Hello Friend.
Pass me by and through the nest.
Take the light, with dark contests.
Pass me by and through the nest.
Take the light, with dark contests.
Ring of Pain: a card-based, Dungeon-Crawling Roguelike,
In a Small, Secluded World both dark and dreamlike.
The protagonist player awakens here,
Alone, confused, and filled with fear.
They meet Owl — bird-friend, if unnerving sight.
"Fight the Shadow," he advises. "Spread the Light."
But Shadow’s words ring differently:
"I am not your enemy."
Rings of cards are core to Ring of Pain's gameplay.
Monsters and treasures, upgrades to stats, and many doorways.
Procedural Generation builds every room.
Weigh each risk with care, or else meet your doom.
Look left and right; interact or pass by.
Wrong moves on a ring might cause you to die.
With skill and fortune, you may yet reach the end.
Will Shadow or Owl be the one you call friend?
If all that you've heard has caused no objection,
The website is here
for your further inspection.
Ring of Pain provides examples of:
- Achievement Mockery: There are 122 achievements at the time of this writing, with several of them based on dying in certain ways or performing ineffective actions.
- Amnesiac Hero: There is virtually no backstory provided up-front. Nearly all plot exposition comes from brief visits with Owl and the Shadow, where you are allowed to ask one question each time. Based on the questions, it's evident the protagonist doesn't know anything more than the player does about what's going on.
- Beneath the Mask: One interpretation of the plot is that it takes some pages from Jungian psychology, with the Shadow representing suppressed aspects of the protagonist's self. This is further reinforced by the presence of a Mask inventory slot, as though the protagonist is willing to wear any falsehood if it means hiding what's beneath.
- Boss Bonanza: Upon deciding to light the tower on the sixteenth depth, the player is sent to five final dungeons— Confidence, Connection, Discipline, Calm, and Vision—where they must face off against the eponymous boss on each floor.
- Cast from Money: A few spells can deal damage by expending souls.
- Central Theme: Although the plot is just vague enough to be open for wide interpretation, one major theme is "masks". The setting was created by the protagonist out of a seeming desire to mask the Shadow aspects of themself. There is a mask inventory slot, with each option representing a different persona. Even Owl is wearing a mask, which is only revealed after accepting the Shadow.
- Chest Monster: Treasure chest mimics are harmless, and will give a random item in exchange for a number of souls.
- Color-Coded Item Tiers: Follows the RPG standard of grey, blue, purple, and orange for common, rare, epic, and legendary.
- Dark Is Not Evil: The Shadows appear to be aspects of the protagonist and are not inherently bad or evil in any way.
- Devil in Plain Sight: If you think Owl looks a little untrustworthy, you're not wrong. He tries to kill you if you defy his wishes.
- Feathered Fiend:
- The Loombirds are a mid to high level monster that can be encountered deep in the nest. They tend to move around the level looking for the player, and will attack the player even if he does not attack them. They will attack twice if the player does attack them.
- Owl, despite appearances, is a subversion, as long as he thinks you will kill Shadow for him.
- Game Face: Owl will expose his true face if you defy him. That little bird beak is actually a nose, and his sharp-toothed mouth is where looked his neck was.
- Irony:
- The first boss of the Light Path, Confidence, will whittle you down with ranged attacks at a distance. When you come close, it will prepare to jump to the opposite side of the ring in cowardice.
- Two floors down, Discipline starts with high attack, defense, and speed, but they will be decreased each time it gets hit.
- Joke Item: The Spoon, which goes into the weapon slot. It grants -2 attack and -2 defense, and you can get an achievement called "Here Comes The Airplane" for attacking Owl with it, and other achievements for completing runs with it. It can be more useful after obtaining the inverted candle.
- Light Is Not Good: For all of Owl's insistence to spread Light, he doesn't take kindly to defiance, and it seems to be the "wrong" choice in terms of what's good for the protagonist.
- Money for Nothing: Once on the Light endgame path, you will likely earn an outrageous number of souls, but there are no shops or mimics to spend them on. It is, however, a good time to be holding the Soul Cannon spellbook, which can repeatedly convert 30 souls into 30 damage with a fast recharge timer.
- No Fair Cheating: If you save and load twice on the same floor, an enemy called Time Weaver will appear next to you in retribution for perceived abuse of the save/load system. It has enormous stats, acts as a blocker, and grants no reward for killing it. While you can just ignore it and move the other direction, the decreased tactical flexibility will probably make you do worse on that floor.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Owl is actually a loombird, using yellow feathers to make himself more approachable.
- Rainbow Pimp Gear: Seemingly parodied with the tacky-looking Rainbow Socks and Fancy Tights, both of which give good stats for their common rarity. Dying with Rainbow Socks equipped grants you an achievement called Colorful Corpse.
- Rhymes on a Dime: Almost all dialogue is written as rhyming couplets.
- Secretly Selfish: Shadow suggests that Owl's generosity is not motivated by a desire to help the player. Siding with Owl in the Light ending implies the outcome is good for Owl and negative for the protagonist.
- Small, Secluded World: Based on suggestions from the trailers, Owl, and Shadow, the dungeon is some kind of "in-between world" created by the protagonist and populated by physical manifestations of fear and doubt. Owl considers this world to be his home, and suggests it's the protagonist's own decision as to whether he/she will stay trapped inside indefinitely.
- Weird Currency: The currency in this game is souls, generally earned by killing creatures. And it turns out the vast majority of them have more than one soul.
- Yellow/Purple Contrast: Light and shadow
Deep within the Ring of Pain
The cycle is complete again.
The cycle is complete again.
