Days of Doom (Nintendo Switch) Review

By Eric Ace 31.10.2024

Review for Days of Doom on Nintendo Switch

Rogue-likes and rogue-lights take a unique role in gaming that until recently was a very niche market. Now it seems every other game takes some elements of random maps, slow unlocks, or losing most progress at each death, only applied to some new formula. In Days of Doom a wasteland full of zombies needs traversing - how well will that trip go?

Days of Doom has a lot of great ideas, some blatant directions it should have gone, and some critical flaws. What is presented here isn't pretty; there are just too many things wrong with it to recommend at all, and short of a tremendous overhaul is unlikely to ever improve. Unfortunately, the premise is actually pretty good. A rogue-like where a random group of survivors who battle across a wasteland to try to make it to the promised land are controlled. The type of characters ranges from a big melee guy, to a fast gunslinger, and to magical units like a 'hydromancer' or a priestess. It sadly sounds a more interesting than it actually is. While each unit's starting position is slightly different, for example the gunslinger can hit an enemy at three tiles away, these small differences quickly fall away in the battle system and units do not upgrade or change in any meaningful way.

To explain this further, battles are conducted in a typical grid formation except the battlefield is very small, and units can on average run across half of it in a single turn. What that means in reality is target range and tactics are almost pointless. Zombies rush at the team and it turns into a slugfest. The only element that significantly counts is damage. To this end, many of the characters are largely imbalanced; for example the gunslinger does more outright damage, and because of this fact is completely better than some of the other units.

Screenshot for Days of Doom on Nintendo Switch

Days of Doom misses so badly anything that might have made it really cool. While units do level up, it adds a mere few points of damage and little else. No new moves, no unlocks, no picking a stat to focus on, nothing. It would have been so easy and interesting to have a simple skill tree system. Can the melee character get some new moves or auras, or how about the water-wielding mage get…well anything beyond a basic attack? The answer of course is no, and while there is a very basic item system, it is also forgettable.
It seems like the general insults to modern game sensibilities don't end anywhere, as even the rogue-like parts are boring. Any upgrades are very, very sparse, very expensive, and mostly meaningless. It might be something like 'gain +5% food' and several good runs would be needed to afford the starter unlock. It offers yet another reason to not want to keep playing.

Diving into Days of Doom the graphics, the genre, and the premise all seemed really impressive. But everything from its half-baked gameplay, to its lack of upgrades kills any enjoyment. The absolute worst part, is during the multiple (attempted) runs, there was over a 50% chance the game was going to crash after any victory in battle. In a way it felt fitting for the general incomplete nature of the game.

Screenshot for Days of Doom on Nintendo Switch

Cubed3 Rating

4/10
Rated 4 out of 10

Subpar

Days of Doom had a lot of potential, but an utterly unforgiveable amount of hard crashes 'doom' much of its hope for a decent experience. Even when it is not crashing, there were just too many things that really should have been different. Classes are far too boring, plenty of missed opportunities for more weapons, any skills, or any sort of depth. For people looking for a game that had good potential, but blew it so badly, this is a good example to study.

Developer

SneakyBox

Publisher

Atari

Genre

Strategy

Players

1

C3 Score

Rated $score out of 10  4/10

Reader Score

Rated $score out of 10  0 (0 Votes)

European release date Out now   North America release date Out now   Japan release date Out now   Australian release date Out now   

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