No Going Back: Roguelike RPG

Maciej Sady

About this game

A turn-based roguelike dungeon crawler for one thumb — offline, no ads, one tap at a time. The dungeon is five lanes wide. Every tap steps you one row forward, into your lane or a neighbouring one. Nothing steps back.

Monsters drop gold. Fighting costs health. Stores sell health back to you at a deliberately terrible rate — so no fight is a mistake, only a bad purchase. And consecutive kills pay better: a streak multiplies the gold, if you dare route through the monsters instead of around them.

Gold's real use is gear. A better sword ends a fight in fewer rounds; armor makes each round cost less. Spend well early and the savings compound. Spend badly and an ordinary monster three biomes later is the one that kills you.

WHAT YOU CAN SEE
The next three rows are identified. The five after that are silhouettes. Stores and gates show a marker from further off, and a gate shows you which of its bosses is waiting — long enough ahead to route towards it, or to decide you cannot afford to.

WHAT IS DOWN THERE
The dungeon changes as it goes, and it does not warn you kindly. Gates seal it at intervals — a boss across all five lanes, no way around — and breaking one raises what you can survive afterwards. How far down it goes is yours to find out.

Distance is what you have to show for a run. Most of them end early. That is the roguelike deal: permadeath is real, and the next run knows nothing but what you learned.

ONE THUMB, PORTRAIT, ONE HAND
Tap the square you want, swipe, or use the arrows along the bottom. It is a turn-based game, so the dungeon waits: nothing moves while you are deciding, and nothing is counting down while the phone is in your pocket.

PLAYS OFFLINE
The whole game is on the device. An offline game in the plain sense: no internet needed, no account, no sign-in — play it on a plane, underground, or with the wifi off.

NO ADS, NO IN-APP PURCHASES
No energy meter, no timer, no second currency, nothing to buy with real money, nothing to wait for. You install it once and that is the whole game.

IF YOU LIKE
Roguelikes and roguelites, turn-based RPGs, dungeon crawl games, permadeath runs, offline single player games, and short sessions with long consequences — this dungeon crawler is built for the five minutes you have, on the phone you already hold in one hand.