Cinderia Review

A fast roguelite where every run is chaos, experimentation, and learning through failure in a broken fairy-tale world.

There isn’t an actual introduction to Cinderia's game world through conventional means. The systems are not introduced to the player in stages, and there is no gradual introduction of gameplay mechanics either. Cinderia takes a different approach to introducing its world to players.

The game opens with atmosphere first, with ruins covered in ash and a fairy-tale-like narrative. Since the moment you begin Cinderia, the game makes sure that it won’t hold your hand. You are supposed to learn from experience, mistakes, and the gradual discovery of the workings of its mechanics during many plays.

There is no tutorial or guide here; instead, you simply have to dive right in. The universe of Cinderia is rooted in a shattered fairy tale. You learn little bits of the story of a witch whose presence causes much destruction. Plagues strike whole continents, and floods destroy cities.

Finally, the entire kingdom realizes that something should be done about the threat, and a king goes on a crusade against it through raging flames, sticky mud, and crumbling land. However, in Cinderia, such a conflict does not seem like a satisfactory ending. After overcoming the witch, the world still does not recover easily.

There is some lingering sense in this aftermath, some unresolved issue. From among the ashes, a child emerges, adding another layer to the intrigue that Cinderia carefully crafts for its world. The story in Cinderia is never revealed in one big chunk.

Instead, it is delivered in fragments.

Small narrations, quick cutscenes, and lore items discovered while running missions all provide tidbits of information. You do not get the whole story at once, but have to piece it together as you go along. After getting started running around in Cinderia, you’ll find that its loop is actually quite structured.

Despite the chaos that appears to be going on at any one time. You go into a room, get attacked, and then have to do two things: survive and defeat the enemies that attack you. After defeating all of them, you’re then able to collect upgrades or items that affect your build for this particular run.

From there, you move forward using the branching pathways, and each of those pathways has a certain symbol associated with it. That symbol indicates either a fight, a store where you can buy things, or another kind of encounter or event. 

What’s interesting about Cinderia is that it doesn’t give you an explanation for what each symbol represents. This vagueness at the start of the game is a deliberate design feature. Cinderia can be learned through practice. Once you have played a few times, you begin to recognize patterns.

Some roads will be safe, some profitable, and some risky, but with more power at stake. This learning process itself forms a part of the gameplay. The key gameplay element in Cinderia is combat, intended to be rapid, reactive, and dynamic.

In this game, there is no time to stand around for too long. The enemies usually fight in a group, and before long, you find yourself dodging multiple foes as well as being offensive. When a run begins in Cinderia, you have very few options to use.

You have a melee attack that does basic damage, a ranged attack such as throwing daggers, and a dash move. Those are what make up who you are in terms of combat abilities. Everything you get during a run will either modify those things or give you more options. The throwing daggers illustrate how the modifications work.

Throwing daggers is simply a ranged attack with a low cooldown time.

However, many ways of throwing daggers could be altered as you progress through the run. You might be able to throw multiple daggers, use poisoned daggers, or deal extra damage if a target is at full health. Before long, a simple tool becomes part of your entire play style.

Dagger-centered builds can be your primary damage dealers during some of the game's runs, particularly if you can stack poisons and hit multiple times. Melee combat is not an exception in Cinderia either. You could apply armor breaks and fear effects, as well as increased damage from attacking combos.

There would even be upgrades that work only after you complete a specified number of attacks, adding a bit of rhythm and anticipation to your combat. And now, the real power of Cinderia comes to light. It is not only about the strength of each individual's ability but also about how they interact with one another.

An additional effect may follow an attack move. Projectiles may follow dashing. One skill can affect another. Cinderia creates its own complexity through interactions, not by simply pumping up the stats. The concept of energy adds to that system. Some skills cost energy, which is gained via attacking and waiting.

Thus, playing Cinderia requires more effort than merely pressing attack all the time. You should constantly be on the offensive while still maintaining control over the energy system. Another key feature of Cinderia’s combat mechanics is the dash. This goes beyond a simple defensive technique.

This is an important component of your offense rhythm and will also have additional effects depending on certain combinations, such as bomb poisoning, projectile generation, and cooldown interactions. Your movement is linked directly to your ability to deal damage, thus making positioning as important as choosing an attack.

With deeper exploration in the world of Cinderia, the fight dynamics increase in complexity, with larger mobs attacking you at high speeds. Positioning becomes a critical component due to the enemy’s behavior, not only engaging but also applying pressure from multiple sides. However, boss battles in Cinderia take this to a whole other level.

The majority of boss fights feature several phases and sometimes even additional foes to battle.

Boss battles in the game are meant to determine if your build will work when put to the test. For a build to succeed in Cinderia, it must remain consistent under chaos. Another interesting aspect of Cinderia is its erosion system.

