If there's one genre of game I've become an unofficial aficionado of, it's the Roguelike; I honestly can't tell you how many games I've played with procedural stages, power-ups, enemies, and so on—and despite it all feeling a weensy bit familiar with one another, every single one of them has that one hook that's just brought me back for more.
Except for one—I've found the ONE title that worked the opposite way, where I had to push myself past the frustrating tedium it inflicted upon me. It's such a bummer because if it had just tried to do more with the gameplay, considering the admittedly intriguing premise the title had going for it, I could totally see myself singing a different tune about my time with the title. Taking the flavor of their trademark "trauma drama" in a vigorously different direction, CRYMELIGHT is the latest entry from the Furyu Corporation 's CRY series where players are introduced to a cast of amnesiac sinners who can't remember what they've done after recently arriving in the afterlife. They are given the chance to live again under the condition of winning a killing game that's modeled after Lewis Carroll 's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.
What initially started out as an interesting approach to the top-down action-RPG with some light Touhou-like bullet-hell elements quickly devolved into one of the most repetitive games that I have ever played in 2026, and that's saying something after all the Gacha-ass games I've played out of Steam Next Fest this year.
As soon as the long-winded explanation of the game's premise is wrapped up, players will assume the role of the apathetic protagonist who can't remember her name and takes on the alias of “Alice.” Guided by the insipidly pompous “White Rabbit,” who welcomes her to the tea party and offers her the opportunity to walk among the living again so long as she can make it through Wonderland and snuff out the Queen of Hearts. Among Alice are other Loligirls who have arrived under similar circumstances and have also been assigned aliases from the children's storybook, specifically those of the Cheshire Cat, March Hare, and the Mad Hatter, and are also participating in the killing game to earn the grand prize of an Easter-Day resurrection.
Before going any further, I do want to point out that, to the game's credit, despite the iffy premise of young girls being pushed to compete in a violent contest while also being presented in a Lolita girl art style, the writing and direction of the game's narrative never crossed into “4Chan” territory, nor did it even humor those particularly icky margins like other similar-looking properties have uncomfortably touched upon, like Mugen Souls or Seven Pirates H. The art style is also, thankfully, bolstered by the Vanillaware-like hand-drawn style and animation, with rendering and color grades strong enough to stand beside the work of George Kamitani and Yoshio Nishimura , doing the lion's share of the work to keep the game's appeal going throughout my time with the title. In addition to the story staying away from the typical creepy tropes its aesthetic suggests, it also delivered a somewhat intriguing story underneath the vapid surface of its Alice in Wonderland cosplay . The steady character exposition of Alice, Mary, Cheshire, Mad, and March managed to engage me with the plot on more than one occasion, especially with the surprisingly evocative voice-acting performances of the cast involved. Despite my overall feelings about the game, there is one specific moment near the end game that was particularly harrowing in its performance, and is easily the one highlight that I'll hold onto from my experience with the title after everything is said and done.
That said, though, the same appeal still managed to rapidly dwindle into a precarious thread. It constantly challenged my ability to go on until I simply couldn't do it anymore. CRYMELIGHT plays like the developer spent a weekend playing through Supergiant's Hades, and then proceeded to take all of the wrong lessons for their subsequent work in the process.
If someone asked me what the secret behind a successful Roguelike game is, I'd tell them it's the ability to steadily habituate the player through shifting challenges while still conveying an element of mystery in its output. Despite the number of times you're going to fall off your horse before you can even finish your first lap around the track, the thrill of the chase towards the finish line is what'll keep you coming back. And just when you start learning when to bank your turns on that track, the game will occasionally throw a barrel in your way to trip you and remind you that complacency will only lead you down the path of failure. A Roguelike game can achieve these airs of mystery through procedurally changing enemies, stages, or events—something that players can gradually learn what they are or how they work without ever knowing when to expect them in their run.
So, with that said, I'm here to tell you that CRYMELIGHT hardly has ANY of this going for it. A run starts on an Amidakuji-style overworld map where players choose different paths to various level points, survive the level, then choose their route at the next fork, until all the paths gradually coalesce into a single destination: the biome's boss. The only, and I mean ONLY, thing that changes during these runs is the boon that is rewarded at the end of the level you engage. The enemy mobs, the stage layouts, they're all identical run-to-run, and the only thing that's different is the reward at the end. The minimal prize wouldn't feel so underwhelming if it had the possibility of being a real game-changer for the run, but no—the various boosts you come across hardly upgrade you at all for the trials ahead.
I will say the main power-up approach was another unique twist that also helped carry me through the game's weary pacing, and that's the Crymecard system. When presented as the treasure for winning the round, a Crymecard can present any number of enhancements, like increased attack range, faster movement, and added knockback against enemies when striking them, and each is presented on a poker card from a 52-card playing deck and, as you'd expect, can slot into a loadout of five available spots for enhancement, much like a card hand. Each section that offers a potential card as the boon for surviving the stage can generate any number of random cards, either from the entire deck or a specific suit, depending on the listed details of the potential boon from the overworld, and if players are prudent enough, they can carefully collect the correct assortment of cards to achieve winning poker hands, such as a Five of a Kind, Royal Flush, Straight Flush, Four of a Kind, Full House, Straight, and so on. The hand's pedigree determines the strength of those upgrades, leveling them from a level of efficacy to a level 5, 6, 7, or more depending on the hand's strength, and resetting the player's loadout for a new panel of upgrades to stack on their current setup. This mechanic alone was the only time that I experienced any sort of rush on what the outcome could be, but it just wasn't enough.
Alice's combat skills are nothing more than a light strike, a heavy strike, a grapple maneuver that can fling enemies across the stage into other enemies or hazards, a rush-down dash that offers a weak fast attack or strong fast attack, and then slippery-ass evasive dodge with like, maybe two i-frames of safety to bank on, and uhhh—that's it. The first couple of hours were spent repeatedly bashing my head against the first wall of the boss, until I could earn enough of the in-game currency from a finished run to level my base stats to a point where I could earnestly stand a chance against the boss of the first biome, Dum, a gothic girl twist on the Tweedle siblings of the story. In those attempts, I fought the same enemies in the same stage layouts, cycling through the same cut-scene events over and over and over, until I mercifully reached the next area and found myself subjected to the same torturous ebb and flow. Regardless of all of the minor loot I accumulated to gradually buff my core stats, or change up some of the potential events that could happen in the runs ahead, it all just felt like such a chore, and CRYMELIGHT did little to nothing to incentivize me to dust myself off and try for the piece of cheese at the end of the maze again.
The Roguelike genre is the new Metroidvania, and much like how these two categories have their crown jewels like Hades or Hollow Knight: Silksong, they also have their stinkers, and CRYMELIGHT is definitely one of the smelliest. If there were any game that I could sum up with the words, “poop from a butt,” it's this disappointing take on the Roguelike style. Even fans of the previous entries of the CRY series will find this entry to be too repetitive to enjoy long-term, and the edgy take on the Alice in Wonderland setting isn't enough of a reason to endure it either, especially when we already have American McGee's Alice. There are several other, simply better games in the genre to enjoy that also have an appealing anime-based visual design, like BlazBlue: Entropy Effect or Chrono Ark, that you can spend your valuable time and money on.