Scallywag: In the Lair of the Medusa Demo

Roguelike role-playing games are not the most popular out there nowadays, mostly because tradition says they have to be difficult and discouraging. Since the current generation of gamers prefers something more friendly and good-looking, such games are a rarity nowadays, with certain extraordinary exceptions, like the brilliant Faster Than Light.

Scallywag: In the Lair of the Medusa follows a pretty simple formula at its core, since all you have to do in order to play it is to keep descending from one dungeon to the other, until you reach the bottom. In practice, however, things are much more complicated than that, because a thousand things can go wrong along the way and hinder your progress. Thus, survival is the key word if you want to master the art of dungeon looting.

The game at hand comes with a background story as well, to explain some of the things you witness along the way. As such, everything revolves around the Gosling valley, a dreamy land that goes from being a piece of paradise to everyone’s worst nightmare in a matter of days. As it turns out, a cave system underneath the valley caused the misfortune, so someone must obviously explore it and maybe even get rid of the curse while doing so.

The actual gameplay is nothing out of the ordinary, since it is basically a top-down RPG using the classic control scheme based on mouse clicks. In order to survive, you need to keep an eye on your hit points, pick up weapons to defend yourself, and watch out for the oil in your lantern. Obviously, there are many other things that can go wrong as well, such as terrible diseases and curses your character can catch.

From a technical point of view, the graphics are basic and somewhat lazy, because everything looks almost the same. There are a few different environment types you get to visit along the way, but most of the levels look very similar and it can get boring after a while. On the other hand, the dungeons are randomly generated every time you start a new game, so you at least won’t have the chance to learn them by heart.

In the end, Scallywag: In the Lair of the Medusa is not exactly a jewel of the genre, because there are far better titles out there. However, if you’ve got nothing else to go for and you do not mind a bit of simplicity, this can be a decent choice in some circumstances and there are some strong elements to take into consideration as well.