Roguelikes are a pretty diverse bunch, even if there’s a glut of action RPGs and deckbuilders in the form, but using billiards as inspiration stands out as particularly unique, introducing some entertaining ideas. In Rack and Slay, you navigate a dungeon as a billiard ball, encountering treasures, traps, enemies, and various power-ups along the way.
There’s no deep storytelling in Rack and Slay, the game firmly set in the casual, pickup and play category. The controls will be familiar to anyone who has played a pool or snooker game before – you aim where you want the ball to go and then power up the shot, releasing the ball to hopefully do what you want – but this is not your standard game of billiards.
For one thing, pockets are located in random places, sometimes the traditional corners, and sometimes in the middle of the table, and they can be different sizes. For another, there’s other hazards to watch out for, with wall spikes, bombs, bear traps, and portals all posing a risk to your billiard ball. Your billiard ball has a health bar too, with any unwanted impact doing a point damage.
The aim is to pot all of the enemy balls within a set number of shots and without incurring too much damage. If you run out of shots, each of the remaining enemy balls does a point of damage to you. If you do not have enough health points, then your run is over. If you do survive this final attack, you will move onto the next dungeon with your reduced health.
Rack and Slay is a roguelike though, and with that comes upgrades and abilities. Between each dungeon you will be able to select random ability cards, as well as use any gold you have collected to recover health, increase your shot power, increase the number of shots you have per level, and add more abilities. These abilities include being able shoot out mini billiard balls when you launch the main ball, become invulnerable to traps, gain health and gold, and increase shot power. There are dozens of ability cards to unlock, and some also stack.
The main game has you rolling through a maximum of ten dungeons, at the end of which is a boss 8 ball that has to be pocketed last to be defeated. Once you beat the ten dungeons, an endless mode option is presented, challenging you to make as much progress as possible. There is even a warning that you could break the game as you can keep unlocking and stacking abilities on this run.
Speaking of challenges, Rack and Slay does have a challenge mode with specific modifiers enabled. For example, the Drunken Master challenge will sometimes see your ball go in the opposite direction than the one you intended, while Bouncyland makes level obstacles all bouncy. These challenges are fun to play through and, just like a normal run, you can enter an endless mode on these too.
There are different enemy billiard types present in Rack and Slay, and these are perhaps the most disappointing part of the game. Just like your ball, the majority cannot move unless they are hit, including bosses. There are a couple that can move of their own accord, but they won’t hit you the majority of the time. Some enemies can fire projectiles, but most of these won’t hit you either. The only enemy that stood out as giving a challenge is the blinding enemy. Hit this, and for the next turn you will not be able to see your aim trajectory. Enemy spawns can also be an issue, especially if they have gathered in a particular area that you cannot get to easily.
