While there’s nothing I love more than an indie game that manages to take me by surprise, delivering an experience that’s completely new, or some hybrid of play styles I’ve not yet seen, there’s no question that path is a risky one. I’ve played plenty of games where it is clear that the road they’ve chosen has never been trod for a reason, or at least at the moment nobody has cracked the code for how to make such a combination work. Roguematch : The Extraplanar Invasion actually hits in a slightly different way though, as overall I can’t say that the game plays poorly, but even as I was having success with it I’ll admit that I remained a bit baffled by its bigger picture.

The core idea here is that it’s a mix of dungeon-crawler and Match 3 puzzling, which in theory is a combination I’d really dig since I’m a long-time Match 3 fan. Every room you enter will have gems to clear, most will have enemies to try to avoid and take out, some will have glyphs to uncover, there’s just a lot going on pretty well everywhere you go. The initial stages do thankfully spend some time trying to help you wrap your head around it all, and I suppose to an extent they did at least do a good enough job that I could generally survive pretty well as I progressed.

The problem? Even though I knew enough to keep making my way deeper into the dungeon, I also can’t really say I was completely on board with everything going on. There’s a kitchen sink quality here, where it just throws so many elements into the mix that it’s a little overwhelming. Considering I’m not even coming to the table looking for something casual, that makes me think that you’re average casual fan would likely struggle a bit with it, which is a shame since in theory that would be the crowd a title like this would be targeting. I’ll absolutely give the developer credit for doing their own thing, I just wish they were either better at slowly introducing new elements to ease the process, doing some editing to lean on what works without throwing so much onto the pile, or to come up with a more effective means of ensuring the player is fully on board with what’s going on to help them better enjoy the ride.