Considering the facts that I’m terrified of heights and that my disability considerably increases my risk of falling, I never want to be told I’m in for “a long way down.” The current game in my sights doesn’t exactly lend itself to the highest quality of puns I could have included to introduce this review, but I shall press on regardless. I’ve had a look at A Long Way Down, a Rogue-like card battler developed by Seenapsis Studio and published by Goblinz Publishing. So, is it “in the cards” that I’ll be going “a long way down” this rabbit hole?

In A Long Way Down, you play as Sam, a young man who was ostracized by most of the people in his home village because he was born to a Black mother and a White father. One fateful day, Sam finds himself in an eerie and unfamiliar place with no memory of how he got there. He discovers that he has just died and is stuck in Limbo. Sam can hear the voice of Ma’bri, his longtime mentor, who is closely guarding Sam’s body in the mortal world and performing his funeral rites.

Ma’bri can speak to spirits in Limbo, which is how she and Sam can still communicate. This is actually a sign of the main problem the two are facing. Since Sam has died, his soul should have been led on to its final destination shortly thereafter. This would mean Ma’bri wouldn’t be able to contact Sam’s soul. However, the spirits have told Ma’bri that Sam is stuck in Limbo because the spirits that are in charge of guiding newly deceased souls to their ultimate destinations consider Sam to be too “rebellious” for them to lead his soul to its designated place.

Before Sam died, Ma’bri taught him everything she knew about battling souls lost in Limbo. Since Sam is now in Limbo rather than the mortal plane, he’ll be fighting those lost souls much more directly. Ma’bri will do everything she can to help Sam despite the barriers between the mortal world and Limbo. Sam finds himself in the fray armed with nothing but a pointy stick and some of the cards he and Ma’bri use to fight lost souls. Sam will need her advice, some assistance from friendly lost souls with whom Sam can ally himself, and orders from you to navigate through Limbo.

There are two main aspects to A Long Way Down’s core gameplay loop. One of these is combat, and I’ll call the other “the board.” If you’re not currently in combat or between levels within a run, you’re on the board. Each run within A Long Way Down is comprised of individual levels, which all have primary and secondary objectives for you to fulfill. Limbo is basically just a void of nothingness, which means you’ll need to gather and place tiles of solid ground (called “slabs”) to move around the board to reach your goals.

You start with a decent amount of slabs, and you can pick up more by stopping on certain tiles. The catch is that you can never predict what the slabs you can gather and place will contain. Some have nothing special and are ideal for traversal. Others might have treasure chests and/or enemies you’ll have to fight. Others still might have campfires you can visit to recover some health. You’ll most commonly encounter slabs that have walls attached to up to three sides, which can only be removed with a consumable card you’re not always guaranteed to have.

All of this means you’ll have to think carefully about which slabs you place where. You’ll ideally want to make your path to your objectives as smooth as possible, without adding unnecessary combat encounters or getting boxed in by surrounding walls. Both in combat and while on the board, gameplay is turn-based. You have a certain number of action points you can spend each turn. Your opponents’ turn will automatically begin when you’ve spent all your action points, assuming you don’t manually end your turn before then.

I pluralized “opponents” there because you’ll always have more than one opponent: Your main foe is the powerful “dungeon master,” who can change the slabs on the board. Your secondary opponents are lesser enemies that the dungeon master summons to try and stop you. When your turn ends on the board, the dungeon master will take his turn, then all the other enemies on the board will move (usually toward you). When you and an enemy occupy the same slab, combat begins. If you moved onto a tile where an enemy already was, you get the first turn in combat, and vice versa.

Sam and any allies he may have in his party all have decks of cards used in battle. All your cards cost action points to use; you can see each card’s cost in its upper left corner. Action points and turns work exactly the same way in combat as they do on the board. You use cards by clicking and dragging them from your hand onto your intended target. During your turn, you’ll see what abilities your enemies plan to use on their next turn and who they’ll target, so you can plan defenses accordingly.

By winning battles and looting treasure chests, you can pick up equipment and additional cards. You can only swap out your equipment and cards at an altar. Altars are always present between levels, and they can sometimes appear on the board during missions. Until you reach an altar, all equipment and cards you pick up are temporarily carried in your bag. If you die, you lose everything you had except the cards in your deck, the equipment you’d put on at an altar, and the magical powder you can use to buy upgrades. Thus, you’ll lose everything in your bag if you fail a run.

I have mixed feelings about this aspect of A Long Way Down. On one hand, I understand that there needs to be some kind of potentially significant risk if you die during a run, so losing everything in your bag makes sense from that perspective. On the other hand, if I’m carrying a weapon or piece of armor in a bag on my person, I don’t understand why I’m required to be at an altar before I can pull equipment out of my bag and put it on. This gameplay mechanic is just one item on a list of things that combine to make A Long Way Down’s core gameplay loop feel unpleasant and repetitive.

I also dislike the fact that, as far as I can tell, you can’t combine cards of which you have multiple copies into fewer, upgraded versions. You instead have to spend increasing amounts of magical powder to upgrade each card in your deck individually. I would have preferred the option to spend smaller amounts of powder and multiple copies of cards I’m carrying as a means of upgrading my deck’s contents. That would make the process of upgrading cards more intuitive and help me cut down on redundant cards cluttering up my deck. Especially since the required amounts of powder seem to increase arbitrarily.

Overall, I’m on the fence about A Long Way Down. I don’t feel comfortable categorically recommending A Long Way Down or shouting from the rooftops that everyone in the world should drop everything and play it immediately. That being said, I also don’t consider A Long Way Down to be worthy of total condemnation. Considering how many games I play in an average year — whether I do so for review purposes or otherwise — I’m bound to periodically encounter some games that just aren’t my cup of tea despite not being objectively bad or bland. It seems this is one of those occasions.

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A Long Way Down

$17.99

6

Score

6.0/10

Pros

• Interesting story concept and setting.
• Occasional enjoyable humor.

Cons

• Repetitive core gameplay loop.