Kingsway

Kingsway - The roguelike where you can fight enemies, save the world, and fend off spam email, all at the same time. I've been having fun with it for the past day or so, have two completions of the game so far, but I'm still missing some potential endings or unique areas, I think. Regardless, here's what I think about the game.

Probably the first thing you would notice about Kingsway is its unique presentation - you're dealing with an operating system. You got your desktop icons, a start menu, a little clock in the bottom right, and of course all your windows for the various applications you'll run. All of the things present on your Kingsway OS are actually usable, and none are purely cosmetic, which is nice, but I wouldn't stop on the UI for too long, since, aside from the difficulty of clicking buttons in moving windows, it has next to no implications on the gameplay - peel it away, and you're left with a more-or-less regular roguelike.
Overall, while I would give points for the way the game is presented, I would also remove some for the difficulty of use that brings. Once the novelty wears off, some aspects just become tedious.

But let's not judge the game by what it looks like then, but by what it plays like. I found a whole lot of similarities with One Way Heroics, but I couldn't really say if Kingsway managed to out-do its predecessor in my eyes. The most glaring similarity is that both games have some nigh unstoppable force approaching from the west, forcing you to advance to the east while gaining power and searching for a way to stop the march of destruction. A lot of the other aspects are generally just characteristic of roguelikes, but they're still tuned to be similar to OWH, be that intentional or not.
During your adventure you level up, distribute your stat points, choose skills that are unique per character class, allowing for different play styles across multiple playthroughs, find or buy equipment that also plays a big role in defining your character... Pretty standard stuff. Throw in towns, dungeons, quests, random events, some secrets, a few different endings, and you got yourself the core of what this game is.

I don't actually have many gripes with this game, and definitely nothing major that bugged me. I'm not a big fan of action elements in otherwise non-realtime games, so the combat wasn't ideal, but since this is the main thing that actually synergizes with the unique UI, it also opened up some fun possibilities, and I can't really blame the choice.
I would say that, as always, a roguelike is very reliant on the amount of content it has, in addition to it having to be fun to play. I think The Binding of Isaac is a fine example of this, since the amount of content will keep people playing for hundreds of hours, instead of maybe 10 or 20. Kingsway is a bit weak in this regard. I like the gameplay, but quite quickly I've seen most of what the game has to offer.

So... I loved this game. I think I'll be playing it a bit more to 100% it, and I would definitely recommend trying it.
Edit: Here's a spoilery link to what I consider "beating the game". Note the character's shield slot and the ring on the left.