As you collect different upgrades throughout the process, you will accrue erosion points. After reaching a certain number of points, you must select a curse, which imposes a negative impact on your build. This ensures you cannot scale infinitely within the game. 

Cinderian buffs tend to have conditional abilities. They could depend on several basic hits in succession; some may become active depending on dash usage or cooldown timing. Some buffs depend on statuses, such as being scared, stunned, having armor broken, etc. 

Thus, you could develop a mechanism that would allow you to call shadow strikes periodically based on your attacks or create expanding blade effects with every dash used. The ability to layer conditional systems makes Cinderia's gameplay really unique and exciting. When you design your build, you don't simply stack upgrades; you make a build of interactions. 

Each game becomes an intriguing puzzle about system interaction, one that only gets stronger each time. The gameplay system gets even more complex with items. Cinderia items could improve various stats, including hit speed, recovery rate of energy points, and maximum energy value, but also include conditional benefits.

Some items would give additional power to characters when certain skills are on cooldown, and items with special effects depending on applied status effects. It also has long-term progression systems that let you spend on improvements that will make your future runs easier.

Furthermore, there is the system of hubs, where you rebuild the elements of a town or base, earning bonuses along the way. Such an approach makes you feel like developing beyond the scope of individual runs. It should also be noted that Cinderia greatly benefits from having multiple characters with diverse starting skills, encouraging players to adopt different tactics.

Some of them will focus on ranged attacks, while others will prefer close-up battles, and so on. 

The key aspect of all that is the game's flexibility, which allows players to freely change identities. Finally, the element of randomness plays an integral role in this game. No two runs will be alike; you get new sets of items and rooms as well as opportunities for upgrading every time you play. 

As long as you know the game mechanics by heart, you still have to respond to unexpected events and stimuli.
From a visual standpoint, Cinderia utilizes a subdued art style. The environment includes ash tones, dark reds, and shattered worlds, thus contributing to the overall feeling of decomposition. 

The combat skills are visually stunning, and comprehending the abilities is easy and clear despite the chaos. Cinderia’s sound effects work well alongside combat when everything else works flawlessly. The attacks are performed with vigor, abilities have their own sound effects, and boss fights feature heavy music.

However, sound effects and background music tend to fade for a few seconds, which can make one feel uncomfortable, particularly during level progression. The technical implementation in Cinderia needs some additional improvements. This can cause unpredictable crashes or resets just before a battle.

This can make things less annoying at times, but it has to be said, this game is still in Early Access and could do with a bit of polish. Despite all these concerns, however, the gameplay loop in Cinderia is solid. You run, you battle waves, you level up, you test new builds, and you get further each time.

Even if you fail, you have progressed far enough to become a better player for the next attempt. And that is the loop that ensures the sustained engagement of the game. Of course, Cinderia borrows a number of concepts from other roguelites as well. The setup and its narrative approach may remind one of Hades, while the pace of combat and experimentation recall Dead Cells.

And with its unique synergy mechanics, the game definitely draws inspiration from Risk of Rain 2.

What Cinderia does exceptionally well is ensure you dive into the actual gameplay and stay engaged as soon as possible. No lengthy interruptions here; instead, various game systems slowly unravel during interaction with them. It's not perfect by any means yet, but the framework is certainly in place. Combat is swift, the build diversity is impressive, and the loop itself is compelling.

The core loop seems to work; it just needs a bit of refinement. As for the early version of Cinderia, it actually creates an enjoyable loop of trial and adaptation. It's not a rethinking of the entire genre, but the game handles what it does with confidence.

There's even a clear “just one more try" draw that stems from Cinderia's ability to quickly get you back into the action after each loss. In particular, the fact that each run can end badly, yet the reloading process feels immediate, adds significant strength to this design decision. It may seem like a small thing, but it actually plays a pretty big role in maintaining the player's focus.

Yet another subtle yet important feature of Cinderia lies in how it preserves readability even when various effects collide. Considering that several effects may occur simultaneously, causing shadows, wheel blades, poisons, and dashes to appear together, there is always a chance that everything becomes too chaotic to process visually.

Yet in Cinderia, despite all the chaos happening on the screen, enemies' silhouettes and attacks are still clear enough to allow a player to act accordingly. This allows the game to offer fast builds that are neither completely chaotic nor confusing. Moreover, it is essential to mention the sense of mastery a gamer gains after playing the game multiple times.

Initially, gameplay feels very reactive due to uncertainty regarding the drops. However, over time, players learn to experiment with various skill combinations to find which works best. Thus, players start building their characters purposefully, rather than reacting to what has been dropped. 

Even with its flaws, Cinderia has already developed a rogue-lite essence, where systems begin to take on a personalized touch. Every choice made to upgrade, the style used in utilizing abilities, and how one adapts to randomly acquired items – these all give each playthrough an individual personality, allowing Cinderia not to become repetitive despite its repetitive design.