Cally's Trials

I went into Cally's Trials expecting the kind of throwaway mobile-to-PC port that clogs the sub-five-dollar tier, and the first ten minutes almost confirmed that suspicion. No title screen, no tutorial, just a small girl with a large gun dropped into a cave. What surprised me is how quickly the core loop clicks: you pick up weapons off the ground, use them to deal damage, and watch them level up in real time - every weapon has its own XP meter, and at levels 4, 7, and 10, they transform, sometimes gaining genuinely new behavior. The shotgun fans out more pellets. Other classes shift form in ways that make rotating through them feel like a small experiment each run. It is a light, unpretentious kind of progression, and for a certain mood it lands exactly right. The structure across all 110 levels and 6 biomes (water, ice, fire and friends) is roguelite rather than true roguelike: levels are hand-crafted and fixed, so dying and retrying means replaying the same rooms. That is the honest friction point. Players hoping for procedural variety will find the repetition wearing before long, and the enemy AI is not sophisticated enough to make repeated encounters feel dynamic. Spongy health bars on common enemies mean combat often settles into standing on a ledge and chipping away - effective but rarely exciting. The six boss fights have exploitable safe spots that let you farm weapon XP without much threat, which is either a clever grind opportunity or a sign of undertuned design, depending on your temperament. What Cally's Trials does well is the cumulative feeling of getting stronger. Money earned on each run feeds a permanent upgrade shop, Cally levels up to gain more health, and weapons carry their progress between attempts. There is a real sense that every failed run leaves you meaningfully better prepared. The 38-track soundtrack has a light, chiptune warmth to it that suits the 8-bit visual palette without ever overstaying its welcome. Vibrant pixel art keeps each biome distinct, and the whole thing runs clean - no crashes, no technical drama. For players new to the Cally's Caves series, this sits comfortably as a self-contained entry point. Veterans of Cally's Caves 3, however, should note the overlap in enemies and bosses is significant, and the weapon cap here is 10 rather than 20, which makes it feel like a slimmer remix of familiar content. The honest verdict: this is a game that knows its scope and mostly lives inside it. The weapon evolution system has more texture than the price implies, the run length is sensible, and the 38-song soundtrack treats itself as a proper companion to the atmosphere rather than background filler. It will not convert anyone who needs deep roguelike systems or adaptive AI. But if you want a chill cave-crawling platformer where the numbers tick upward and a six-year-old with a boomerang occasionally outperforms a maxed shotgun, the quirk is part of the charm.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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