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Deepest Chambers comes out on Steam and the Epic Games Store on July 22, 2021, for $12.99. A dungeon-crawling adventure with rogue-like elements and deckbuilding gameplay, Deepest Chambers will let you strategize and use different tactics to survive chamber after chamber of the most gruesome enemies in the underworld.
You're stuck in a seemingly never-ending network of dungeons. Hope is desolate, but all of your kingdom's hopes rest upon your shoulders – the captain of the Royal Guards. Will you let your hope run dry, or will you continue on through the Deepest Chambers?
What is Deepest Chambers?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nle9sWIyvxk
Deepest Chambers is a rogue-like dungeon-crawler-inspired deck-building game. If you've played games like Slay the Spire, Dicey Dungeons, and Monster Train, then you will have an easy way of figuring this game out. Each time you play is a new run, with a starter deck, going through a series of randomly generated chambers with enemies you'll have to defeat. You'll have to go through four floors of a run to complete it. After each run, you gain a card and a trinket, and then you're ready for another run.
Gameplay
Deepest Chamber‘s core gameplay loop follows three steps: Preparation, Dungeon-Crawling, and Combat. In preparation, you get to choose quests to accomplish, extra cards and trinkets to bring to your next run, and even which path to take for the run. Each path, theoretically, has its own quirks and enemy types. As of now, however, we only have one path available in Early Access: Sewers. Extra cards and trinkets you can take with you for your run can be obtained from completing previous runs. More on this later.
Next is the Dungeon-Crawling. Deepest Chamber doesn't subscribe to the traditional dungeon crawling experience. While the perspective in battle suggests it, you will not be moving through corridors and entering musky rooms in first-person. Each floor will present you with several room options, or chambers. Each chamber contains one to three enemies you will have to vanquish to clear. Chambers may have gimmicks that add challenge to the fights, with extra rewards waiting for you. All of these gimmicks and rewards will be visible to you before choosing them. To move on to the next floor, you will have to clear three chambers.
Finally, you have Combat. Deepest Chamber‘s Combat is split into two: your turn, and enemy turn. For each of your turns, you are dealt a hand of cards, which are drawn from your draw pile. Most of the time, you have 3 energy, which you use to play your cards. Every card has an energy cost, with a minimum of 0. You drag a card towards an enemy to use it on them and right-click on a card to cast it on yourself. Some cards deal damage, some heal your party, and others earn you Block, shielding you from damage. Each card has a class based on traditional RPG classes, with synergy dependent on building cards with classes with high affinities with each other. These classes add depth and variety to your cards, making each class feel like its own playstyle. Once you exhaust your Energy, you end your turn, which gives your opponents the opportunity to use their Intents – the actions written above the heads of each enemy, signifying their next moves.
Deepest Chamber‘s gameplay loop is engaging enough and fast enough you won't notice that you've already completed a lot of chambers. Each win will reward you with coins and cards that you can add to your current deck. You sometimes earn Trinkets that modify some mechanics of your fights. One special trinket allows you to visit a special shop. Here, you can spend either your hard-earned coins for new cards and potions to aid you in your fights, or spend your party's health on powerful cards and trinkets. Boss fights and Elite enemies give enough challenge to make you think about your every step. Each loss against these monsters will teach you something new about the game and will make you rethink the way you build your deck in your next run.
Overall, Deepest Chamber offers enough challenge to keep you on your toes and raring for another run, never too hard to feel like the game is unfair. Once you've cleared one path once, you can start doing Quests for more rewards. You can also start increasing the difficulty of each of your runs, which will then increase the spoils of war. However, the game gets repetitive after a couple of runs, and while the gameplay loop will get you hooked, it's hard to want to return to the game right now. =
Story
Deepest Chamber‘s story is simple. The King of Dolmin had to bring his folk to the depths below to avoid a catastrophic event. However, going down under has led to a life of desolation. The denizens of the underworld lost their minds, turning into mindless zombie-like enemies. Now, as the commander of the Royal Guards, it's up to you and your “party” to find a way back to the surface, fighting off the denizens of the underworld on the way. You are the last hope of the Kingdom. Are you up to the task?
Unfortunately, the story doesn't seem to go so far yet in Early Access. After completing the Sewers a couple of times, it doesn't feel like coming back will offer me anything new, discouraging me to play it again. While there are unlockables in the form of new enemies, new cards, and new trinkets, the gameplay itself doesn't change enough for me to want to come back. And at its current state, the story doesn't progress much either, which gives me less incentive to keep going on. Perhaps when it becomes clear what your path to escaping and finishing the game is, I'd find more motivation to play the game to the end.
Graphics
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The graphics are gritty, and the art direction is understandably dark. However, graphics aren't exactly Deepest Chamber‘s strong point. Apart from bosses and ost of the enemies almost look the same, with no defining features making them unique. All of the chambers also look almost the same, with no defining features to set them apart from others. I'm not a big fan of the game's art style, either. But as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Thankfully, the graphics don't really hold you back from enjoying the game. The cards' artworks are serviceable and legible enough to know what the card does at a glance. For a deck-building rogue-like, that's the most important part, and Deepest Chamber nailed it.
As for graphics options, Deepest Chamber oddly only has an option between fullscreen and windowed, with no way of changing the resolution. You can turn on and off V-Sync, Shadows, Ambient Occlusion, Reflections, Parallax Mapping, Dynamic Lights, FXAA, Bloom, Fog, Depth of Field, and Color Grading, but no resolution.
Music and Sound Design
For games where each run should make you fear for your life, ambient sounds and music are important. While Deepest Chamber‘s sound design is serviceable, its music is utterly forgettable. However, the music and sound design at least don't distract so much from the gameplay. No annoying sounds or music to take away the moment from you. Attacks and magic sound like how you'd expect them to sound, too. Aside from groans and death rattles, don't expect so much from the sound department. It works fine, but it won't win any awards.
Accessibility
The game doesn't have a lot of accessibility options, but it comes in three languages: English, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese. The game also doesn't have controller support.
Verdict – Is Deepest Chamber worth your time and money?
Being a fan of deck-building games and of card games in general, I always appreciate new card games. To me, the challenge of defeating an enemy with the strategic use and sequencing of cards is always a satisfying experience. However, if you're not really into card games, this won't change things for you. Deepest Chamber will appeal to a specific kind of gamer, and while I'm part of that market, I understand that the game isn't for everyone. In competition to other games of its kind, Deepest Chamber doesn't have a lot of unique features that make it preferable to others. It won't hurt if you get introduced to the genre with this game. But at the same time, you might find a lot of better options out there.
Score: 6/10
Disclaimer: ClutchPoints Gaming received a free review copy of the game from the publisher.
