tilt risk. Every time I do Slay the Spire, I do that.
00:51:45
Speaker
Well, if I deal more damage, I'll take less damage. So I'll start fighting elites with like, you draw one extra card. And I'm like, this is plenty. And then I'll get my ass stomped. And it's not a good time. But like with Hades, because I could control all of the outcome there with movement and combat,
00:52:08
Speaker
It much more facilitates having that risk to, oh yeah, I'm going to shoot a lot of extra damage and take 15% extra damage. It's fine because I won't get hit. Or I'll have other things to mitigate it by dashing around.
00:52:24
Speaker
Yeah, I find myself falling into the same pattern of, oh, this weapon does big chunky hits. I'm going to use this weapon even though it might not be the best fit for the fight. 30 frames later, I'm coming to catch you. Yeah. But yeah, it fits that risk reward.
00:52:46
Speaker
nipping and getting a couple hits off and dodging out versus I'm just going to swing and hope for the best. Sometimes you need a strength build. That's just the way it is. That's how I always did Dark Souls. You can 100% do a strength build.
00:53:02
Speaker
It is hard to stack a stat though. You can only take items that have a particular stat boost, but you're really hamstringing yourself if you do that. Because I've had runs before where
00:53:24
Speaker
I'm going to get to a certain point with dexterity because that gives you extra damage and then I see nothing but perception or constitution. You do have to adapt on the fly, but for the most part, it doesn't hinder you too much with the RNG for stats.
00:53:43
Speaker
How have you enjoyed the bosses or specific enemies? Are there any that really stand out of like, this was a cool design? Or is it kind of generic? Or is it, I fucking hate this guy. I hate that guy. That guy's a real son of a bitch.
00:53:59
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, fuck harpies there. They are the worst enemy. Um, they can, they target you, they can target you from across the room, which affects the length of their animation, which also affects when you can parry them. Uh, so there's a lot of variance in, in how they attack that just makes it really hard to parry. Um,
00:54:26
Speaker
I think all of the bosses are fairly unique in their designs. They each have gimmicks. They do each have their own patterns that you have to learn. But I don't think there's a single boss that you really need to have a certain build to beat. Just about any build can beat any boss.
00:54:54
Speaker
there is the difficulty spike is pretty, pretty dramatic. Um, you know, the, the way it's laid out is, you know, the first time you go into each of the temples, you only go to the first mini boss. And, you know, I cleared each of those and maybe one or two attempts. So I was like, Oh, baby game for babies. And then, um, when I got to the air temple,
00:55:20
Speaker
for the second time, so I had to go through two mini bosses. It took a good 60 or 70 attempts for me to get to that mini boss. And it was mostly down to my own incompetence, but at the same time, it just, it felt like a really, really sharp kick in the teeth. There are a lot of enemies in that temple that
00:55:44
Speaker
have varied attack animations and it's really hard to parry and if you're really stuck on parrying then you forget to dodge and then you just take a bunch of damage.
00:55:58
Speaker
As I've always said, iframes are my frames, I will dodge 99 times out of 100. And then at one point be like, oh, Perry's a thing. And then with that horribly. Yeah, right. Each of the temples does have a theme. So fire, air, poison. Which one attacked first?
00:56:19
Speaker
Was it poison? Poisonation probably attacked first. We don't hear a lot about poisonation actually. I knew that was an avatar reference. You got me. Yeah.
00:56:35
Speaker
Yeah. Overall, enemy design, just each region, each temple design, there's some similarities, some overlaps as far as shapes of rooms go, but
00:56:52
Speaker
Traps, enemies, bosses are reasonably unique per area, which is nice. And do you pick a temple for a run? You're like, OK, this run, we're doing air temple. Yeah. OK. Yeah. Interesting. I think later in the game, you're basically running through a temple that mixes everything. Gotcha. Rainbow temple. Yeah. So you might see two different enemies from two different temples in a single encounter, which can
00:57:23
Speaker
I don't think I've run into anything that's been any mix of enemies that's been like truly run ending, but I imagine there's probably a mix of every heavy enemy from every temple in a single room is just going to be a bad time. Yeah.
00:57:39
Speaker
Well, I feel like at least with the floors in like a Haiti sense, a lot of those, I mean, obviously it gets more progressively difficult, but they all seem to kind of fit together. But when you're going through the sticks and everything's like out to poison you, you obviously play a much different way or you hope your bills on online to stay at range and deal with them and not get poisoned all the time.
