Watcher Think?: The Weaponographist

"Watcher Think?" is GameWatcher's series of unscored mini-reviews for the tl;dr crowd. This time around, Chris Capel runs around a maze killing things before dying, being brought back to life, and running the maze again. It's like Groundhog Day with wizards!

The Weaponographist should have been an easy shot for me. It's got lots of things I hate in gaming: it's a top-down roguelike with basic Binding of Isaac-style flash graphics where you're expected to clear rooms of the same enemies over and over again, and if you die you get to repeat it all again. Some people like The Binding of Isaac and its ilk, I can't stand those games. So basically no one's more shocked than me that I actually loved The Weaponographist and found myself hugely addicted to it.

Story-wise your knight "hero" is cursed by a witch after refusing to go to her town's aid, causing everything he owns to wither away, and the only way to break the spell is to rid her town of monsters. This translates into the aforementioned roguelike, where the knight must travel through rooms clearing them of enemies one by one until he dies. When he does, and will, he's transported back to the town of Hellside where he can use the "monster goo" he's collected to buy weapon, personal, and magic upgrades.

Killing wizards with a chainsaw? Now THAT'S my kinda game!

The crux of why The Weaponographist is so addictive and good is the upgrade system. Every time you die you can upgrade, so unless you've done really badly you almost always reenter the dungeon stronger, so previously tough rooms suddenly become doable and you can progress a little bit further - and if you die again you should have enough "goo" to make yourself stronger again. While there's a set pool of enemies per dungeon depth (several rooms followed by a boss) they're randomized so it feels unpredictable. The only weapons you get are the ones dropped by enemies and they only last a few hits, so you have to choose wisely and swing with purpose, although there are one-off magic spells when you're in a really tough bind.

It's all good fun, and I lied - the game does allow you to save, before and after the boss. It's this fact that makes me wholeheartedly recommend The Weaponographist, because it allows you to make progress and aren't stuck playing the opening levels every time you play. The only real complaint I have about the game is the spotty twin-stick controller support - there's no native Xbox pad binding, you have to assign buttons manually and then you're not told them during in-game tutorials, and you can't rebind the slightly odd keyboard controls. Nevertheless, if you're after a simple, addictive roguelike that actually has a save system in place to stop you going mad, Puuba's The Weaponographist is well worth the £6.99/$7.99. Phew, now I don't have to type that title anymore at least...

Chris Capel