Ring of Pain is an indie, turn-based, roguelike dungeon crawler, which came out in 2020. Every dungeon is a single room, and each one is filled with a ring of cards. These rooms are also set up in a ring formation. The player proceeds clockwise until they reach the end. Then a decision must be made: who to trust? It could be argued that this is a roguelight — — learning what a mystery room does will reveal its nature in future runs, and discovering items during a run will unlock them as potentia
l, future finds. However, since those aspects don't strongly effect a run's outcome, I think it's fine to call it a roguelike game. The Story. The player starts off naked, confused, and with a demented-looking creature. It claims that it saved the player from a Shadow's curse, and has done so many times before. It calls itself “Owl,” yet it looks more like a gigantic, demonic chicken than an owl. Owl says that to escape this cursed place, the player needs to deliver a candle somewhere, and light
several more candles there. Along the way, the player can meet someone who says the truth is different. And it warns the player not to trust Owl. Eventually, the player will need to decide which one of these characters to trust. I won't give major spoilers, but essentially there are two different endings. One is the correct choice, but little is clarified in either ending. Why the player journeyed around the Ring of Pain is never well explained. Meanwhile, NPCs' backstories remain vague, too. I
was frustrated by that ambiguity, because I often found myself chasing down dead ends. I expected depth to discover since it gave interesting clues, but there was none. Instead, it's just an artistic, bare-bones tale, which is meant to be more of an art piece than a solid story to explore. Plus, as I played, I also gradually learned that Owl and the other character have contradictory dialogue. Their words contradict both themselves and each other. That was disappointing, because it made what li
ttle characterization they did have seem weak. Eventually, I didn't want to keep hunting for answers anymore. I’d tried several things, and even beaten it several times, but I wasn't sure about what I’d found out. Did I miss an unlocking mechanic, or was there really so little story content to find? Since I had no idea, and couldn't find anything but fan theories online, I decided that I'd take a practical shortcut. I took a peek at the game's dialogue file. This is why I'm certain that it's a b
are-bones tale: I read everything that NPCs can say. If certain options are chosen, then a few core details are revealed about both the storyline and its characters. But that's the best it gets. Much that's intriguing is left unresolved, always. I don't want to spoil anything crucial about the main characters or the setting, but to give context about how mysteries remain unresolved in the game, I’m gonna cover a lesser NPC who similarly lacks detail. Here's an NPC called Sam. Why does Sam have a
n everyday sort of name when no one else does? What has he done exactly? Several different, interesting fan theories are possible, but there are no definite, canon answers given. As I said earlier, the Ring of Pain is more of an art piece than a game with a coherent story. It's meant to be a sort of fever dream that's open to interpretation. As a result, many creative fan theories on many points, both major and minor, seem equally valid. That said, I can understand why the game has its fans. If
a player likes ambiguous, fertile ground for fan theories, then this game's artistic ambiguity will deliver, and probably be their cup of tea. But it's not mine. To help others understand my own perspective on the topic, I'm going to give a visual analogy: a painting. I'm also going to contrast it with the nature of gaming. Imagine a canvas covered in red paint. Imagine that someone draws a pair of mysterious, mesmerizing eyes on top of that red paint. What that means is up to individual interpr
etation: anger, passion, a bloody history, or something esoteric, such as the eyes representing the soul — — since eyes are the “windows to the soul” — — and that the body is represented by blood. Many theories are equally valid, but there's no innate story there in the painting. The piece is all about how people react to it. If a few vague, yet interesting rhymes are added on to provoke further interest, then the piece becomes about as full of story as the game I'm reviewing here. But with that
sort of medium, it’s easy to tell at a glance that it's about subjectivity. It can take hours to learn if a game’s story is actually a story, or if its clues are only part of an interpretation-based art piece. Additionally, games have trained players to expect locked information. If clues are dropped, then, generally, they're meant to be pursued, and doing so will unlock additional content. RPGs especially tend to reward players’ investigations. As a result, an expectation for the medium is the
re — — built up over time through experience. That's just not the same for a standard piece of artwork. There's no expected content lock, such as looking at the back of the canvas, or finding a geocode on the front. Meaning that when there is no such intended maze to unravel in an RPG with clues it can be confusing, because a player will often wonder if they just haven't yet found the right, programmed path to unlock things. This was what happened in my case. I kept trying various methods in the
hope that I’d unlock content, but it wasn't actually there to find. Clues were just something meant to be puzzled by, to invoke curiosity, but not to be a literal, mechanical puzzle where the player should actually spend time engaging with it. So by the end, I felt disappointed. I'd encountered many dead ends when following clues, and expected one thing but got another. This is why my personal rating is near rock bottom for its story. It has a simple yet interesting premise to engage players, b
ut then little actual content behind that simple premise. Meanwhile, investigating its secrets leads to surprisingly little, because it does things like tell the player that they might have missed things, to reflect on what they learn, and so on. I think that's a poorly designed story, because it's encouraging players to look for content that just isn't there in a medium where, generally, such nudging means the stuff is there. I think that's poor design for a game, because there's no way to tell
if the time investment will actually yield answers or not. The Gameplay. A ring of dungeons is traversed clockwise. The final dungeon is the end game. Along the way some rooms are unique, but most rooms simply contain a ring of cards. These cards are mostly monsters. Monsters can either be fought or passed. Passing gives them an attack of opportunity. A high Stealth, Dodge, or a Parry stat can allow a player to pass safely... sort of — — Parry does not block poison damage. Killed monsters drop
