Into the Pit

A roguelike shooter that shines when it unsettles, but soon lets the horror leak out through overfamiliarity and a lack of challenge

While the start of Into the Pit is unquestionably rocky, the follow-through is a blast, with fast action and serious pyrokinetics as monsters turn into blood splats decorating the walls.

What we’re left with in Into The Pit is a really great set of ingredients. The art direction and visuals are excellent, the music is perfect, and the core mechanics are really well designed. It is absolutely fun to play, no question about it. However, due to a lack of variety and challenge, the magic quickly fades, and I found myself wondering what this game could have been rather than being able to fully enjoy what’s on offer. In many ways it feels like not-quite-final draft that needs more fleshing out, and ironically what Into The Pit needs most is more depth. It’s a great set of ideas on paper, it’s a good romp for a few hours at least, and I like a lot of what’s going on with it, but Into The Pit leaves just a little bit too much on the table for me to feel completely satisfied.

Into the Pit is a retro FPS/roguelike that's far less than the sum of its parts. It's got great action, but everything that surrounds it is questionable.

All that said… Into the Pit is still relentless. It’s a fast paced shooter, that feels really tight as a first person shooter. It’s meant to be played in fast bursts, so maybe it’s the perfect exciting thing to get you pumped while commuting on the bus. Or the kind of game where you breeze through the dialogue, turn off the sound and play while listening to a 25 hour audiobook. Into the Pit is a well-constructed roguelike shooting game and if you’re the kind of person who hears those words and yells, “I’m sold!” then you will probably have a lot of fun. But it’s not going to make believers out of genre-skeptics.

‎There is no denying that Into the Pit is easily classifiable as "another indie more pixelated retro fps roguelike to forget", and for my part I do not plan to make an exception, because exactly that is it. But now I ask you not to forget it, and if you can, take a look at it. And maybe hopefully, you will be amazed and think about how wonderful the Game Pass is for offering us magical moments of vice like the one I have had with the title of Humble Games and Nullpointer. Because the game, it's really good.‎

A greater difficulty in the clashes was desirable: overall, Into the Pit remains a title to try for lovers of the genre, especially if you are a subscriber to the Game Pass.

Into The Pit is a good way to reintroduce a genre one could have assumed a relic of the past. It’s a tad slowly paced and can get repetitive as any roguelike might, but it’s a strong innovation on a tried and true genre.

Into The Pit has some genuine fun in it. It controls well, has a unique look, and has great potential with its rogue-lite offerings. In the end though for me, the lack of variety in multiple areas kept it from being something I could recommend except for the fact that it’s on Game Pass. For free (if you’re already an existing member) it’s a no-brainer to give this one a try if anything you’ve seen about it has caught your eye. After all, the only cost will be a little bit of your time.

Into The Pit is an exhilarating first-person shooter with lofty ambitions. It is a fast-paced rogue-lite that excels in the bloody gunplay we've come to expect from classic titles such as Doom. However, its promised flashy spells and novel mechanic of combining dungeons fail to live up to the expectations they set.