Blacken Slash

Blacken Slash is a solid little tactical roguelike that's brought down by a few nagging balance issues.

The game puts you in control of a rainbow-colored pyramid, and each turn you have a certain number of cycles (3 by default) to perform actions. Moving and melee attacks cost one cycle apiece, while other attacks and abilities can consume from one two five cycles.

It's really the perfect phone game. Each level makes you think a bit but not too much – it won’t perplex you like Into the Breach – and they always only take a minute or two to complete.

Unfortunately, I can’t overlook the balance issues. For instance, one power allows you to teleport, but for certain types of levels it's disabled. Ok, if my goal is to reach the exit, I can understand why teleport is disabled. But it’s also disabled on levels in which your task is to block the exit.

On one particular level, I ended up in an unwinnable situation from the jump. There was a thick stack of enemies standing between me and the exit. I couldn’t reach the exit to block it, and because my character was built around teleportation and melee, I had no way to attack the far enemies before they escape.

That was level 48, just two levels from the finish line. I lost and was sent packing all the way back to the beginning. The experience left a bad taste in my mouth, and since then I don’t even consider choosing the teleport ability because I know it’ll just end up being a dead slot in certain level types.

After that epic failure, I did keep at it and a few runs later I finished the game. Is it fun? Sure. But it's also a bit rough around the edges and very RNG dependent. Win some, lose some, I suppose.