Needs Improvement (Author: please read) – Imbroglio Review

Ok. I like this game. But it has a lot of wasted potential in my opinion. I've also played and love Zaga-33, also by the artist here, and I feel similarly about it, but not as strongly. Zaga is intended to be a random adventure, but it has a reachable goal. The unbalanced weapon upgrade goals remove a "sense of accomplishment" in Imbroglio due to the flaws I'll hereafter mention. First and foremost, there are mechanics that make this an exasperating game that just need to be changed: 1) when you're in a corner and on a ranged space, aiming at two enemies, sometimes the better choice is to move out of the corner, but the game only allows you to shoot; 2) If you can only unlock board changing for a character after you get a certain number of gems, you need to make the default board accessibly completable. These flaws inhibit straight playability for anyone and everyone. Not even looking at these problems, there are just some annoying aspects of the game itself that could be changed. First, the randomness of the game turns all aspects of strategy into a facade. Think you're a pro? Nope, just lucky one shots, gem spawns, and mazes. Not very good? Maybe you're just getting screwed by corner generation, spawns, and fixed difficulty ramping. Of course strategy games can be semi-random. That's most RPGs. But when you depend on the randomness to succeed for the majority of your journey to 100 gems, that's silly. Second are the screw-you-over movement mechanics. In Zaga, you have enough health for this to make the game interesting. It also feels somewhat realistic: you get trapped, you have to take a hit. However, in Imbroglio, you have 4 hits and an incredibly small map with walls. If an enemy spawns on an off turn, you have to take a hit. If you're a certain character against a certain enemy, that can mean you literally can't kill it. Even at full health. And if you run to a gem (if you can), another enemy will spawn in, creating a cycle of death. Imbroglio deserves a circumvention to this mechanic, like a pass option. That would require strategy, and would maintain the game's intended difficulty. I'll stop there with the problems and say that this is a noteworthy game: it just needs developer attention and a couple of buffs. To anyone considering purchase, try it out, it's worth the money. However, I would recommend Zaga-33 as a substitute, though.
Review by RedSquirrel0249 on Imbroglio.