There is a particular kind of invitation, rare in a genre that usually hands you a blessing and a shiny relic, in waking up in a one-bit room and discovering that the entire product is a curse you have to pick on purpose. The pistolflash is still a pistolflash. The card is still a card. The first swarm that tries to teach you a lesson is not a metaphor. Curse Rounds, the frantic action roguelike from TENTACLES INTERACTIVE, is built on that bad deal, and the bad deal is ruder, funnier, and more useful than a four-dollar hex has any right to be.
I played the PS5 version, the 14 August 2025 console launch that QUByte Interactive walked onto living-room hardware after TENTACLES INTERACTIVE put the same frantic roguelike on Steam on 7 February 2025 at $3.99. You survive random rounds. You accumulate one curse per room from more than sixty cards. You kill enemies with a variety of shots and power-ups. Seven Steam achievements sit in the ink. The Steam purchaser sample is Positive, 92 percent of 28, with 46 voices across languages sitting at 95 percent, which is the honest weather of a quiet four-dollar roguelike and not a dare. Great, not huge, and very much a deck I would recommend you draw if you like a shooter that knows it is also a joke at your expense.
The Deck Does Not Care What Fair Means
Most action roguelikes begin with a speech and a gift. Curse Rounds begins with a choice that is already a punishment. Official copy on Steam says this is a frantic roguelike in which you must try to survive random rounds, accumulating one curse per room from the 60+ cards available in the game. Then it asks you, with the grammar of a person who has already lost the argument with luck, to kill enemies with a variety of incredible shots and power-ups. That is not flavor text. It is the design refusing to pay for a power fantasy when a bad hand will do.
You start shooting because the alternative is becoming a rumor in a room that does not keep rumors. The first stretch is staged like a punchline that forgot to be funny. You clear a swarm. The next door thinks about it. Something in the ink thinks about you. The script, still a little breathless and still very sure of its monochrome, asks you to pick the lesser of two evils and walk into the next room anyway. Nobody else will. That is the rest of the run.
I like a premise that prices curiosity as a hazard and then lets you walk toward it anyway. Official press from the shop says this is not your typical roguelike. The deck is not stacked in your favor. It is stacked against you. Each run throws you into chaotic, randomly generated rooms where more than sixty unique curse cards actively make the game harder. Forget the usual blessing. Survival here means adapting to every disadvantage the game deals you. Why are there rooms and no mercy. What was that card before it learned to bite. The more you play, the more the ink answers with another swarm and another thing that would like a piece of your last life. Story is environmental and stingy, which is the right instinct for a game that wants your hands more than your diary. You are not reading a novel. You are looting a disaster that is still happening, and the disaster is printed in two colors.
The fantasy is not mastery of a lore bible on day one. The fantasy is competence arriving about half a run after you invent a habit of picking the curse you can live with. You will fail in ways that would be funny if the card were not so sincere. You take the screen shake. You take the faster enemies. You become the kind of person who thinks a bad deal is a personality. Curse Rounds arrives as a first game from a Campina Grande shop born in 2024, driven by an old passion for roguelikes, and a certainty that fun does not need super realistic graphics.
Draw a Curse, Then Invent a Way Out
The loop is the old religion and TENTACLES INTERACTIVE does not pretend otherwise. Clear a room. Draw two curses. Pick the one that will, theoretically, make your life less difficult. Do it again until the run learns manners or you do not. None of that is a revolution in the abstract. All of that is the sentence the rest of the toybox has to live in. Official highlights ask you to choose your own burden in each room and test your limits. That is not a costume menu. It is a verb.
Combat is physical in the way a good one-bit room is physical. You are not only drowning in upgrades. You are looking at a card that increases enemy speed and a card that removes half of your health before the next fight, and you are deciding which of them has been useful enough this second. Official copy is blunt about the range. There are more than sixty cursed cards. They run from speeding the swarm to chopping your health in half. Some of them make tougher guests arrive earlier. Some of them clone the thing that just hurt you, which is a simple evil until the room is already a crowd. The most annoying one I lived with for an evening was the card that shook the screen every time the pistolflash went off. Depending on how far the run has already gone, different poisons will appeal more to you. That variation is the whole joke, and the joke is the whole game.
