It's a unique roguelite with a well-written story grafted onto it.
This game is about exploring a procedurally generated maze of rooms with curios and monsters inside, that the three pre-defined characters explore semi-autonomously floor by floor, going deeper into the dungeon and corruption. There's also a compelling narrative perfectly explaining why exploration happens in the first place, and why and how you are only given partial control of the party. This is very cool. Honestly, I think the narrative is the strongest suit of this game—yes, that's a roguelite we're talking about. Going Deeper just has a very good story. It has a coherent plot, with solid mystery, characters, motivation, and worldbuilding. The prose is competent (see: the Witch character), and there's a good balance between the amount of story and action you're given.
There are unfortunately three problems that prevent Going Deeper from getting 5 stars from me. And no, art is not one of them, I just treat it as a text game. The art is a net positive, and that's good enough for me.
First, currently (beta 1.5) adult content is fairly scarce. You have only a handful of scenes with each girl, a lot of them being pairings, player character not present. On top of that, unlocking events is a part of roguelite system. Sometimes you need some very specific circumstances being met, like a particular curse—out of many—on a particular girl, and a particular camp activity happening. Worst of all you need to cast a spell to watch the precious event, so you need to constantly keep track of what events might happen. This is just difficult, not in a good, but in a tedious way. Camp time is one of the most tightly managed resources in the game, and on top of that events form event chains... The game either needs a lot more events available, so more of them will just fall into your lap, or make a way to get more rolls on prerequisites, and on top of that the hint system needs... to be more helpful? Somehow? Maybe this isn't completely fair but I'm tired of trying to hit Lucette with Nature's Reclamation—and yes I know I need a Thorns build for that to even be a possibility. I give up, I just don't have the time for another full run—a full run with a build I do not like—for a chance of a scene.
Speaking of builds I don't like... This is the second problem. It is somewhat subjective, but there are very few choices that make a tangible impact. Yes, the skills do matter, they do make the characters stronger, but compared to other games, they just don't feel that way. Like a skill gets you a 3% effective stat boost when your active skill had been off cooldown for several turns (which should never happen ideally, so what's even a theoretical uptime on that buff?) Compared to some other roguielites where a single perk or item will happily give you something like 10%+ crit chance, no strings attached, Going Deeper handles its build systems in a miserly way. And did I mention your characters can have only one big active skill, with a cooldown that is typically 20 to 40 turns? I did not call it miserly for nothing. Yes, there is a limited choice of support skills, but they are different, and must be activated from an awkward context menu, which is rather tedious.
This brings us to the main issue I have: the UX that becomes less and less pleasant the more you want to play optimally; and I don't know about you, but I like optimizing. Why else would you play a turn-based roguelite? The problem is that fundamentally, this game puts you on a fairly strict timer, and the way to play with the best combination of safety and speed is to follow these rules: a) do not split the party b) don't waste turns doing nothing c) rest ASAP. It is possible, but MY GOD it requires a shit ton of micromanagement because of the way some core mechanics and default behaviours are implemented, and the UI is not cooperating, not cooperating at all.
Still, 4 stars for unique roguelite mechanics and excellent storytelling, and maybe this game can overcome some of the problems I listed and earn a fifth. Try it out in any case.
This game is about exploring a procedurally generated maze of rooms with curios and monsters inside, that the three pre-defined characters explore semi-autonomously floor by floor, going deeper into the dungeon and corruption. There's also a compelling narrative perfectly explaining why exploration happens in the first place, and why and how you are only given partial control of the party. This is very cool. Honestly, I think the narrative is the strongest suit of this game—yes, that's a roguelite we're talking about. Going Deeper just has a very good story. It has a coherent plot, with solid mystery, characters, motivation, and worldbuilding. The prose is competent (see: the Witch character), and there's a good balance between the amount of story and action you're given.
There are unfortunately three problems that prevent Going Deeper from getting 5 stars from me. And no, art is not one of them, I just treat it as a text game. The art is a net positive, and that's good enough for me.
First, currently (beta 1.5) adult content is fairly scarce. You have only a handful of scenes with each girl, a lot of them being pairings, player character not present. On top of that, unlocking events is a part of roguelite system. Sometimes you need some very specific circumstances being met, like a particular curse—out of many—on a particular girl, and a particular camp activity happening. Worst of all you need to cast a spell to watch the precious event, so you need to constantly keep track of what events might happen. This is just difficult, not in a good, but in a tedious way. Camp time is one of the most tightly managed resources in the game, and on top of that events form event chains... The game either needs a lot more events available, so more of them will just fall into your lap, or make a way to get more rolls on prerequisites, and on top of that the hint system needs... to be more helpful? Somehow? Maybe this isn't completely fair but I'm tired of trying to hit Lucette with Nature's Reclamation—and yes I know I need a Thorns build for that to even be a possibility. I give up, I just don't have the time for another full run—a full run with a build I do not like—for a chance of a scene.
Speaking of builds I don't like... This is the second problem. It is somewhat subjective, but there are very few choices that make a tangible impact. Yes, the skills do matter, they do make the characters stronger, but compared to other games, they just don't feel that way. Like a skill gets you a 3% effective stat boost when your active skill had been off cooldown for several turns (which should never happen ideally, so what's even a theoretical uptime on that buff?) Compared to some other roguielites where a single perk or item will happily give you something like 10%+ crit chance, no strings attached, Going Deeper handles its build systems in a miserly way. And did I mention your characters can have only one big active skill, with a cooldown that is typically 20 to 40 turns? I did not call it miserly for nothing. Yes, there is a limited choice of support skills, but they are different, and must be activated from an awkward context menu, which is rather tedious.
This brings us to the main issue I have: the UX that becomes less and less pleasant the more you want to play optimally; and I don't know about you, but I like optimizing. Why else would you play a turn-based roguelite? The problem is that fundamentally, this game puts you on a fairly strict timer, and the way to play with the best combination of safety and speed is to follow these rules: a) do not split the party b) don't waste turns doing nothing c) rest ASAP. It is possible, but MY GOD it requires a shit ton of micromanagement because of the way some core mechanics and default behaviours are implemented, and the UI is not cooperating, not cooperating at all.
Still, 4 stars for unique roguelite mechanics and excellent storytelling, and maybe this game can overcome some of the problems I listed and earn a fifth. Try it out in any case.