Caves of Qud: A Review

Few games have captured my imagination like CoQ. Only, I wish it wasn’t so punishing. Death lurks around every corner. Even in roleplay mode (with permadeath disabled), you can lose hours of progress if you die between villages.

I understand the appeal. It makes the stakes real. You learn to run away rather than fight. But while it’s fun to laugh at all the ways you’ve died, if you’re a perpetual noob like me, it’s also frustrating. Survival seems to depend on keeping the wiki at hand. I contracted ‘glotrot’, for instance. Didn’t understand how or what I could have done to avoid or how to get rid of it. It was all there in the wiki. Maybe I could have soldiered on until I’d found an in-game book with the right info. Maybe I could have used that info in my next run. But with runs taking tens to hundreds of hours, that’s a big investment!

Still an incredible game though. I think about it more than any game I’ve ever played. The Steam Deck controls are also surprisingly effective for a kbd+mouse game!