I have played a lot of games that treat the first upgrade as a tutorial and the tenth upgrade as a spreadsheet. Curse Rounds is meaner than that on purpose. Official copy says no two attempts are ever the same. If you want a loadout that never asks you to accept a disadvantage on purpose, you will feel underemployed. If you want an evening that turns a bad hand into a conversation, you will feel hired.
Shooting is the other half of the short description and the kinder half of a week. Kill enemies with a variety of incredible shots and power-ups. That sentence is both a promise and a warning. A pistolflash handles the general population of problems. The later, nastier rooms will empty your patience if you treat them like scenery. Getting a shot with actual manners takes a while. Until then, a retreat to the better angle is a strategy, not a cowardice. I left the greedy path on for an evening and the careful path on for another. The deck did not mind. The swarm minded either way.
Pistolflash, Swarms, and a Room That Matters
The room is the other half of the pitch and the ruder half of a week. Official features list fast-paced bullet-hell combat, precise controls, thirty unique enemies, and five epic bosses. The mission is not shooting for its own sake. It is a continuation. That shift is the closest Curse Rounds comes to a power fantasy, and I like it more than a new gun. Mastery, here, is logistics wearing a curse. You gather a shot type you can live with, you stash a little confidence, you walk a ridiculous little pistolflash into a place that tried to eat your last life last room, and you arrive like a person who has mail.
An achievement name will ask you to kill a named thing if you would like the fantasy of purpose without a town. BOMB CHICKEN DEAD. MOMMY SPIDER DEAD. QUEEN FLY DEAD. TENTACLES DEAD. THE REGURGITANT DEAD. Those five receipts, plus CAPTURED and EXIT, keep the ink from feeling like a screensaver that learned to punch. They are not a city. They are a reminder that someone else survived long enough to leave a joke on the achievement list. I sold seconds I was sure I needed and then needed them, which is the oldest roguelike joke in the book and still a good one.
I will not invent a highlight reel with fake timestamps and tidy room counts. The nights that stay with you are the ones where you thought the hand was finished, then something started knocking in a rhythm that was not your own fire, and then you were on the wrong side of your own greed. Combat can feel like two pieces of ink agreeing to take turns being disappointed. That tightness is real. It is also priced into a loop that would rather you shoot, retreat, and come back dressed in a slightly worse curse. Distance helps. A working shot helps more.
The pistolflash is the commute. The swarm is the argument with space. None of that changes the central truth. You are here to pick a burden and then find out what the burden is for.
Bosses, Cards, and the Map Getting Smaller
Pressure is the variety. A door that holds is a better reward than a new silhouette if the silhouette is just another way to lose a life. Hunting a clean room is good practice and a grocery run. Official copy on the living-room store is not shy about the guest list. Bosses big, huge, giants and powerful. Thirty enemies with unique characteristics. Kill all your enemies with a variety of amazing shots. Sparks happen. The store page is not shy about it. What the store page cannot tell you is how quickly you will start treating a successful clear as a mood stabilizer. You eat ink. You drink a slightly worse card. You put the pistolflash down and look at the next door like a person who has decided civilization is a coin flip.
The world has history if you will walk toward it, even when the history is mostly a silhouette and a name. Official features list a distinctive 1-bit black-and-white pixel art aesthetic, high replayability, and a combination of curse cards that ensures no attempt will be the same as another. The story is uncovered through rooms, bosses, and the remains of a joke that tried to outlive its own swarm. I like a map that prices curiosity as a hazard and then lets you shoot toward it anyway. Some rooms are handsome. Some rooms are a commute. Both rooms are the job.
The shop wrote the length with the candor of a team that has already lost the argument with a sprawling campaign. A first release. A calling card. Retro visuals, challenging gameplay, and that touch of unpredictability that makes each match unique. If you want a year of biomes, you should look elsewhere. If you want a half hour that can turn into a few evenings of monochrome disaster, you are the audience.
Seven achievements sit behind the loop for people who like a receipt. Names like BOMB CHICKEN DEAD and THE REGURGITANT DEAD tell you the shop has a sense of humor. None of them change the central truth. You are here to raise a curse and then find out what the curse is for.
Handmade by Design, Mean by Habit
I should be clear about the friction, because it is real and it is not a footnote you hide after the score. Curse Rounds looks like a game that was built by a small shop that wanted a roguelike more than a showcase, then discovered the roguelike was a whole deck. Rooms can be handsome. Animations can be stubborn. A shot can arrive a half-second late to its own impact. Performance can sulk when a late room decides to remember itself. I will not invent a frame census. I will say the ink sometimes forgets to stock the snap you need and then shrugs like weather.
