Ultimate ADOM - Caverns of Chaos

I keep a spreadsheet for games like this, and Ultimate ADOM - Caverns of Chaos filled it faster than almost anything I have touched this year. The pedigree is real: the original ADOM launched in 1994 and accrued a cult following that spent literal decades mapping its secrets, and developer Thomas Biskup has returned to that world for this sequel set in the caverns beneath Ancardia. The question worth asking before you spend any time here is not whether the game is deep. It is. The question is whether that depth has been finished to a standard that respects your time. On paper, the systems are exactly what a build-order obsessive wants. Seven factions with distinct allegiances shape how you approach each run. Race, class, and gender all modify your stat spread and available skill paths. The grafting mechanic, where you literally attach monster body parts to your character, is the kind of delightfully chaotic idea that only a traditional roguelike can get away with. A spell grimoire stretching past 100 entries covers everything from possession to summoning demons to the reliable fireball. The skill tree count runs into the dozens of branches, with hidden and secret skills for players willing to experiment past the obvious picks. The radial action wheel means you can topple braziers, push coffins, coat objects in potions, and interact with the environment in ways that most dungeon crawlers do not bother to model. You can also toggle between a modern graphical view, isometric, top-down, and full ASCII at any time, which is a genuinely thoughtful concession to the purists. Here is where the spreadsheet gets complicated. Steam reviews land at roughly 47 percent positive across several hundred responses, and the criticisms cluster around the same issues: bugs that surface deep into runs, tooltip errors, unfinished systems that exist as placeholders rather than working mechanics, and a general sense that the game left Early Access before it was ready. The gear comparison problem alone is legitimately frustrating. Working out whether one weapon beats another requires processing attack speed, hit chance, and damage variance simultaneously, with no in-game tool doing that math for you. Players coming from the original ADOM have been particularly vocal about the gap between the word "Ultimate" and what shipped. Community threads note that development momentum has slowed, which is a serious concern for a game that launched with several systems still flagged as incomplete. The no-diagonal-movement design choice also flattens tactical positioning in ways that feel like an oversight rather than a statement. For who, then? If you are already fluent in traditional roguelikes and can tolerate rough edges in exchange for genuine systemic depth, there is a real game here that rewards patience. The procedurally generated dungeons, faction scoring between runs, and the sheer volume of skill interactions give it more theoretical replayability than most of its competition. The ASCII toggle and preset character builds like the Dwarf Fighter lower the entry barrier for newcomers more than the game's reputation suggests. But if you need a polished experience with reliable save states and working altars, the mixed community reception is a fair warning that this is not that product in its current state.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

Be the first to comment on Ultimate ADOM - Caverns of Chaos.