With the creative machine on its mundane sport-turned-RPG Roguelike phase, it was about time a snooker-based game like Rack and Slay came to be. However, after multiple hours of play and exploration, I sense a lack of creativity on the part of Ludokultur.
While the idea sounds ever so appealing, the execution of the Roguelike Snooker game felt closer to a browser game. In other words, this MONEY game flashed me!
Billiards, 8-ball, Snooker, whatever
As I said, Rack and Slay is a Snooker-based Roguelike. The snooker aspect is quite polished and manages to entertain but it is the roguelike part that really missed its target for me.
Let me explain: The game will begin and you will be on a snooker table with one white ball and a bunch of enemy balls. You have a health bar (with starting 8 health points on it) and a turns counter. The goal is to remove all the enemy balls from the board by hitting the white ball at them(Snooker Style). This ideally has to be achieved before turns run out and must be completed before health runs out or it is game over.
You have limited turns to knock all the enemies out. If you run out of turns, the amount of enemies left will be subtracted from your health bar. Other ways to lose health is if the white ball goes down a hole, hits a spike or is hit by sword-wielding enemies.
So far so good but here is where it goes downhill.
The Bo-Ro-ing-like
The Roguelike Elements of Rack and Play really destroy the work done by the Snooker portion.
As you would expect after each round, you go to a screen where you pick powerups/upgrades for the following rounds. You can also use some coins(awarded throughout the game for just doing things) to buy things like health, extra shots, and a randomizer for upgrades. Believe me, just stick with health, everything else is useless.
Going back to the upgrades, my problem arises when you actually look at these upgrades. Now for a roguelike to be fun, the upgrades should really shape your run but that is not the case here. All Rack and Slay has on over is extra coins, extra health, more holes on the pitch, etc. This just doesn’t cut it and that is why I find this game to be lacklustre. There is the ball explosion upgrade and the extra ball but these power-ups seem nothing more than aesthetic.
What a waste of Snooker!
In the end, Rack and Slay is like a shiny new cue with no chalk—promising at first, but pretty useless in practice. The so-called upgrades are boring and don’t change much, making it a real snooze-fest. The snooker part is fun enough, but the roguelike elements are as exciting as watching the paint dry.
If you’re a die-hard snooker fan, you might get a kick out of it for a bit. However don’t expect anything mind-blowing. Here’s hoping the developers wake up and inject some real creativity into this dud in the future.
