I really wanted to like Delver but I just think this isn't quite my kind of game. This is a first-person dungeon crawler that feels a lot like Doom except with a greater emphasis on melee combat. You explore several layers of a procedurally generated cave systems collecting loot and fighting monsters. True to the rogue-like genre when you die you lose everything and must restart. This is where Delver loses me as I think this game would have better fit the rogue-like formula that usually lets the player maintain at least some progress after each run. Oh well, I don't design the games I just review them. Lets dive straight into depths shall we.
The game starts you above ground where there are a handful of merchants trying to get you to buy their goods. Right off the bat I don't like how the game expects players to travel all the way back here after navigating the mazes of the cave system. Thankfully you do have a map system but that still doesn't excuse the time it takes to backtrack. Anyway, you usually start out with one melee weapon and one magic wand. Wands are a long range weapon but have a set number of uses. My favorite ranged weapon is the bow because I often found plenty of ammo and you're able to often recover arrows from the corpses of your foes. Each weapon has a damage range and all attacks can be charged in order for them to deal more damage.
There is lots of other loot to find besides just weapons. You'll come across armor pieces on occasion which usually just increase defense but may have other buffs on them enchanted on them. If you scrounge around enough you can find to scrolls to farther enchant your weapons. Potions are probably the most useful but you won't know what each color potions' effects are till you drink one. There is also a lot of junk which you can pick up such as books and tankards; the only possible use for these is to chuck at enemies. Gold is some of the better loot assuming you wish to walk all the way back to town or manage to make it far enough down to discover new shops.
To me I think the best thing Delver has going for it is it's really charming 8-bit art style. Although, I have to admit that the exploration is quite good and the combat can be fun if your prepared. I really wanted to play this game with a controller but I caved in and started using the mouse and keyboard for the convenience of item bindings. I really would have like to have finished Delver but without any progression between runs I'm just not motivated to get to a place where I can finish the game in one sitting. Maybe the intention is that you just keep coming back to town to heal and upgrade equipment but that just seems too slow pace for an action-oriented game like this. Oh well, on to the next I guess.