Source of Madness Review

Welcome to the Loam Lands, a twisted, nightmarish world where the Old Gods reign and madness is supreme. The end of days is here and deep within the confines of a massive Cathedral, cultists spout tales of madness while waiting for one of their number to do something about it. Do you have what it takes to brave the nightmare monstrosities hunting the world, to find out what secrets lurk in the Loam lands and, eventually, the Tower of Madness?

Lovecraftian Cthulhu Mythos lore with the Roguelite genre

If the answer is yes, then prepare yourself for a somewhat unique take on the side-scrolling Roguelite genre. Source of Madness combines Lovecraftian Cthulhu Mythos lore with the Roguelite genre in a 2D side-scrolling action platformer. But what does it do differently from other games in the genre that, beyond the cosmic insanity and Mythos Lore, should have you picking it up?

Developer Carry Castle has opted to use a combination of procedural generation and AI learning to develop its game. What this means is that, beyond specific areas, the game levels are all procedurally generated by a neural network that is supposed to learn how you play. It’s not just the levels though that are procedurally generated and animated, but also the nightmarish monstrosities looking to chomp you into itty bitty pieces.

One of the major aspects of Lovecraft’s work is his “indescribable” abominations, which tend to be rather describable. The aspect of creatures beyond the understanding of men, whose very sight drives you to madness, has rarely been truly, visually approximated. Everyone wants to see the monster after all. That is one aspect that Source of Madness has gotten right thanks to its AI-created and controlled monstrosities.

Stitched together from a variety of parts, what you’re usually blowing to pieces tends to be a nightmarish conglomeration of tentacles, eyes, teeth, claws and whatever else is kept in the games parts library to draw from. There’s rarely a clear indication of what you’re fighting, only that it has more eyes, teeth and tentacles than should be possible.

Procedurally Generated

Outside of specific areas such as the opening Cathedral, the game levels are also procedurally generated. The game’s art style is certainly unique, creating a layered effect of pieces put together haphazardly. It certainly fits in with the theme of madness and a world gone wrong and full of pustulent flesh and Geiger-esque buildings.

Between the enemy proceduralisation and the level generation, few runs will be entirely the same, even though repeating sections and enemy designs do occur.

In the beginning

You’ll start off the game by choosing a cultist. In the beginning, there’s only one class to choose from, with more unlocked as you find their class altars in the world, with random attack options. Attacks are controlled by the items you equip and can be set to each hand. On one hand, you can equip a slash attack and on the other ranged, magic attacks. You can mix and match as you please though it’s rather satisfying to be throwing explosive fireballs while physically hacking away at something at the same time. There is no levelling system. Increasing your attributes is handled by the gear you equip. There is a skill tree system of a sort, which deals with unlocking new classes and gear via blood orbs you collect from killing enemies. For instance, Pyromancer class rings can be unlocked and become drops in the world. The higher the gear level, the higher it increases your attributes and attack power. Pay attention as well to the little bits of lore in the gear description, as you can miss out on something that could prove to be vital in a run.

The game also sports a permadeath system for your characters, with each run getting you just that further into the game before death inevitably claims you and you have to restart with a new character and load outright from the beginning. There are no dropped items on death so there’s no reason to worry about making it back to where you pegged before. Thankfully the game is more on the Roguelite side of things. The more you unlock, the better your gear drops in each subsequent run. So you may start off with that level 1 Slash and before long pick up a level 2 Cthulhu’s Eye, and so on. As well, there’s a save point between levels that you can continue from with your current character if you need a break.

Combat

Initially, the game’s combat system feels very flighty and imprecise, with your character moving rather slowly and having a very floaty feel to them. Once you get used to the way the character moves and can unleash attacks via a 360-degree aiming system, you’ll become better at surviving the hordes that you will find yourself up against. As such, the game begins to become more fun the more adept you get at dealing with the threats.

Sound

The game’s sound design is also fantastic. There’s a creepy sense of dread, despair and creeping madness that seeps through the audio work. And the monstrous sound effects that precede something terrifyingly large are top-notch. The winner for me though is the satisfying noise made when you blow one of these monstrosities back to whatever hell spawned them.

Less successful though, is the procedural and AI mechanics of the game.

While it’s true that no two runs will be entirely the same, because the levels are been generated from pieces, you will be seeing a lot of the same repeating architecture, sometimes multiple times within one level. And as the levels increase in size, it can become difficult to tell where you’ve already been when one cave section looks exactly like the one you’ve just come from. More than once I’ve looped back into an area I’d previously cleared while thinking I was moving forward.

The monsters as well, while looking truly, abominably indescribable, almost all move in the same boneless, rolling fashion. And over the course of multiple runs, I couldn’t tell whether or not the game was actually learning how I played as I continued to create chokepoints to jam bus-sized monstrosities in and then walloped them from a distance with the heaviest attack in my arsenal. As much as I enjoyed fighting enemies here, it misses out on the iconic moments you do get in curated design.

At its worse, Source of Madness is an intriguing experiment in neural net learning and procedural generation. At its best, it’s a creepy, fun, Lovecraftian Roguelite that left me feeling like I needed to keep trying new runs just to see what the game would throw at me. Thankfully, it’s far more the latter than the former. If you want something different from your action platformers or just need to delve into anything with Lovecraftian sensibilities and lore, then Source of Madness is your jam.

Developer: Carry Castle
Publishers: Thunderful Publishing, Thunderful Group
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X and Series S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 5

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