When you enter an otherworldly realm to get revenge on a witch, you gain the ability to continually hunt her. You continually traverse a dangerous and randomly-generated dungeon to get the power necessary to defeat them. This means lots of dying, hordes of enemies, and opportunities to upgrade. It’s difficult at first, but eventually you learn and start making progress in the dungeon.
Sulfur is an action roguelike by Perfect Random that tests your reflexes. Enemies swarm at you from all directions, forcing you to think and act quickly. Use various accessories and oils you find to upgrade your equipment. There’s a lot of trial-and-error as you learn what fits your playstyle and how enemies operate in dungeons. While Sulfur is a difficult game, there’s enough variety to get you started and hopeful about what comes next.
Sulfur’s story is about a priest hunting down a witch who destroyed the livelihood of several citizens. The witch escaped to the titular Sulfur realm and you pursue her even though you are outmatched. Thanks to your talking amulet, you learn how to navigate Sulfur and get stronger. Residents who were slain by the witch also appear in Sulfur and provide services to keep you at your best.
The story isn’t remarkable and is simple, but it never needed to be complicated. All it does is help you understand why you are going through a strange realm to fight. Your allies are friendly, happy to help you fight against the enemies in Sulfur. They can also appear inside the dungeon itself to help you out. While you can’t learn more about them right now, their services are necessary for you to succeed.
The real focus is the gameplay and it is intense. You quickly learn about your enemies but they can come at you from all angles. Narrow corridors in the dungeon are relatively safe but open areas are a free-for-all. While fighting enemies isn’t different from other roguelikes, you are constantly looking over your shoulder or watching the ground for enemies that attack you. Misjudge enemy numbers and you lose all your progress.
Sulfur is a difficult roguelike because your progress resets after every death. There are ways to circumvent some of the losses like depositing items in storage or teleporting when you have enough energy. Early on, expect to lose everything from an enemy ambush or falling off a ledge that was too steep. It’s frustrating but it does help you understand how punishing Sulfur is and what you must do to survive.
Your main weapons are a wakizashi sword and several firearms. While getting more powerful weapons is a reliable way to get stronger, Sulfur introduces weapon accessories and oils into the mix. Accessories supplement your firearms with benefits like better aim or reducing bullet spread. Oils provide several benefits that enhance your bullets, damage, or other stat. Their usefulness varies but combined with the right weapon, they are amazing. This gives you several avenues of customization not just for weapon appearance, but also utility. Mixing and matching accessories and oils opens up experimentation more than a traditional roguelike. You can turn your starting weapon or newly obtained gun into an unexpected powerhouse. Even if you have a bad accident that costs you your weapons, the right accessories and oils tide you ov er until you get everything back.
Unfortunately you still have to survive to get enough accessories or oils, and that’s where the difficulty rears its head. Surviving long enough for your weapons to gain enough ranks for oils isn’t easy, and finding the right accessory is hard. Customization is only possible if you can survive long enough to perform it. Otherwise, most of your dungeon findings will be useless as they don’t provide enough benefits to help you.
There are also several unexplained aspects that aren’t easy to experiment with. For example, there are several cauldrons where you can craft items but you don’t have any recipes. You can come up with your own recipes and hope it works, but you can’t make invalid recipes. This means you must chance upon a recipe or hope someone else did and learn from them. Even if you can learn in the future, this makes the early-game difficult because you can’t utilize them effectively.
Despite Sulfur’s difficulty, it’s a fun challenge if you are willing to persevere. You can spend hours fighting enemies and dying, learning every time and applying your knowledge. Pay attention to your surroundings and use every resource you can. It’s almost like crawling to survive; the experience is brutal but you eventually get better. Once you improve and learn, then your enemies won’t stand a chance.
Victor played Sulfur in Early Access on PC with a review code.
