Entropy

A theatre troupe drafted into a demon war

Entropy opens with a wooden-sword stage performance interrupted by an actual demon attack at the gates, and that collision of the theatrical and the genuinely apocalyptic sets the tone for everything that follows. The world is dying — not from any single cataclysm, reviewers and the store page agree, but from a slow, inexplicable infertility that's left scattered, squalid, tyrant-ruled settlements surrounded by monster-infested wilderness. It's a strange, specific kind of grimdark that several reviewers compare to a JRPG filtered through a "depressed euro lens," or Nausicaä crossed with Vagrant Story. That's a lot of reference points to throw at one setting, and the fact that they land as a coherent description rather than a confused mess of comparisons says something about how distinctive the writing and atmosphere actually are.

This is Lovely Hellplace's second game, following the cult-favourite action RPG Dread Delusion, and the connection matters for how the reception is reading right now. A meaningful share of Entropy's Early Access enthusiasm is existing fans of that first game extending trust to a new one, and several reviews explicitly frame this as "if you liked Dread Delusion" rather than judging Entropy purely on its own terms. Artyom Trakhanov's art direction — a retro, PS1-influenced 3D style paired with detailed character portraits — carries over as the clearest visual throughline between the two games, and it's the single most consistently praised element across the review corpus.

Turn-based tactics with real stakes, sometimes too real

Where Dread Delusion was an action RPG, Entropy switches to turn-based tactical combat, assembling a party of up to six characters (with a larger reserve pool) into fights where limb-targeting, armour types, and elemental gear interact in ways reviewers describe as genuinely rewarding once understood — maces and axes crush armour, spears reach the back row, and destroying a limb can cripple an enemy's whole turn. Fallen party members can be replaced through a mercenary system that charges an upfront hiring cost plus an ongoing cut of future combat earnings, which gives squad composition real economic consequences rather than being a free undo button.

The trouble is what happens when that system meets the game's permadeath and injury mechanics under its current save structure. Entropy autosaves constantly and offers no manual save slots, which several reviewers report turning a single unlucky encounter into an unrecoverable setback — a character permanently dead or crippled with no way to reload to before the fight. One reviewer described losing "hours" of progress this way and simply stopping rather than rebuilding from a weakened position; another proposed decoupling manual saves from the difficulty setting entirely, since right now choosing anything but the easiest mode effectively locks a player into ironman rules whether they wanted that pressure or not. It's a legitimate design philosophy — permadeath without a safety net is a real school of tactics-game design, Battle Brothers and Darkest Dungeon both live there — but multiple reviewers frame the specific combination of autosave-only plus permadeath as an oversight rather than an intentional statement, and the volume of the complaint suggests it's the single biggest fix the game needs.

Difficulty tuning compounds the problem. Reviewers describe Normal mode as close to trivial once a workable party composition is found, while Hard swings the other way into what more than one review calls "masochistic," with early fights capable of one-shotting party members through RNG that feels disconnected from player skill. Losing characters on Hard also has a compounding effect: a smaller, weaker squad earns less gold per fight, which makes it harder to afford the replacements or equipment needed to recover, creating a spiral that at least one reviewer says pushed them to shelve the game until a balance pass. This is Early Access feedback doing exactly what it's supposed to do — the developer is clearly still tuning these numbers — but it's a real gap between the two available settings today, not a hypothetical concern.

A short first chapter, honestly

The content available right now is limited to the game's first act, which most reviewers finish in somewhere between three and eight hours depending on how thoroughly they explore side content and random overworld encounters. That's disclosed honestly as Early Access rather than hidden, and several reviewers explicitly frame it as "come back with more acts" rather than a complaint about being misled. One reviewer did go further, suggesting the price and length seem calibrated to land just outside Steam's standard two-hour refund window — a serious accusation to make about any Early Access launch, though it's a single reviewer's speculation rather than anything independently verifiable, and the overwhelmingly positive tone of the surrounding reviews doesn't support reading it as the dominant sentiment. It's worth knowing the concern exists without treating it as settled fact.

Where the game's writing does show real ambition despite the short runtime is in its "choose your own adventure"-style overworld encounters — text vignettes with accompanying art and a choice or two, which one reviewer compares favourably to The Banner Saga's wandering-text-event system. Companions fare less well by comparison: several reviews note that despite distinctive portraits and introductions, most party members rarely comment on events or grow much beyond their opening scene, which sits oddly next to how much personality the game finds room for everywhere else.

Final verdict

Entropy earns its Very Positive reception honestly — the writing, world design, and art direction are doing exactly what a follow-up to Dread Delusion needs to do, and the tactical combat has real depth once its systems click. What holds it back from an unreserved recommendation today is specific and fixable rather than fundamental: pair permadeath with a way to actually undo a bad roll, close the gap between an easy Normal and a punishing Hard, and the game underneath is already most of the way to being excellent. Buying in now means buying into that process — a genuinely distinctive three-to-four-hour first act, at a price that assumes good faith about where the finished game is headed. For anyone drawn to the studio's previous work or the specific flavour of grim, mushroom-choked JRPG revivalism on offer here, that's an easy trade. For anyone allergic to losing a run to bad luck with no way back, it's worth waiting for a save-system patch first.