Roguelites: Curse of Resthaven

This past week I've been sick with a fairly nasty cold, so I've been doing what I do best while sick and that's mainlining a game nonstop until I beat it. And that game is Virtue's Last Reward Curse of Resthaven, a time loop RPG about a guy looking for his niece.

Curse of Resthaven came up in my Steam discovery queue and when I see a time loop story with an interesting aesthetic, I'm instantly in. Unfortunately after beating it I have some pretty severe criticisms; not enough to call it a bad game but certainly one that disappointed me.

This blog will have some spoilers since it's a story-heavy game, so be aware.

Economics 101

This game bills itself as a narrative roguelite, where you're constantly balancing out the economic needs of the town in order to progress the story. This comes in the form of a fairly simple bartering system: Your town has certain buildings that give you free resources every day, and you sell those resources to traders for money. Each trader has their own set of interests and you have a average price, but can push that higher or lower depending on your relationship with the trader and how risky you want to be. Gold and goods are funneled back into your town, via letting you go on expeditions (the primary form of progression, along with some neat smaller stories) and upgrading buildings for more/better resources.

(a sample of the screen you'll be in for 90% of the game, indicating crafting level)

(lamp oil, rope, bombs? it's yours my friend as long as you pay an exorbitant mark up)

Of course since this is a time loop story, this means at the end of the week Story happens and you're stripped of most of your goods/gold and have to start over. This is where the roguelite part comes in, expeditions give you skill points which lets you start the next week off slightly better or do things like transfer over gold. You also get to Pick 3 from an assortment of buffs and debuffs for the next run.

(a sample of assorted cards you can pick from, all of which are kind of just meaningless)

Outside of economic means, you're playing at being Phoenix Wright and investigating the town, following leads and trying to identify what happened to your niece. Every action you take (whether it's going on expeditions, selling items, talking to folks) takes up time so you want to manage your time throughout the week.

(phoenix wright moment)

The end result is that unfortunately, most of the game is tedium behind a facade of gameplay. By the second time line (separate from a loop) I realized that for the most part, engaging with the economy was a waste of time. You HAVE to engage with it to progress the story as expeditions cost gold, but you start to figure out how to do the bare minimum to progress.

Expeditions don't fare much better in terms of gameplay either. The way expeditions play out is that they have a resource or companion requirement and the entire gameplay element involves finding the square peg to go in the square hole. Each of them is a short horror story interaction where you're given a set of actions to perform, one of which will always obviously be where you use the square peg. You can also pay to reveal which is the correct resource. I think I failed expeditions a total of three times over the course of the entire game.

(a sample set of expeditions)

Even though the game bills itself as a roguelite, I intensely struggle to think of it as one because the elements are mostly there to serve as padding. The skills are there solely to make the game less tedious to reach the story conclusion and the buff/debuff you choose often adds up to be the exact same time spent. But also since you can freely just start a new loop (and often you are required to do so, since to progress you'll need to hit certain times gated interactions) it's just...very poorly thought out? In a way I view it the opposite of Ultros: A time loop Metroidvania game that players called a roguelite despite it not being one. Curse of Resthaven is a time loop narrative game that's called a roguelite by the devs, but isn't really.

A Spark of creativity

The story is almost exactly what it says on the tin: Your goal is to find your niece. Along the way you'll uncover some additional subplots, engage in some horror-themed antics and ultimately see the end of Resthaven.

In a way, the story is so routine at times that it drags down the rest of the game into the depths. About halfway through the game I saw exactly what the game was trying to do and not in a particularly exciting way. The characters are all mostly one-note as well despite how much time you spend interrogating them, they might have some concerns for the future or issues with family but the depth mostly ends there.

It's a shame because I really love the art direction and character design. I compare it strongly to Scarlet Hollow, another incredible horror visual novel. Scarlet Hollow's cast has depth and nuance though, along with a more tightly written plot while Curse of Resthaven drops the Spark of potential on the floor.

I think they might've stretched themselves a bit too thin ultimately because the game has full voice acting (which is great) and a fairly large scope to how they wanted the story to play out. They wanted the gameplay to facilitate this and also wanted it to be a roguelite for some reason, and each time they expanded the scope they took less and less time/ability to shore up the core themes and writing of the game.

My opinion on the game ended up flipping over after about the second timeline. The first full run I had a blast, the second starting wearing on me and by the third I was just disappointed. I think what makes me so negative about the game is that I see what it wanted to be, but it just failed to get there. Maybe the game will hit differently for you, so check out the store page here. It's only $20 when not on sale.