Ring of Pain is an immensely enjoyable experience that can be monumentally frustrating due to its luck-focused nature. It has excellent mechanics and really has a way of worming itself into your brain. But it can be horribly aggravating all the same.

All in all, Ring of Pain is a different enough take on the card game genre that it’s definitely going to be a good time. While not perfect, it has enough lurking in its depths to keep you thinking “Okay, well just one more run!”

Ring of Pain takes a mashup of genres and brings them together for a dark and challenging adventure. The most important takeaway is that it works and provides some great gameplay moments for hours with many new ways to approach encounters. Sure, there are a few high moments of difficulty, and a few systems aren’t completely newcomer friendly, but there’s definitely enough here to keep you entertained for hours of dungeon-crawling and deck-building.

Ring of Pain is interesting and enjoyable in ways that can keep you enthralled despite doing almost the exact same thing for hours. The quick runs are really nice for just jumping in and having a few goes rather than oversaturating yourself with this world. It nails the creepy aesthetic from the art and sound design right down to the way it plays. It can make you feel a bit unsettled no matter what stage of the game you're at and how confident you're feeling. Ring of Pain swings between frustration and satisfaction but thankfully leans heavily to the latter most of the time. It's a delightfully disturbing mix of roguelike and card game genres that's worth stumbling in the darkness to discover.

Ring of Pain is an excellent concept which is almost perfectly executed, but falls flat at the final hurdle. The gameplay is as engaging as it is moreish, which is why it’s such a shame that the difficulty spike at the end ruins the experience. Hopefully this is something that’s amended after today’s release.

There's certainly room for improvement in Ring of Pain, but what is here is an intriguing step forward for the genre that's just in time to celebrate the Halloween season. With a few content updates and a rebalance that lets players experience more of the game's arsenal more consistently, this could be a real contender. As it stands, it's an engaging mystery waiting to be solved, a gameplay loop that's perfect for shorter play sessions interspersed with more in-depth dungeon dives done elsewhere.

Ring of Pain understands what enamours roguelike fans to a new arrangement of rules and challenges. The focus on lateral movement and strategic interaction forced me to think ahead as I fought my way through a world full of beautiful and haunting creature designs. But an over-reliance on chance and an underdeveloped world cut the legs out from underneath all that polish and initial charm. Those hungry for something different will love the first taste, but I’m just not sure it will convince you to come back for a second helping.

Ring of Pain probably isn’t something you’ll sit and play for hours at a time. It’s the sort of thing you’ll enjoy a few rounds of before turning it off, more than likely feeling defeated. But it won’t be long before you’re itching to jump back in and try again. There’s something infectious about its simplicity; it’s a roguelike dungeon crawler like no other, and despite the lack of action or actual dungeon-crawling, it’s huge amounts of fun. Even when you’re exploding left, right and centre.

Ring of Pain shows creativity and promise, but all to little depth to carry those qualities through. The choices presented by the game are interesting in principle, but in practice your success or failure are determined by luck more than anything else. The result is a game defined by repetition, which struggles to justify the time it asks of you. That said, for a minor price and a fun few runs, you could do far worse as a distraction.