00:58:06
Speaker
So like kind of mashing some of those together, like enemies from like the second area where they're jumping around a lot versus something else that's like staying at range and trying to shoot at you would definitely cause a lot of grief in my mind. Like you get used to playing a certain way, then it's like shaka shaka, how about this?
00:58:31
Speaker
Yeah, I will say that's a thing about Hades that I wasn't particularly fond of. It felt like ranged builds were more powerful than melee builds because of Styx.
00:58:49
Speaker
You know, if you're in close swinging a melee weapon and getting poisoned, it kind of makes you not want to get in close and hit enemies. Um, at least with the curse of the dead gods, any weapon, any attack is dodgeable or parioball. So.
00:59:07
Speaker
Um, there's no, there's none of that. Oh, you killed an enemy or this enemy is trying to poison you. Um, Good luck. You know, if you, if you're wielding melee, um, any, any weapon that you're using in curse can, can finish an enemy and result in you not taking any damage. Whereas it didn't feel like that that was possible in Hades. Counter argument, shield of chaos, best weapon in the game.
00:59:36
Speaker
So freaking good. Yeah, it's pretty strong. I've decided to stop taking damage and to do this, I will hold left click. That's when I found out that Jake didn't use a Xbox 360 controller for that game. I played mouse and keyboard.
00:59:55
Speaker
I've gone through much persecution for this, but I beat the game. I won't persecute you further at this juncture when we get off the call. But Mike, would you say this is like any time I see an isometric game, I default personally to using a controller. Is this something that you enjoyed with a controller or more so keyboard and mouse? What do you think works best? I didn't. I haven't tried playing with the keyboard and mouse.
01:00:22
Speaker
So I've purely played it with the controller. It felt like it was a natural fit for a controller. But again, if somebody like Jake who has played Hades with mouse and keyboard- You have to generate, you can say it. That's fine. I would imagine for some people, it's just going to be easier to play on mouse and keyboard. Coincidentally, when the game actually first released, controller support was broken, so you had to play with mouse and keyboard. Really?
01:00:52
Speaker
actually refunded the game because I didn't want to play it because it didn't have good controller support. I like how on the third attempt, at first you're like, I'm going to ignore this game. Then you're like, I'm going to refund this game. And now you're like, I'm hearing a podcast talking about this game. Yeah.
01:01:08
Speaker
Well, I like this though, because I haven't, I haven't really heard of someone else like refunding a game and then considering picking something back up. I've done this. I haven't picked it back up yet, but they're funded hyperlight drifter, which otherwise. Like I love the music. I love everything, all this stuff, but like, I just was not in a mood to play that game at the time, but I've, I don't know if it's a regret because I have like tons of unplayed games, but I considered getting that again.
01:01:36
Speaker
So maybe there's hope, maybe the lesson from the last hour of discussion for Curse of the Dead Gods is that there's hope for hyperlight. Sometimes you just got to go back and try something on a whim. Something you forgot was in your Steam library. Like FTL.
01:01:55
Speaker
All right. Jokes aside guys. Let's wrap it up. Um, so, uh, how, how, um, do you, I assume you recommend this game as you're coming on to talk about it. How do you think it stacks up to other games in that space? Like, like Hades or like Hades is really high tier. If you say that this is like anywhere within like two or three steps from Hades, that's pretty high praise, I think. Yeah. Um,
01:02:24
Speaker
I would say if you enjoy Roguelikes and that's primarily what you play, definitely pick it up because it has...
01:02:33
Speaker
Interesting mechanics is a good challenge. If you're looking for any sort of story, probably avoid it because it has basically none. What if I'm already challenged? That's a discussion for a different time, I think. Okay, that's fair. I would give it a solid seven out of 10. I would recommend it to most people.
01:03:04
Speaker
You heard it here first. Probably not, but hello. Hi. How are you? Sounds good. Well, as I said, it's on my wish list, so keep that in mind. I don't remember if that comes around in a year. But thank you, Mike, for coming back on to talk about Curse of the Dead Gods. It's always a pleasure to have you on the podcast. It's always a pleasure to have you.
01:03:30
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for having me back. I see that look. The eye contact. But yeah, no worries. We are always happy to have more content and these guest episodes are like, man.
01:03:46
Speaker
I don't know whether it was myself or Dave came up with this, but freaking great idea. It was definitely Dave's pointing at himself, so I assume it was me. Thanks for being on and thank you to our listeners for listening to another episode of Soapstone. As always, you can reach out to us with feedback at soapstonepodcast.gmail.com.
01:04:09
Speaker
Or you can join the discussion on Facebook at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night. Have a good one.