City of Brass

While some of its procedural generation can sometimes make for an unnecessarily challenging experience, City of Brass more than makes up for it with the sheer creativity you can have exploring its Arabian Nights-themed maps. With genii to imbue you with wacky powers and the ever-tantalising need to collect more gold (as well the option to compete with others via the leaderboards), Uppercut Games h...

City of Brass is the sort of game that certain gamers will treasure. It is a beautiful, well-polished first-person rogue-lite that will not hesitate to regularly reward diligent players with a quick and horrible death. City of Brass is not for the faint of heart, but for those that put in the time to hone their skills, the rewards of City of Brass are great (and I'm not talking about the in-game t...

Talent without skill is like a desert without an oasis, and this game is one hell of an oasis.

Legend has it that somewhere in the vast desert there is an ancient city. Once this city was full of life and riches, but now it remains as a shell of its former glory. For those willing to take the risk, many riches still reside within its walls. But to get them you'll have to make your way through the horrors within. Are you up to the task?

In City of Brass, you have to make it to the centre of the Arabian Nights inspired city by any means necessary while hordes of skeletons stand in your way and hundreds of traps wait to rip you in half.

City of Brass is an odd beast. I’ve never played anything quite like it. Well, strictly speaking, that’s not true. It’s a procedurally generated dungeon crawler, with purchasable upgrades and an experience point system that persists between runs. It’s also a first-person melee game all about killing Arabian Nights themed monsters with a sword and whip. Somehow by cobbling together a bunch of diffe...

You turn left at the storehouse, frantically running through alleyways as a group of skeletons shamble after you. With a crack of your whip, you grapple on to a hook and soar over a trapdoor. Your pursuers are not so lucky, their cries reaching your ears as they fall onto a pit of spikes. You can’t help but smile as you land on the other side scot-free and prepare to proceed to the mystical’s city...

City of Brass starts off strong, with innovative mechanics and an impeccable presentation that continues to impress. As long as you're not expecting an endless adventure, this first-person roguelike is well worth playing.

In short, City of Brass has a ton of cool concepts and most, if not all of them, pay off. While the pace of the game is certainly slower than I would like it to be, it's still a blast to play. And even though there are a few bugs in the game that did annoy me, the vast majority of the time I didn't experience any. For $24.99, players should pick up the game if they are looking for a challenge and ...

The roguelike genre has become a staple of today’s video game industry, with the likes of Spelunky, Rogue Legacy, and The Binding of Isaac being defining releases that helped to legitimise the phenomenon. One more feature that links the three together is the fact that they’re all 2D, a perspective that the genre rarely breaks away from. City of Brass is one of those outliers, but does its leap int...

There’s no doubt that City of Brass is meant to be punishing. But between its ungainly controls, its inability to stave off a sense of tedious repetition, and spirit-breaking lack of progression, it feels far less fair and more painful than its rogue-lite brethren. Its superficial use of the Arabian Nights folklore, combined with its monotonous design and reliance on exotic cliche, make it as unin...

Set in a gorgeous Arabian Nights inspired world, City of Brass is a whip-cracking roguelike that has recently released onto PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Made by developers who had formerly worked on the Bioshock series, the game and its eye-catching aesthetic immediately stood out when we played it at PAX AUS 2017. Bubbling away on Steam Early Access since September of last year, the game has finally em...