Rack and Slay answers the question of "what if a dungeon crawler was like billiards" (2024)

Answering the question you didn't think to ask, Rack and Slay has shown up to show you what happens when you combine a dungeon crawler with something resembling billiards and pool. It's as odd as it sounds but it works. Note: personal purchase.

Rack and Slay is all about the fun of creating ridiculous builds. Here you control a billiard ball, and you have to knock all the other balls into the holes (or traps and spikes). Each level is randomly generated full of monster balls, traps, collectibles, power-ups and more. It's another small, bite-sized coffee break game that's cheap and easy to get into, while providing hours upon hours of game time for whenever you feel like it.

It's certainly a pretty unique idea. Here your ball can be hurt by traps, or by potting yourself into a hole, and your health is taken down for every remaining monster ball after you've used up your total allowed shots per level, so you have to sink as many of those balls into the holes as you can. No timers though, it's all very relaxed for you to line up that perfect shot.

There's a lot of different enemy balls including sticky balls that decrease your power if you touch them directly, balls that shoot themselves towards you after every turn, balls that shoot other balls at you, some will blind you so you can't tell where you'll end up, others just explode on you and the list goes on. It's all about figuring out how to deal with them all.

After each level you get to upgrade from over 100 items, some with huge game-changing effects that can stack up to create something truly ridiculous. The game will start off simple and slow, which is why some players may bounce off it, but if you stick with it Rack and Slay soon gets pretty nuts as you build up. Items can include: not setting off traps, shooting out extra balls when you take a shot, a longer movement prediction line, gold that spawns after each hit, increased item pickup range, throw out a bunch of bombs around you and the list goes on and on. There's a seriously big variety to what you can load up onto your ball and since they stack, it just gets insane.

The interface really reminds me of Slay the Spire, and just like it, the game explains everything quite nicely. You can hover over everything for details, so you're never really in the dark about what everything does. Still, you have to discover as you go and there's numerous little surprises.

As you play and level up, you unlock more items for the shop too, but because it's such a casual game, there's a button simply to unlock everything if you prefer to have nothing gated by progression, but some of the later items are more complex.

Features:

• 111 game-changing items, with 50+ of them unlockable through playing any mode you like (and yes, in good Slice & Dice tradition there is an "unlock all" option).
• 20 difficulty levels to unlock in packs (no need to go 1-by-1 if you're that good).
• The full 10-level Crawl Mode for your good old ~30-minute roguelike runs.
• The shorter Delve Mode with half the levels, but double the item drafts.
• The one-level Raid Mode with random items for a quick burst of mayhem.
• Daily Mode featuring a unique set of game-changing run modifiers every day.
• Wild Mode for random (and sometimes extra crazy) sets of modifiers.
• A set of Challenge Runs featuring pre-defined gameplay variants that will often drastically change the way you play the game.
• A full Item Compendium to track your unlocks and collect badges for the highest difficulty you beat using each item.

It does basically everything it sets out to do, it doesn't need anything more than it already has, it's a great example of a small and complete game that can hook you right in.It is quickly becoming one of my most played coffee-break games on Steam and I think you'll enjoy it. Gets an easy thumbs-up from me for the fun idea, along with the nice and relaxing but engaging (and at times quite challenging) gameplay.

You can buy it on Steam. It has Native Linux support but no Steam Deck rating currently.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.