Annihilated Review

Death Kumi's unusual dungeon crawler combines branching character stories, breakable equipment, and turn-based combat to create an adventure that is as strange as it is memorable.

Roguelike RPGs often ask you to accept a certain amount of repetition. You explore a dungeon, fight your way through increasingly difficult encounters, collect resources, and eventually lose everything when your character falls. The challenge comes from learning enemy patterns, adapting your strategy, and deciding how much progress you're willing to risk with every new run.

Then you start again, hopefully with a little more knowledge and a better chance of reaching the end. While this structure works well for many games, it can sometimes make following a story difficult, especially when important character moments are locked behind multiple lengthy runs. 

Developed by Death Kumi, Annihilated is a dark fantasy roguelike RPG that mixes dungeon crawling, visual novel storytelling, and turn-based combat. 

It does not follow the traditional formula you might expect from a dungeon crawler, either. Although the presentation initially suggests you are about to enter a conventional first-person adventure, much of your journey unfolds on a map where you choose paths and encounter events along the way. 

Annihilated introduces you to a group of heroes stripped of the abilities and qualities that once made them powerful. You don't play as one of these legendary figures, though. Instead, you control a soldier sent into a dangerous dungeon on a rescue mission.

What begins as a straightforward attempt to retrieve a missing party quickly becomes something much more complicated. You cannot simply gather everyone and walk back to the surface. Each character has been changed differently, and you must decide which one will accompany you on your escape.

That setup gives Annihilated an interesting foundation. You are not simply trying to defeat monsters and reach the final boss. You are also learning what happened to the original party, understanding the people they have become, and deciding how to respond to the difficult situations you encounter.

The hero is insane and can only say yes or no. A doll replaced the warrior's body; the mage could no longer use magic, and the priest went mad and lost his faith. These characters are now shadows of their former selves,s and their situation is far worse than the rescue team had anticipated.

You are Soldier, the last survivor of a rescue squad sent to locate the missing heroes.

Once you find the party inside the dungeon, you quickly realize that getting everyone back is not an option. Instead, you have to choose one of them to accompany you as you try to escape. This choice matters, because each character brings a different personality, background,d, and story path to the adventure. 

The characters are not simply unusual companions designed to make the party look different. The conditions are tied to their personalities and the battles they face. For example, the warrior-like doll remains cheerful and active, even after losing their original body.

But that optimism also conceals complex feelings about their identity and the burden of being a fighter, which is what they were expected to be from birth. They also have a villainess from the dungeon's lords in their past who happens to be their former fiancée. This gives the path a personal conflict that goes beyond just beating another foe.

The other characters have issues of their own, and learning their histories gives you a reason to go through more than once. The hero's damaged mind, the mage's loss of magic, and the priest's fractured sanity all influence how they interact with the world. These conditions also shape how you handle certain things on the trip. You slowly learn more about the original party, the circumstances of their fall, the Demon King, and the suffering that goes beyond the dungeon itself.

Soldier is also more than a silent protagonist who follows the other characters around.

They have plenty of dialogue, and much of their personality comes through internal monologues about the heroes, their enemies, and the world. These reflections help you understand how Soldier views the people they meet, though some run longer than necessary.

Sometimes the writing tells us how characters feel and what is happening to them, but the same can be shown through their interaction. The self-examination is useful, but sometimes Annihilated explains a moment so much that it diminishes its impact. Your choices are another big part of the story. The biggest decision is who to choose as a companion, but other choices can determine how things play out and what ending you get. 

You can try to understand their situation and be sympathetic, or you can treat them as obstacles that need to be gotten rid of. These choices are not just different dialogue options that lead to the same result. They can help shape the story and make your approach to the characters and their struggles meaningful. The game is particularly interesting in that it contrasts the dark setting with the personalities of the people trapped inside.

A good example of this contrast is the priest here.

Their behavior is disquieting, but they offer healing and are tied to a mysterious entity called the Great One. Annihilated slowly peels back more of these characters rather than explaining everything at the start, giving you a reason to keep going through the dungeon even when the gameplay gets repetitive.

Annihilated's dungeon crawling isn't exactly what its presentation might suggest. It's not about free-wandering through complex corridors looking for secret doors, or exploring a massive maze in the classic first-person dungeon-crawler sense. Instead, Annihilated uses an abstracted map where you choose between several available paths. 

Each path contains different types of encounters. You could find a monster and begin a battle. Or you could find a treasure chest and gain an item. Or you could find a random event and be thrown into an unexpected situation. You'll also find campfires, doors, recovery spots, and boss encounters. This structure keeps the journey fairly straightforward, but the different nodes still let you decide how to approach each floor.

Choosing your route matters, as not all routes offer the same benefits.

You might want to pick a path with more chances to pick up equipment or skip unnecessary fights when you are out of resources. Rest points are particularly useful, as you can recover before moving on. However, players expecting the freedom of a traditional dungeon crawler may have to temper their expectations. The map-based approach doesn't offer the same sense of discovery that comes from getting lost in a maze. 

