Ghost Mansion

Surviving in a roguelike is much more fun than in a regular game, mainly because it’s a lot more rewarding to make progress when you know that death is final and you have to take it from the beginning if something goes wrong. Hence, survival feels more exciting this way, especially if the gameplay is tough enough to provide you with a challenge at all times.

Ghost Mansion is a retro roguelike in which the only goal is survival, while making sure that your character has enough health and mana to deal with a variety of monsters. Everything else is kept as simple as possible, including the gameplay mechanics and the controls, so that you are not hindered by clunky control schemes or annoying mechanics that do nothing but slow you down.

The story puts you in the role of a wizard who’s trying to perform a black magic ritual. As you might expect, everything goes wrong at some point, which is when his castle is overrun with all sorts of monsters. Thus, your goal is to find your magic books and get out of the castle alive, which means that you also have to fight any creatures that might get in your way.

Since you inevitably catch some flak at some point, it’s important to keep an eye out for potions, which can drop either from the monsters you kill or from the chests you open along the way. It’s also possible to buy a few things from the merchant, but money is rather difficult to come by in the game. Speaking of which, there are no armors or weapons to equip, so this part is a bit lackluster, unfortunately.

As for the controls, you can use the keyboard only or aim using the mouse, depending on how you are most comfortable. There are only a handful of commands anyway, so the bigger challenge is to react quickly and make sure you are not wasting your manage. The graphics are decent as well, at least if you are a fan of the retro style.

Even if it doesn’t bring anything new to the genre, Ghost Mansion is more than capable of keeping you busy for a while, especially since it features a challenging difficulty level. On the other hand, it can also become repetitive in a rush if you keep dying too often.