A Deck Stacked With Terror

HIGH Easy to pick up and play.

LOW A lack of overall depth.

WTF Scoops the Clown.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Hi everyone. Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com.

The Spirit Lift is a roguelike deckbuilder that takes inspiration from haunted houses and creature feature films of the early ’80s and ’90s. A group of high school seniors get separated from their group on a field trip to a spooky hotel and get sucked into The Spirit Lift, where they must fight through 13 floors of terror in order to get back home.

Once a run begins, players take their group of teens through the cursed hotel floors in order to make it to the Penthouse and defeat the evil creature there. Each floor is different, with the theme depending on the boss that will be found at the end of the section. Every door along the way might hide cards or gear to help with the run, gold to buy cards from a shady wolf lurking around, or enemies trying their best to gobble the players up.

In combat, cards are played each turn to defeat enemies. Enemies telegraph what they will do when the player ends their turn, so using that information to plan out moves before enemies act is crucial. Unlike others in the genre, I have yet to find a card in Spirit Lift that actually serves as “defense” — there are no shields and no blocking. Options seem limited to attacking or debuffing enemies, which leads to a quick gameplay loop as it’s all-offense, all the time. That said, this speed is helpful in avoiding the maximum of 13 turns per battle — I haven’t found out what happens if a player uses up all of those turns, but I can’t imagine it’s good. Whether players win or lose a run, there will be points awarded that they can use for things like more starting health or starting with more gold on future runs.

There’s not much to the formula beyond what I’ve just described, so there’s not much depth in The Spirit Lift. There’s not much enemy variety, either. In my runs I’ve seen basic versions of bad guys, slightly healthier versions, and versions that do more status effects. There are some one-off enemies that introduce a new gimmick, but the well of new ideas seems to dry up fast.

What really kills the Spirit Lift, though, is the grind. It’s not the worst I’ve seen since each run is fairly short, maybe taking an hour to hit the final boss of the run, but the lack of variety is felt quickly.

On the plus side, players will eventually unlock five additional characters past the starting three after a few runs. Some are better with straight attacks, while others are better at buffing or damage-over-time, but they all tend to play fairly similar to each other. This means that after only a little while, The Spirit Lift has shown its entire hand.

That could be disappointing for players who love to dig deep into an experience like this, but despite how shallow it seems, I find that the spooky haunted house vibe is charming, it’s easy to grasp some of the powerful combinations quickly, and learning the full array of monsters allows players to quickly strategize each encounter.

The Spirit Lift won’t be a game for everyone, but there’s joy to be found for players who might like a smaller bite.

For me, The Spirit Lift gets 7.5 loops of elevator music out of 10.

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Disclosures: This game is developed and published by prettysmart games. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Steam. Approximately 8 hours of play were spent playing the game, and multiple runs of the game were completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game is not currently rated by the ESRB. However, it’s safe to say that it has fantasy violence as players use cards that represent items like guns, baseball bats, and tennis rackets to attack horror monsters. No blood, no foul language, just creepy atmosphere.

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind Modes are not present.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles, but subtitles can not be altered and/or resized. There are no audio cues needed to play. The game is fully accessible.

Remappable controls: Controls are not remappable, and there is no control diagram. Movement is controlled by pressing WASD on the keyboard, or by using the mouse to click on the arrows on screen. Mouse is used to control everything else (card selection, selecting options in events, etc),

The post The Spirit Lift Video Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

Death Howl is ambitious simply for the two genres it tries to fuse. Deckbuilders are almost always roguelikes, and Soulslikes are almost always action-heavy. The idea that you could blend these systems in a way that not only makes sense but actually feels good to play seems almost absurd. Yet Death Howl pulls it off, all while telling a moving, heart-wrenching story about grief.

You play as a mother who has lost her son and refuses to be consumed by the despair threatening to overwhelm her. Instead, she steps into the spirit world to search for him and bring him home. The writing is excellent, and the quieter, emotional moments between the violence are genuinely powerful. It hits especially hard if you’re a parent, but the struggle to push back against grief is something most of us understand in some way.

As for how it plays, you explore the world, interacting with objects to uncover new knowledge and gather items that can be turned into cards. You can refresh the spirit realm by resting at special stones, which restore your health but also revive the spirits, forcing you to push through them again.

Combat is turn-based and unfolds on a grid, with you and your enemies jockeying for position while you manage mana to play moves that attack, defend, or trigger entirely different effects. It’s a delicate balance and one that often feels stacked against you, but that only makes each victory more rewarding.

The challenge in every encounter reinforces the strength of the protagonist and her relentless fight to recover her son. Expect an uphill climb and a world that isn’t afraid to land emotional blows as you push forward.

The post Death Howl Mini-Review: A Genre-Bending Journey Through Grief appeared first on Green Man Gaming Blog.