Malebolgia is a simple game, and it seems like the whole thing was made by one guy. The game tries to borrow from the Dark Souls series a little bit: difficult combat, tough bosses, infinite respawns, "bonfires" sort of, an open-ended world and an obscured narrative. The story of the game is hard to figure out and I still don't quite understand what on earth it was about. Basically you play Leopold, an old guy with a halberd, some fashionable military garb and a torch. Basically it seems like you made a pact with the devil or some demons and thus the proverbial shit has hit the fan at your family home, which happens to be a gigantic sprawling castle. Your mission is basically to explore these shadowy halls and kill the bad guys.

This game does an excellent job in a few areas. Firstly, the simplistic art style works wonderfully. Everything is made from crude geometric, textureless models without much colour. Almost everything is grey or black, except you and your little torch. The appearance of the game is striking and it grew on me. There are some simple particle effects, and the halls of the castle are littered with eerie paintings. The whole game is very dark and you carry a torch to light the way. But if you lose HP, your torch slowly dies, making the game darker and more difficult to navigate, not unlike Darkest Dungeon. Despite the simple presentation, the sound design is top notch and very spooky, adding greatly to an overall eerie atmosphere.

The game doesn't really have any RPG elements. There's no levelling or upgrading or switching weapons. Every time you beat a boss you get a little bit stronger, but that's it. This is kind of unfortunate since it means there's no reason to kill most enemy mobs: you're often better off to just walk past them and save yourself the bother, since there's no reward for killing anything. The combat itself is rather clunky but it can be satisfying once you get used to it. At times it feels unfair as the bosses chain attacks upon you over and over, meanwhile you're moving around like an asthmatic hippo; and the dodge-roll is broken almost to the point of being useless except when something shoots a projectile at you. I think it would have made more sense to give Leopold a shield or perhaps a parry mechanic. Still though, once you get used to the combat it's kind of fun and it works. The fights are very challenging, some of the bosses are extremely challenging, so I liked that.

My biggest complain about the game is the lack of direction. After you've killed a boss, there usually isn't anything to indicate where to go next. Often the next boss will have spawned in some obscure chamber in the castle that you visited hours ago. So I spent at least 50% of my time in the game just wandering the halls, checking each room one-by-one until I randomly stumbled across the next scripted event. This became extremely tiresome once the whole castle was unlocked, meaning a full search of the place could take an hour. This is made worse by one particularly nasty portion of the game where you must find a secret door along a random hallway to progress. It was pure luck that I happened to find it, and I've googled the game: it seems like perhaps I'm the only person who has actually found that door and finished the game.

Since the game was developed by a one-man team there were bound to be bugs. And yes, the game bugged out on me many times. The worst bug is the one that appears to wipe your saved game. You have to quit and restart the game over and over until it successfully loads the save. Also the steam achievements are completely broken.

Anyway, even though I've written a whole page criticising this game and rambling about how broken it is: I still think it's an excellent game. I picked it up for a couple bucks, and I had a lot of fun with it. Despite the flaws, the game has a genuinely spooky atmosphere, a beautiful presentation, an eerie story and challenging (sometimes fun) combat. The dev was really creative with some ideas, the setting was cool, and the game was also influenced by Dante's Inferno, which I love. If you're willing to look past a couple bugs a minor irritations then I can say that this is a great game, and definitely worth picking up if you see it on sale.