Probability 0 : Review

Probability 0 is a platforming rougelike, by Droquen. However if you hear the word rougelike and think, randomly generated dungeons with kobolds, and goblins, this is more than a little different. The randomly generated aspect is kept, with your character making a journey down in to the seemingly infinite dark. But the monsters, equipment, and quests, is all left out. What’s left is a gem of an arcade platformer, that replayablity to quite literally infinity.

The game starts of hard and gets harder. You have a single task, get to a bottom, which may or may not exist. As far as goals go that’s a pretty vague, unreachable one, so thankfully the game is built in an arcade style. This means that there is always a high score, for you to aim to overthrow, and keeps the self-competition up and running. Your score is generally based upon the amount of weird floating creatures you kill. As you go lower and deeper into the cave these creatures get tougher and tougher, requiring different tactics to defeat.

Its highly probable that you will die. Infact the probability of you surviving is about 0.

That ties in to one of this game’s greatest aspects, the sense of adventure and discovery. You can almost hear the little monsters in the dark depth, calling you down. The atmosphere is only boosted by the probabilities constantly displayed on your screen. The game never for a minute lets you forget your meager abilities, and just how small, tiny insignificant, you and your chances of surviving are. As the name suggest, inevitably, the probability is 0.

And since it’s hard you’re going to die a lot, and I mean it. Think Spelunky type dying, and that means in multiple annoying ways. But the game strikes a good balance. The powers you accumalte keep you on par with the demon-esque enemies, but never make you over powered, the possibility of death is constantly lurking right behind you, and the fun you get from knowing a single misstep is all it takes is price-less.

This on its own makes the game worth the measly 9$ you have to shell out, but combine it with the controls, and leveling up mechanism and you’ve got a real gem. Basically the deeper you go the stronger you get, with new abilities unlocked at every “level” of the cave. Eventually you will be able to fire in all directions, fall further, deal jump damage, and tons more. All these abilities you gain over time just add to the shock when you mistimed a jump and land straight onto an exploding bug. BOOM, pretty much all you have worked for is gone, never to return again.

These types of rougelike elements combined with a platformer, with honest, simple controls, and a devilish scheme to kill you, make for a wonderful game. That isn’t to say this will take up all of your gaming time, it’s more of a fast paced, in between kind of game. That will kill, explode you, stab you, and drop you to your horrendous death, and still keep you coming back for more.