"A deadly plague ravages your world. Your last hope: a legendary alien facility dug deep into the Feldspar Mountains...a massive Pit, built by the ancient Suul'ka."
I've always been a big fan of roguelike, dungeon crawling games. The genre takes progression elements from RPGs and adds a strategic layer to the game.
Picking up The Pit during the Steam winter sale, I figured it would be a fun way to burn some hours and then move on to the next indie title. The game's style and setting reminded me of System Shock and its sequels so I thought I'd give the game a go.
The Pit is pretty standard for a roguelike: you get to pick a class, you get out there and kick-ass (or have your own get kicked), go down to the next level once you're ready (or die a horrible death because of complications). You only get three classes to start off with in the base game: Marine, Engineer, and Scout. The Marine is all about beating things up and shooting things. The Engineer is all about the tech aspect, but can still hold in a fight. The Scout is all about mobility, popping in and out of fights and scavenging. It's the traditional firepower-mobility trade off.
organization is key to having a good time
As I ventured into The Pit, I quickly learned one aspect: You're going to die, but that isn't a bad thing in a roguelike, really. The game features a little SOTSDEX device that logs the different enemies you encounter, the items you find, and different messages you decrypt from computers that reveals more about the game's universe and of course, The Pit itself. Your little SOTSDEX is your encyclopedia and you write it as you play the game. It's available to you at any time in any play-through. With every expedition into The Pit, you are armed with more knowledge that will hopefully carry you farther and hopefully lead to another discovery before you get your face melted off.
these messages give crucial hints
Like many games in the roguelike genre, The Pit is very brutal. You have to be resourceful with the little bits of food, ammo, and tools you find. Knowing that you're by yourself in The Pit adds a degree of tension while you're playing, but there are some scenarios that you're going to run into that you will have little to no control over. There will be times when you just run into a seemingly harmless room only to find multiple killer robots. There will be times when you have bucket loads of rifle ammo lying around when all you have is a pistol. Sometimes, that's just how the dice are cast.
beep boop
Sword of the Stars: The Pit is a test of your resourcefulness, knowledge of the game, and perseverance to push forward.
The game is very comfortable, but feels very standard and lackluster. There isn't very much to distinguish the game from any other roguelike. This is definitely a game where you talk to your friends about the various monsters and items and what they do, gleaming little bits of knowledge off each other.
I feel that this game would be a lot if it included a way to share discoveries with your friends. That way, the entire knowledge of the game isn't spoiled by the Wiki and you can still have a meta-database of your own with some friends.
I feel that this game would be a lot if it included a way to share discoveries with your friends. That way, the entire knowledge of the game isn't spoiled by the Wiki and you can still have a meta-database of your own with some friends.
Finding crafting recipes to build items is overly tedious mainly because components are destroyed if you don't have the right combination so it removes a lot of the player intuition part from it. You can't really come up with creative combinations of items in your head. Instead, you're either going to have to scrap together hints from hacked terminals, go to the Wiki, or just try every combination imaginable.
hang onto your points until you need them
I've only gotten to about 1/4th through the 30 floors, but nothing so far has impressed me. I wish the game allowed you to command and extra trooper or two. That would open up so many more tactical and strategic options! Instead of having to choose one of 3 classes, why not be able to bring them all in and specialize them even further? It could allow for much more elaborate and in-depth combat options as you breach a room or try desperately to escape.
Do I recommend this game? To be honest, I can't give my wholehearted recommendation.
I really like how much exploration and in-game knowledge you can build up. Different enemies will detect you through different ways: sight, sound, smell, if you're bleeding or not, etc. but their isn't any form of indication to tell the player what the monsters are reacting to. The audio-visuals don't really complement the theme of data collection and exploration. Sure, it's lighthearted and cartoon-like, but the tiles get repetitive and sodden. The walls and floors change colors every so often, but that alone isn't enough.
The game is fun, it's comfortable, there's a lot to learn, but it doesn't go that extra mile to make it special. The presentation is mediocre, but it all wraps up to be a worthy roguelike. Sword of the Stars: The Pit seems small, but there's a lot to the game than meets the eye. Here's a demo from Steam if you want to give it a go.
The game does have two DLCs, but I'm not really tempted to try them at the moment.
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