Something about caves of qud escapes perception, at first. If you look at the website for it, the webpage will tell you of all the strange things you can do. Clone yourself, it says, and then cut off your clone's face, then wear your face on your face. Its peculiar, right? What kind of game has ever let you do such a thing?

Do you even gain any benefit for doing this?

The answer is, of course: sorta, but the +3 ego you get isn't really all that important in the grand scheme of things, unless you're attempting to make your life as an esper much more difficult. Better just wear a Dazzle Cheek, instead.

Caves of Qud is quite unlike any other game I've played, save for Nethack, which manages, I think, to live on in this game. Something about nethack I always adored was this sense that at anytime, no matter how much time you put into it, this game could surprise you, and I think this sense lives on in Qud. No, I understand that a lot of other old school roguelike-y games have had this same kinda sense about them, but they are often too bleak, too ugly, too demanding of my ability to come to grasp with their arcane systems. Caves of Qud manages to be both complex and simpler, too. Its not as technically complex as many out there, especially in terms of combat, but it feels like a world. Like an immersive sim, there were so many times where I tried to get around a problem in a way that I felt would work, and was delighted when it worked exactly the way the game had taught me it would. The game teaches you how to break it, and then, as a reward, it breaks you back.

Your enemies are numerous, and their tactics are underhanded. Galgallim are horrific entities that can stunlock you in place where you must watch helplessly as you die unless your quickness is high enough, a very tall task considering they're only just below 200 themselves. If you've already gotten a grasp on how to break the game, this isn't so bad. You can mostly murder everyone with the cool golem you make with your bear-monk allies, hide your 'friend' in there so that he doesn't die, blast the slave-nazis that run around calling themselves the good guys into bits with your cool Head-Asplode mind powers.

But even after you do that, the game, once again, breaks you back with the narrative. If you've gotten so good at breaking the game to get past its bullshit, you come to understand many of Quds inner workings, its history, the people and the places you come to visit. You climb in your robot with your 'friend', triumphant, and the two of you ascend up to the spindle, where you learn of the truth. Even in the game's little moments of victory, it is still crushing you beneath its heel in a way that I don't entirely know how to describe.

I don't really know what I could say about this game. I had been falling out of love pretty steadily with gaming for a long time now, unable to accept it. When I picked up this game, I played it obsessively for about 4 months. I couldn't stop. Nothing could compare to the journey I was taking, the adversity I was set up against, the determination to get past it, to calm the nephillim of the gyre, to talk to a ghost. This game is incredibly dear to me. It singlehandedly revived my enjoyment of this strange hobby i've had for so very long. It made me laugh, it made me mad, it made me cry.

Beating this game, learning all of its horrible and beautiful truths, was one of the most satisfying things I've ever done, and even if you don't like games like this, you should play it anyway. I can't guarantee you'll enjoy your experience, but you never know. Like one who's just seen an apple farmer's daughter, your next obsession could be flitting about behind the woodshed, shyly.

Who doesn't love exceptionally quirky roguelikes??

Most people.

But for the rest of us, there's Caves of Qud, one of those odd Steam snags I didn't expect much from initially but which paid off in spades!

Set in the dilapidated world of Qud, CoQ begins by dumping you in a stagnant little farming village in a forgotten corner of a vibrant, post-apocalyptic world more reminiscent of a jungle-fied version of Dune than the usual Fallout clones. Armed with nothing more than a handful of loosely-defined quests to guide you, you set out to explore a vine-choked world of broken machines, gene-addled mutants, rampant hypertech, snarling kobolds, and Glob-only-knows what else. And as is the case with most roguelikes, you're going to die along the way. Pretty often, really. While the game is fairly forgiving once you get the hang of it, your first time exploring any new area is going to hit you with bizarre, unpleasant, and distinctly unfair modes of death (Protip: Don't attack the slumberlings), abruptly ending your 5, 10, 20 hour run with nothing to show for it but an entry on a high score screen no one will ever look at.

So why go back? Why play at all? And why the hell did I give this thing 5 stars? Because it plays on curiosity masterfully. The visuals may be minimalist, but they manage to evoke natural settings and sprawling compounds wonderfully, combining with the deeply unusual soundtrack to create a surprisingly immersive experience. Even more crucial though is the writing, which gives you tantalizing hints at what the hell is going on in the world in little drips and drabs, dodging the hazards of exposition dumps in favor of a playfully slow release of information. Everything is familiar, but uncomfortably alien, and I needed to know why.

If you enjoy the capacity for simulation of roguelikes, and want to see it used in pursuit of rich storytelling rather than strategic gameplay, Caves of Qud is worth a shot, particularly if you're fond of the squickier end of the hard sci-fi genre. With a massive world to explore, plenty of possible character builds, and a dev team that pumps out new content very regularly, it's a game that will keep you playing for a loooong time.