Before I bought Juicy Realm, I should have taken into consideration the game’s “casual” tag.
I enjoy similar games like Enter the Gungeon and The Binding of Isaac, but Juicy Realm was just too shallow for my liking. I played through three runs, encountered the same boss all three times, and the weapon variety I encountered ranged from a handful of odd melee weapons (a rubber chicken comes to mind) to a small assortment of same-y pistols and one gun called Steam, which shot money (how painfully clever) at my enemies.
The enemies themselves are personified, weapon-wielding fruit. There are notes scattered throughout the levels that you can read that (I’m assuming, since I played for just under an hour) gradually reveal the backstory of the game. The notes were very brief, and I encountered the same ones through my handful of runs. I eventually ignored the notes altogether.
Ultimately that was what I disliked the most about Juicy Realm, it was too repetitive. I encountered the same, bloated boss at the end of the first area, and from there the game shifts to a desert zone where seemingly everything explodes. From inanimate cacti to flying corn kernel-looking things, it seemed like everything was made of dynamite. Having to run through the same boss fight, only to die in random-feeling encounters cheapened the feeling of progression and ultimately discouraged me from continuing to play.
To add to that frustration were very limited options available to me, and I found the sound design particularly tiresome after the first few minutes of gameplay. I wanted to hear the music, but the sound effects were just overwhelming and became borderline annoying in a short amount of time.
Overall, I’d say this game would make a good entry point for someone looking to dip their toes into roguelike games, but chances are if you already have a taste for roguelikes, you won’t find much excitement with Juicy Realm.
NOT RECOMMENDED: Juicy Realm, even for it’s affordability (it’s sitting around $10 on Steam, at launch), provided little value for the time I spent playing it. I wasn’t having much fun, the enemies were forgettable, the weapons were not exciting to use…there wasn’t enough to motivate me to keep playing. Performance-wise I encountered zero bugs, and I had no trouble running the game, —Juicy Realm is well built, but the meat on its bones was meager at best.
