Devil Spire Falls is the sequel to one little indie game I adored back in the day. It was a lovely dungeon crawler roguelike that made a mockery of some competitors in the genre, and to this day the original Devil Spire is one of my favorite ‘just 10 minutes’ games when I don’t have much time.
Devil Spire Falls takes on the original theme and dials the ambition up several notches. A procedurally generated open world RPG, I’m still baffled how on earth Ithrio Sumi pulls it off. Calling it just an RPG is putting it very lightly, as the amount of mechanics in Devil Spire Falls is immense, and far more than I can cover in just a single impressions review!
The last time I saw an indie game this ambitious was Kenshi, another game where I questioned the sanity of the great minds behind it. Devil Spire Falls feels a lot like The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, only made by a single person. Let that sink in. How ridiculous is that? That doesn’t mean the game is flawless as it certainly isn’t. Anything with this much ambition will come with issues such as the procedural content being a mixed bag and some bugs, but I am incredibly impressed with what Ithrio Sumi has accomplished so far.
The game starts you off in the unknown with very little to your name, and from that point the world is your oyster. While Devil Spire Falls does not hold the player’s hand, there is a ton of information in the options menu so you won’t get too overwhelmed. This is an impressive achievement for a game with so many hidden mechanics. At its heart, Devil Spire Falls is a dungeon crawler just like its father with a ton of different ways to tackle the challenges that it offers. The open world generates everything from towns to bandit camps, with NPCs to negotiate with or to murder, if the latter is something the player fancies. All of this is with an awesome, hellish atmosphere and despite the game’s simple graphics,
The combat is usually something these kinds of ambitious games fumble, but Devil Spire’s combat system is solid. That didn’t surprise me because the first game had great combat too, but there’s a lot of strategy involved in fighting, and you have some interesting skills to fall upon if the bread and butter of normal melee fighting doesn’t appeal. It can feel a bit clunky at times and movement feels slow in the beginning, but that improves as your skills increase.
As of this review, the game is in early access, which means you may encounter bugs and occasional crashes—something I expected. However, the developer is working tirelessly, releasing patches every week to fix numerous bugs, improve performance, and add new content.
I’m excited about what this game will deliver. Given what it already offers, it’s incredibly impressive. I can’t wait to see what the final version 1.0 will be like; this game has the potential to become a classic.
