Ring of Pain

Release Date: October 15, 2020

RPG, fantasy, turn-based, roguelike, RPG elements, 2D, card games, dungeon crawler, indie games, singleplayer

7.4

OpenCritic

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Ring of Pain is a mix elements characteristic of dungeon crawler, roguelike and card games. The game was developed by Simon Boxer and Twice Different studio.

Plot
Mechanics
Game modes
Technical aspects

Ring of Pain is a mix of a dungeon crawler, roguelike and card game. The game is also characterised by an unusual artistic style and atmosphere. It was developed by Simon Boxer in cooperation with Twice Different studio. The publisher is Humble Bundle.

Plot

The action of Ring of Pain takes place in a world distorted by the psyche of the unnamed main character. This is a place full of danger, fear and illusion. A mysterious creature called Owl helps us to explore it and tries to protect the hero from the threatening curse. The key to finding a way out of the situation is to know the roots of the characters.

Mechanics

In Ring of Pain the game is about "exploring" a location consisting of a randomly selected set of cards arranged in a circle (it's a bit like some card / board games known from the real world, such as Munchkin). The player has the ability to interact with individual tiles to cause specific effects.

When playing, we sometimes find items that offer us passive bonuses - the character we play has several fields that can be filled with cards, but we have to choose carefully, because there can only be one in each of them (some of them offer additional reinforcements if we use them simultaneously). While exploring, we can also find an event or meet with the enemy, using the collected things.

The order of cards in the circle is also important - the monsters present in the circle signal their plans and the player can adjust their strategy based on this information.

Game modes

We can only play the Ring of Pain alone. The main game mode is a single player story mode.

Technical aspects

Ring of Pain has an original, two-dimensional graphic design, which is mainly based on very colourful illustrations with a unique, strange artistic style. The game is enriched with equally colourful light effects. The game is accompanied by a soundtrack composed by Belinda Coomes (music) and Damion Sheppard (effects).

Videos and Screens

[1:04] Ring of Pain trailer #1

7.4

OpenCritic Rating

Game is Recomended by 60% of Critics. There are 14 Critic Reviews.

OpenCritic

Nindie Spotlight: 7.5 / 10 by Justin Nation

With a variety of titles proving that the tight and challenging strategy of a roguelike can make for compelling play it’s not hard to see some of Ring of Pain’s influences...

Full Review

GamingTrend: 55 / 100 by John Farrell

Ring of Pain shows creativity and promise, but all to little depth to carry those qualities through. The choices presented by the game are interesting in principle, but in practice your success or failure are determined by luck more than anything else. The result is a game defined by repetition, which struggles to justify the time it asks of you. That said, for a minor price and a fun few runs, you could do far worse as a distraction.

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Noisy Pixel: 8 / 10

Ring of Pain takes a mashup of genres and brings them together for a dark and challenging adventure. The most important takeaway is that it works and provides some great gameplay moments for hours with many new ways to approach encounters. Sure, there are a few high moments of difficulty, and a few systems aren’t completely newcomer friendly, but there’s definitely enough here to keep you entertained for hours of dungeon-crawling and deck-building.

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