Ring of Pain Review

One of the most common thematic elements in roguelikes and roguelites is straying from the path given. You know the way forward, and it may even be a peaceful waltz with free rewards and a kiss on the cheek, but you see those trees rustling over there. You see that dark doorway where the sharp teeth glisten from the light on your side. Most people would turn away, but in the context of the story, you’re not like most people, are you? That’s Ring of Pain in its purest form.

This is the debut commercial release for solo Australian developer Simon Boxer and his team Twice Different. Simon was previously a concept artist on titles like Armello and the now-defunct MMO survival sim The Last Stand: Dead Zone, before working on Ring of Pain and finding luck with funding via Film Victoria, and publishing by Humble Games. After a modest hit release in 2020, lightning strikes twice with a day one release on Xbox Game Pass in 2021.

The story doesn’t reveal much beyond a vaguely anthropomorphic owl telling you to not trust “The Dark”, while “The Dark” possesses an entity that claims you should be wary of the owl itself. Both sides clash in a dilemma that’s never actually solved, choosing to subject you to hideous rhyming schemes that will usually fall out of flow with awkward near-rhymes. An experience equivalent to listening to Yelawolf B-Sides and The Best of Macklemore.

Thankfully, Ring of Pain’s gameplay is a largely satisfying loop (I promise to the gods above that this is the only ring-based pun in the review). Trapped in a panopticon dungeon full of monsters and treasure, the game tasks you with slaying monsters by taking turns slapping each other until one of you turns to dust. In-between optional paths and pit stops for free equipment and merchants, you’ll be treated to a tug-of-war between two sides displaying two vastly different goals, and two vastly different finales.

Almost immediately, you’ll notice that the pacing of the game is breakneck, and constantly pushing you forward. Pushing on further and further, more doors and exits leading to optional challenge rooms will emerge, usually hosting more specific enemy types and scenarios. Whether it’s pushing two separated NPCs back together or killing harmless “Puppers” and frogs to please a Lovecraftian beast, the game covers a lot of bases that can arise from this gameplay format.

It’s not like the game is demanding you speed up and make every decision a snap one, but it’s how Ring of Pain becomes a time sink. Alongside the 16 numbered dungeons you have to trawl through, the optional dungeons, merchants, and gifts can easily double the number, but you’ll more than likely spend less than 30 seconds in each. Imagine the formula of Nuclear Throne put into a more immediately accessible core, while also displaying that game’s deceptively simple assertions.

While you’re slaying monsters for their soul currency and using it to acquire new equipment, you’ve gotta think about how they affect your stats. You’ve got your Health, your Attack and your Defense to think about, but what if you want to attack first? Gotta put a few stat points into your Speed as well, and what about health potions, and how well they can heal you? Well, that means you need more Clarity, both in exploration and your stats.

In the grand scheme of things, Ring of Pain isn’t necessarily complex, even in the vein of roguelikes and roguelites, and it feels like a punishment if you put too much thought into a playthrough. For example, all of the equipment is part of different sets that you potentially could grab in order to optimise your run to a specific playstyle. Getting to that point of no return is a massive hassle though, and betrays the game speed itself.

While you can reroll items by paying souls towards them, the distribution of this currency is also at odds with the pacing, leaving you less flush with cash when you actually need it. Scaling down the items wouldn’t have been a problem, but the synchronisation of items doesn’t seem explicitly necessary. If anything, you’re going to find the one item that changes everything by accident, whether it’s splash damage, freezing the enemy for free hits, or intimidation.

Intimidation is where Ring of Pain drops the ball with difficulty, both on the player’s part, and the enemies you face. If you don’t have a higher Speed stat than certain monsters, then you won’t be able to attack them, and you can find several items that can do the same thing, while also stacking the effect. It’s something the game is completely fine with until it inexplicably isn’t, ripping that power from you whenever it feels like it.

It’s something more noticeable in the higher difficulties, where one item can effectively put you on autopilot flawlessly for 95% of the run, but when it comes to the finale? Forget about it. You can’t be well-equipped, the battlefield becomes a confusing mess of monsters all doing different things that are counterproductive to one another, with any path taken leading you to be destroyed by the road less traveled. The roads that the game promised you’d conquer.

As for who to side with at the end of your run, it’s a black-and-white choice that comes down to one really good boss fight, or five really weak ones in a gauntlet. The former operates on smart attack placement and timing, forcing you to optimise enemy spawning and manipulation. The latter is just insoluble, priding itself on being obtuse and not entertaining the idea that you’ve been able to rightfully game the system with the tools given.

It would’ve been nice if Ring of Pain didn’t try so hard to apply an air of mystique with its writing and mechanics when the aesthetic does it perfectly. Monsters stare at you with blank eyes, irises banned from their DNA, shrilling quickly as they make attacks, spindly limbs jerking back and forth with each turn. It has that grim fairytale theme down to a T, but it goes too far in a direction that lacks grace, and is just weird gimmickry.

While Ring of Pain doesn’t have much to stand out against its contemporaries, it’s the bite-sized and brief nature of its runs that gives it the upper hand. If you’ve got 30 minutes to kill before work, or a break in the lunchroom, then this fits nicely alongside titles like Nuclear Throne and Crypt of The NecroDancer. Just don’t expect a cycle that receives the same positive platitudes as the two above.