Recent reviews by BdaLimey

Right And Down is a deceptively simple turn-based roguelite dungeon-crawling card game where you navigate a grid of tiles trying to get from the top left corner to the exit in the bottom right. On each turn you have only two choices: move right, or move down. To win a run you need to reach the end of level 50; you lose if your health is reduced to zero.

Every character starts with one item, which grants some kind of passive bonus, and one ability, which can be triggered by moving in a particular pattern. For example, the Brute's Brutal Hack ability inflicts 4 damage to all enemies after you move down followed by right three times.

Moving onto a tile does something depending on its type:

1. Armor. Increases your armor by the amount shown on the tile.

2. Monsters. Immediately kills the monster, but you lose health equal to the strength of the monster shown on the tile. If you have armor, your armor is reduced first. Killing monsters also gives you experience, used to buy additional abilities at campfires (see below).

3. Coins. Increases the number of coins you have by the amount shown on the tile.

4. Potions. Heals you for the value shown on the tile.

5. Items. You can have up to 16 different items (including your starting item), but you can have more than one of the same item and their benefits stack. Items cost an amount of gold equal to the value shown on the tile and are automatically acquired if you have sufficient gold.

6. Traps. Inflict some kind of negative status effect, for a number of turns equal to the value shown on the tile. For example, poison damages you every turn; blindness prevents you from seeing further than a one-tile radius; burn prevents you from healing; freeze prevents you from using your items; confusion reverses the controls and hides your stats. 

Each set of 5 levels takes place in the same "biome" (e.g. volcano, forest, void), and each biome has its own set of enemies, traps, and items. Some items only offer their benefits in certain biomes. After every 5 levels you reach a campfire, which is a small level consisting of only coin, armour and potion cards. Every 10 levels the campfire also allows you to purchase one additional ability, in exchange for experience points. At the end of the campfire level you can choose between two different biomes to travel to.

At the start of the game only the Brute character is unlocked. However there are five more characters that can be unlocked by achieving certain conditions during a run. Each character also has several different options for their starting item and ability.

Winning a run also unlocks different dungeons, which seem to act like ascension levels in Slay The Spire, and add in extra mechanics. For example, in Dungeon 2 the board also contains Lock tiles which cannot be moved onto without a key (I have yet to discover where you get keys from!).

Despite only being able to go right or down every turn, Right And Down has lots of interesting choices. Do I take the easiest path through each level, but at the expense of not gaining much XP? Do I try to reach that item on the far side of the board, even though I'll have to pass through three tough monsters to get to it? Am I better getting more armor or should I go for coins so I can buy more items?

You can see my first run through the game on YouTube at the link below. If you have any questions about the game please feel free to post them in the comments there and I'll be happy to answer them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ru0kwM0S8c

Words Can Kill is a fantastic mashup of Scrabble and Slay The Spire. You progress through three Acts, through maps with several branching paths, fighting enemies, buying equipment and upgrading your tiles, before facing off against a boss at the end of the Act, just like in Slay The Spire. But it's the battles where this game really creates its own identity. During them you draw tiles from your deck into your hand and use them to either damage the enemies or add block to prevent incoming damage, with the amount of damage or block depending on the score of the word you form. Some enemies can also buff themselves, or debuff you, which you'll need to use certain tiles to dispel.

You can equip four different pieces of equipment: helmet, armour, weapon and shield. Each either changes how you score your attacking and defending words, or adds some buff or active ability.

There are three difficulty levels. In the easiest you can see all words that it's possible to form from the tiles in your hand at the top of the screen and receive bonus points for longer words. In the middle difficulty you can no longer see the words but still receive bonus points based on word length. In the hardest difficulty you can neither see the words nor get bonus points.

The game also has three different character classes, which play quite differently from each other. For example, the first character starts with all single letter tiles, whereas the starting tiles of the second character all have two letters on them, making it much harder to form words (although he does have an ability that lets him split tiles in two too).

I think the game is absolutely tremendous, especially at such a low price point. If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments, or check out my videos on the game on YouTube.

I picked this up because I've just bought the board game. Having read through the rule book, I wanted something to help me understand and internalise the rules before starting a campaign with my kids. Not only has this done the job admirably, I've also found it to be much more polished than I was expecting. Graphically, it looks great, with excellent animations and a really nice UI. I have played for about 12 hours so far, and haven't yet encountered any bugs. However it can be hard to see where doors, obstacles, treasure and so on are, and there are no in-game explanations of the various status effects that I could see. However as I'm playing with the board game rule book next to me, the latter isn't a big deal for me. The absence of the campaign also isn't a problem for me at this stage - the way the game currently string scenarios together is good enough to give a sense of progression. Long story short, I'm really enjoying this and was happy to pay full price for it, despite its incomplete state. It will only get better as the devs add more content to it.