WazHack

Developer: Waz | Publisher: WazHack |Release Date: 2014 | Genre: Indie / RPG / Strategy |Website: Official Website | Format: Digital Download

Deep within the dungeons of WazHack lies the Amulet of Zaw, an artifact of unfathomable value. This legendary prize has drawn many adventurers to their doom, but its allure proves too much to resist. Will your character survive the hordes of monsters, perils of starvation, and unpredictability of the loot, or will they, too, succumb to a permanent death?

Unlike most roguelike titles that opt for a top-down perspective, WazHack is viewed from the side. This might give it the appearance of a platform title, and while it indeed has a jump button, nothing could be further from the truth. The game is actually turn-based, but it is so cleverly disguised as real-time that you won’t even notice until your character stands still. Time stops when your character stops moving, so you can strategically weigh all your options. This gives the game the action-packed feel you would get from a real-time game without compromising any of the strategic depth a turn-based system offers.

The goals in WazHack are very clear and very simple. You must pick a character class, make your way down to the bottom of the dungeon, retrieve the Amulet of Zaw, and escape. In reality, your character can be killed before making it even 500 feet down, and there is no saving and loading to escape your fate. Death in Wazhack is permanent, so every mistake counts, and every bit of bad luck will leave you scrambling to survive. It is a challenging game but extremely rewarding and horribly addictive.

WazHack was initially released in 2012, but thanks to the Steam release, it might finally get some more much-deserved exposure. There are eight different character classes to choose from, each with two subclasses, for a total of 16 different characters. The differences between classes are not just purely cosmetic either, so a knight will be better in hand-to-hand combat than a sorcerer but worse at ranged combat than a huntsman. This diversity boosts the replay value considerably, which is a good thing considering how many times you will have to restart before even coming close to a successful run. Each class also starts with their own pet, but keeping these helpful critters alive is challenging.

The dungeon is procedurally generated, so each trip down into the dark depths is a new experience. The attributes of spellbooks, scrolls, and potions also differ with each run. So that red potion that cured you in a previous run might now cause you to go blind, and the Read Me scroll you thought would cast identify might now summon more monsters. This makes every action you take in the game a gamble, and the deeper you go down, the bigger the penalty for a stroke of bad luck. It is obviously very frustrating if you are in the middle of a good run and what you thought was a healing potion instead polymorphs you into a rat, dropping all your equipment in the process, but this is part of the charm that the game has. There are some friendly NPCs, like shopkeepers, down in the dungeons as well, provided you don’t mess with them, but mostly, you will be fighting for your life (and some sweet loot.) The game even has multiplayer, both co-op and competitive, although each player remains in their own instance of the dungeon.

With every stroke of bad luck and unsuccessful run, we felt like we could do better the next time and immediately restarted. WazHack is one of those titles where you might start it up just to play through a floor or two, and an hour later, you find yourself a few hundred meters into the dungeon and frantically fending off zombies, mummies, and hill orcs. Because the game doesn’t have much of a story, you are left to create your own tales. In one run, we equipped what we hoped would be a beneficial ring, only to start levitating. The ring was cursed, so our character ended up starving because he couldn’t reach any of the food on the floor after killing enemies. In another, we were way down in the depths of the dungeon, surrounded by enemies and down to our last unidentified wand. Trapped and with no way to heal, we used the wand, praying that it wouldn’t’ summon more monsters. The beam from the wand bounced off the wall and ceiling, hitting our character and teleporting her to safety where we could rest and recuperate. Of course, we also had runs where the first potion our character drank caused him to hallucinate and get killed by what looked like a silver dodecahedron.

The game mixes 3D characters with rendered backgrounds, and while the results aren’t exactly beautiful, they still look pretty unique. We love how all the armor, weapons, and accessories you equip are actually visible on your character and how the physics causes slain foes to fall down ladders like ragdolls. The market is saturated with dungeon crawlers using retro or pixel art, so WazHack makes for a nice change. The audio is also quite good and remains unobtrusive, which is great considering how much time you will spend listening to it. The sounds of footsteps might drive the people around you bonkers, but you tend to tune it out while playing. The game can be played using a keyboard, mouse, or controller, and while it takes a while to get used to the menus and inventory management, everything works great when you get the hang of it. The game has some very challenging achievements to aim for, and Steam trading cards were also added after release. In addition, WazHack received plenty of free updates after release that added new game mechanics like beliefs, eggs, and other features such as Steam Workshop support, new items, new monsters, and even a whole new side dungeon.

WazHack makes the roguelike genre accessible to players who might find titles like Nethack too archaic or don’t want to get bogged down in the rules of Dungeons and Dragons. That it is able to do so without dumbing down anything or compromising on the difficulty is an added bonus. With more than 300 unique items and something like 150 different monsters, WazHack certainly does not lack any content. If you are looking for an easy game you can complete without breaking a sweat, you should probably avoid WazHack. If, however, you are looking for a decent challenge and gameplay that will keep you coming back for more, then grab yourself a copy of this game immediately.

*Review originally published in 2014.