This game is a pretty hard sell for me. I love difficult games where you feel like you are gradually learning and getting better at the combat, but player ability feels like it practically doesn't matter here. You get constantly put into situations where death effectively feels scripted until you just get better items. For example, you enter a room, the door shuts behind you and you get immediately piled on by 4 or 5 enemies from all sides, so you just have to sit there and accept massive damage, or to simply die on the spot. The combat feels extremely clunky and "having better movement" or "getting better at parrying" feels like it just doesn't matter when you are just have to accept damage regardless.

The progression system also feels pretty frustrating and dissatisfying compared to other roguelike games. Sure there are a few permanent upgrades, but losing percentages of player level, equipment, and money doesn't feel good especially if you just get very unlucky. After dying for 4 or 5 times I never even got to learn what you use money for.

The game feels like it lacks polish in a number of ways. In addition to the map being small, it's unnecessarily confusing especially because staircases are labeled the same color as walls and all of the room designs feel like nothing meshes together or has any sense of identity, and even the open rooms manage to feel claustrophobic. One run I found a "secret" where I traveled up a staircase but the secret was literally a requirement in order to progress to the later part of the level. There is also no in game menu to see all of the controls listed out for you, and after the game gives you a prompt there's no way to go back and relearn what just happened.

All in all I didn't have a terrible time playing Slasher's Keep, but despite being a huge fan of roguelike games I thought there were too many fundamental aspects that fell flat for me. Maybe I will return to the game and give it another chance some day, but I don't see that happening any time soon. Despite all of these things I want to give this game a thumbs up because I want to support any efforts that are made at making roguelike dungeoncrawlers.