souls. Souls are the game's currency. It can be spent on either opening up “Mimic Chests,” which are simply unlockable treasure chests, or at the shop. There are also other types of cards mixed into a ring: health potions, stat boosts, items, treasure chests, room shuffling crystals, and exit doors. Meanwhile, the player has 5 primary stats to level up: HP, Attack, Defense, Speed, and Clarity. The latter three have percentage chances tied to them for various things: parrying, stealth, dodge, and
so on. Each of the primary stats can be raised through either stat boost cards or by equipping items. Items can be found randomly on a card ring, from treasure chests, bought in the shop, given as gifts from Owl, or, very rarely, granted as hidden rewards for completing various tasks. Hidden rewards are singular, specific items. The other sources just provide randomly generated items. The treasure chests are the most versatile way to get the items that you actually want because of rerolling. Tw
o items are presented. A player can reroll this pair, and rerolling generates two new items at random for a small yet increasing fee, which gives more chances to find optimal EQ. Owl’s gifts, and the Shop’s [items], don't have a reroll option. They're also in their own, randomly findable rooms, which are less common to find compared to those Treasure Chest cards. There are many different item types and variations. For instance, in the hand slot a player can wear gloves, gauntlets, whatnot. And e
ach item variation effects the player's primary stats in some way, and/or has a special effect. In a couple of uncommon instances, an item’s stat effects can be absorbed, and the equipment’s slot is freed up. Otherwise, older gear is simply replaced by newly equipped gear. Yet despite all of that customization, players are expected to die frequently. It's just part of the game. Surviving has little to do with skill, and much to do with luck. This is because the main ring includes 15 standard dun
geons, additional, optional dungeons; a difficult endgame area, and much random generation. Monster placement and item generation are both completely randomized. Meanwhile, monster difficulty scales up quickly. The randomization means that the chance for something to go fatally wrong during all of that traversing is rather high. Leaving dungeons too early too often leads to doom, but getting poor gear obviously will have a much worse effect than getting good gear. What’s gotten is a crapshoot. T
his drastically skews the difficulty from one run to another, no matter the Difficulty chosen in the settings. As an example, consider this book. It will instantly teleport a player to a dungeon’s exit. It also has a low refresh rate before it can be used. This item can let a player immediately and easily slip away from otherwise fatal danger. Teleporting away any time is a very useful ability. In comparison, many other books aren't nearly as useful. Meanwhile, random monster card positions can
also lead to either easy breezy dungeons or a probable death. For example, maybe an uncommon Blocker Monster blocks your path, and you can't backtrack to the exit without dying. Or maybe you never encounter a Blocker Monster at an inconvenient moment. Or maybe a hostile, explosive monster’s chased you down, but you can't flee due to a row of explosive, non-chasing monsters — — which will also go off when it does. Or perhaps you never encounter a chain of them at a time where it would be a seriou
s problem. There's more that can go right or wrong, too. And it has little to do with the player's skill. Sometimes, even if you can see what cards are on the board — — due to having an item that lets you — — things can still go wrong. Saving is done via an autosave system. Death wipes the save. (( ♪ fading, trilling music ♪ )) The Look & The Sound. The artwork has a dark, unique look. I liked it. It's very distinctive. One of the endings even has a neat, visual twist, which I won't spoil. As fo
r its sound, the game's music didn't annoy me. However, I can't say that it wowed me either. To me, it only seemed okay, in the background, and like what I’d expect to hear in any standard game. Its sound effects seemed similar. Time & Cost. It took me ~30 minutes to do a successful run. Yet, as I mentioned earlier, it's normal to die often. Even once a player is used to the mechanics and good at the game, luck still plays a major factor. As such, it shouldn't take too long to beat, but your own
mileage may vary. Going Completionist would considerably stretch out the content. Achievements unlock items, and there are many items. Unlocking everything would take a long time. I got it for free on Epic Games during a giveaway, but the game's normally ~$20. It's ~$6 on sale. I think that $20 is too high given the game's lack of complexity, and how quickly it can be beaten. It's also repetitive. So, trying to drag out beating it wouldn't make much sense — — unless you REALLY enjoy the gamepla
y. For $6, well... ... if someone likes the look of the gameplay and the story, then sure, I'd say go for it. But I wouldn't personally pay for it or recommend it. Final Thoughts. With so many rooms filled with so many random generations, the chance for a monster placement to instantly ruin a run is, in my opinion, just too frustratingly high. It also made winning runs seem like shallow victories to me, because it's not like anything I did was different. I think that system’s way too luck based,
which is either frustrating or disappointing. Frustrating when you lose, disappointing when you win. Because, yeah, it’s nice to finally see the end game, but you don't really get anything for it and you didn't really have anything to do with it. Its story being bare-bones, yet hinting it had mysteries to solve, further added to my disappointment. It felt more like it was egging me on to chase dead ends than it was trying to say, “Hey, be curious and wonder.” So all-in-all, it just wasn't a fun
experience for me. I think its high point is in its graphic design, because its artwork is unique, interesting, and memorable. I liked its visual style enough that it even skews my overall rating from a two to a four. There's even a neat end game twist in a certain visual design, like I mentioned under Look & Sound, though I don't wanna spoil it, so I'll have to still leave that vague. It does do an impressive job at using its graphics to enhance the setting, though. Otherwise, while I want to
be able to praise it for being an indie designed by just one person, which obviously required a lot of hard work, unfortunately, I don't have other positive feedback. So yeah, just not my cup of tea. Didn't really like it. (( ♪ Ether Oar - The Whole Other ♪ ))
Comments