You're picking from pre-existing paths, not combing every crevice of an environment. This makes the experience more digestible, but it also shifts exploration from physical navigation to route selection and resource management—an exploration system. The companion you choose also determines how you make the journey. Party members come in many conditions, and their personalities aren't limited to story sequences. For example, the priest can use powerful healing, but at a cost.

They heal you, and you lose a bit of your mind each time. Lower sanity makes it harder to survive certain dangerous events, especially the roulette-style checks that determine if you get out of traps and other hazards. This creates an interesting trade-off: you can keep yourself alive in combat, but it may make the next part of your journey more dangerous.

The trap system is another example of Annihilated's unique approach to dungeon progression.

Some traps won't let you dodge them by moving or navigating precisely; instead, they rely on a roulette mechanic to determine whether you live. How dangerous these situations become can depend on your condition and resources. The system introduces uncertainty, though it also means some outcomes feel less directly tied to your skill. When your sanity is low, even a relatively ordinary journey can become much more dangerous.

Combat is one of Annihilated's most distinctive features. Battles are turn-based, but Annihilated builds its system around cards representing the weapons, items, and spells in your inventory. Your basic options remain available, while many of the additional cards have a limited number of uses.

Once those uses are exhausted, the equipment breaks and can no longer be used. This means that you cannot simply collect your strongest weapon and rely on it throughout the entire adventure. You need to keep finding substitutes and decide when to use the gear you have.

Some equipment also lets you steal the enemy's weapon when it's broken. Another reason to watch enemy equipment is that defeating an opponent might give you something useful for the next meeting. Exploration is very closely linked to combat because your inventory is always changing. The items you discover along different paths determine your options, and managing their uses becomes an important part of staying prepared.

Annihilated also offers two different ways to handle attacks.

The timing option is based on pressing the attack button at specific moments. If you hit the highlighted area, you can deal extra damage and land a critical hit. You can also steal enemies' equipment with some successful actions. Things get interesting when you are up against groups of enemies. You can link attacks to hit multiple enemies, forming huge combos in frantic battles.

Timing is key and can make a real difference when you're facing multiple enemies before they overwhelm your party. There's also a probability-based combat option for those players who don't want to time inputs on every attack. This gives you some control over how punishing the combat feels and makes the system more accessible to different play styles.

The item-based combat system also doesn't always feel as deep as its initial concept would suggest.

You have plenty of equipment to experiment with, but the most straightforward approach often works well enough. In many encounters, using your strongest available weapon and saving its final use for a difficult situation beats experimenting with every item in your inventory.

Progression is closely tied to the way you use and break your equipment. Breaking items gives you Curse, the game's main currency, which you can use to purchase a few useful upgrades. You use it to get more healing when resting, upgrade your item cards, and craft new equipment as you progress through the game. 

Annihilated immediately stands out through its hand-drawn visual style. The character-designed environments look rough, which suits the mix of fantasy and horror in Annihilated opts for an illustrated look that gives the world its own identity rather than relying on highly polished visuals. 

The presentation works especially well in key story moments. Instead of relying only on traditional dialogue scenes, the game uses manga-inspired slideshows to emphasize certain events. These sequences give major moments greater visual presence and help the narrative feel different from a typical RPG. The game's unusual tone is further helped by the contrast between the colorful character designs and the darker situations they find themselves in. It can shift from genuinely disturbing to ridiculous without feeling completely out of place.

Sound is harder to judge, since the experience is largely about reading rather than hearing performances.

No voice acting; you're supposed to read the dialogue and narration yourself. This makes the text display all the more important, which is a shame when some dialogue is difficult to read. The lack of voice acting isn't a deal-breaker for this kind of RPG, but if you're the type of player who enjoys fully voiced character interaction, thenit'ss something to bear in mind. 

Annihilated is an unusual RPG that shines in the combination of its characters, branching narrative, and item-based combat. Its story gives you a reason to keep going through the dungeon, and the four character routes give you a reason to come back and learn more about the people you meet first. 

Curse gives you a reason to keep using your equipment. Upgrades and crafting give you useful ways to improve your odds in later attempts. It also makes the experience more approachable, letting you bounce back from failure and start again at the beginning of a floor. 

Some presentation issues keep the experience from feeling perfectly polished, though.

The dialog can be unnecessarily long; the English version has noticeable mistakes,s, and the text isn't always easy to follow. But Annihilated has personality, thanks to hand-drawn art, manga-style story sequences and a weird sense of humor that helps it stand out from more traditional RPGs.

At the end of the day, Annihilated is probably best described as a story-driven roguelike, rather than a traditional dungeon crawler. If you expect complex maze exploration or a combat system with endless strategic possibilities, some limitations will become apparent fairly quickly.

But if you like unusual characters, dark fantasy storytelling, meaningful choices, and a forgiving take on roguelike progression, there is plenty to appreciate here. Not everything about its design is perfect, but its memorable cast and willingness to experiment make it a journey worth taking.