Technical manners can stutter when a late room decides to be a theology problem. Hits can land with the conviction of a stamp, which is a sentence no designer writes for fun. None of that is unique to this hex. All of that is the tax on a handmade action roguelike that launched in February 2025 and is still explaining itself in 2026.
Presentation is readable, which matters more than prestige. You can tell a swarm from a boss from a door at a glance. If you cannot read a room, the hunt dies and the curse becomes homework. These spaces are atmospheric enough to carry a scare and clear enough to carry a plan. You always know where you are. You do not always know why a chicken with a bomb is already there.
English is the Steam language with Simplified Chinese and Portuguese – Brazil sitting beside it. Single-player, Steam Achievements, Steam Cloud, and Family Sharing are on the sheet. I will not turn this into a localization seminar. The voice of the game is the ink, and the ink talks in cards, swarms, and the occasional named boss that would like a word.
The developers wrote the terms of the toybox with the candor of a shop that would rather be mean than empty. A commercial license sits next to the four-dollar ask. A bundle with Space Vomit sits under it for anyone who wants two jokes for less than a coffee.
Better With a Curse Than With a Checklist
I have a rule for four-dollar roguelikes. If a game is worse with a curse than with a checklist, it is broken. If it is only good with a curse, it is honest. Curse Rounds is honest, and that honesty should sit next to the price.
A checklist night is a competent half hour. You punch the room, you invent the lesser evil, you lose a life, you come back, you put a better hex on the joke. A curse night is the version the systems were quietly designed around. Someone farms a shot. Someone accepts the shake. Someone learns, too late, that a cloned enemy does not respect architecture. The deck becomes a shared instrument you play with yourself instead of a commute.
The Steam sample around a game this quiet is always going to look like weather. Positive is the official purchaser report, 92 percent of 28 Steam voices, and that split is fair. Across every language the pile is 46 reviews, 44 of them kind, which the store files as Positive at 95 percent. The English pile is six voices, five of them kind, which is too small to lean on and too honest to hide. Players who wanted a deeper scrap, a thicker campaign, or a blessing economy that never hides the mean bounce off. Players who wanted a 1-bit action roguelike with a pistolflash and a bad idea about cards stay. I am in the second camp with caveats, which is the only honest place to stand.
Compared with the giants of the blessed-build business, Curse Rounds is not trying to be a career you finish this week. It is trying to be a place you keep returning to. The shop said the quiet part on the store page. Unique curses. Sixty-plus cards. Incredible shots and power-ups. Fun if you will meet the game where it lives.
Three dollars and ninety-nine cents on Steam, and $4.99 on the living-room store, buys you a first release and a roguelike that knows it is a roguelike. That is not a dare. It is a receipt. If you want a thicker punch, you should look elsewhere. If you want a place that is already a place, you are the audience.
Still Standing After the Deal
Curse Rounds is a rare four-dollar roguelike that understands its own joke and then has the nerve to make the joke a card. TENTACLES INTERACTIVE built a deck about purpose, a pistolflash about teamwork you do with a curse, and a toybox that looks a little homemade and plays a lot more sincerely than that sentence suggests. The loop is the hook. The cards are the spine. The walk from a bad hand to a named boss is the grin.
It is better with a curse than with a checklist. The late rooms can clunk in the way a handmade scrap is clunky. Combat can sulk. The presentation has indie fingerprints, from the stubborn animations to the story that would rather be a room than a cutscene. All of that is true, and all of that is already priced in at $3.99 on Steam. You are not buying a decade. You are buying a season that can turn into several evenings if you like being a coordinated disaster, or being the person who has to explain the disaster to a bomb chicken.
I am scoring it 8.5, Great, because the identity is this clear and the limitations are the limitations of a focused first release, not an empty one. I would recommend it to anyone who likes a curse that has weight and a room that is allowed to be rude. Distinctive one-bit weather, a deck that shrinks the horizon, a shot that turns salvage into conversation, and a price that respects a short week are a lot of game for the ask. The systems repeat their manners. The manners are still useful.
The ink is still out there, still hiring a night shift, still asking what a fair deal was before the cards arrived. After a few runs, you will understand why the job is not finished, and why you keep waking up in the next room anyway.
We prepared this review with a digital copy of Curse Rounds for the PS5 version provided by Pressengine.
