Pereelous Review

Spin the reels, fight the dungeon

Most dungeon crawlers ask players to swing a weapon or cast a spell directly. Pereelous asks them to spin for one instead. Developed and published solo by VANDERMAESEN GAMES -- previously behind the well-liked Tiny Folks, a connection several reviewers mention by name -- it released on Steam on 17 October 2025 at a rock-bottom NZ$7.39, and the developer's own news history confirms the date without ambiguity: a hotfix landed within two days of launch, followed by a steady cadence of version updates through November, a pattern consistent with a genuine new release rather than a relabelled or ported one.

The pitch, and the reason it stands out even in a genre full of gimmicks, is mechanical: rather than choosing an attack from a menu, combat plays out across a spinning slot machine loaded with symbols for weapons, spells, bombs, coins, and hazards, with the resulting spin determining what happens next in a fight. It's a genuinely unusual fusion, and the small review sample -- 75 reviews at the time of writing, 62 of them positive, landing at a Very Positive rating -- consistently credits it as the game's most memorable feature. One reviewer sums up the appeal plainly: "Slots & Daggers but actually good," drawing a direct comparison to a similarly reel-based peer. Another calls it "a greatly simplified Slay the Spire with a slot machine bolted on," a framing that turns out to matter later in this review, since the comparison to Slay the Spire specifically is one several reviewers return to when describing what they feel the game is missing.

Price comes up unprompted and often: at under eight New Zealand dollars, multiple reviewers explicitly frame Pereelous as an easy recommendation on novelty and cost alone, even among reviewers who have real reservations about its deeper mechanics. Presentation earns steady, if less effusive, praise too -- pixel art and a chiptune soundtrack reviewers describe as a good tonal match for the dungeon-crawling premise -- and several reviewers specifically identify themselves as returning fans of the developer's earlier game, describing a similar affection for this follow-up and a developer they characterise as visibly present and responsive to feedback in the game's community space.

Set against that novelty and goodwill, the review sample converges on a specific and repeated structural concern: the game leans too heavily on randomness for its own tactical ambitions. More than one reviewer describes runs that feel decided by the reels themselves rather than by meaningful player choice, a complaint distinct from the ordinary "roguelikes are random" observation because it's specifically about the combat system offering comparatively little room to mitigate or plan around bad spins once a fight is underway. That concern pairs with a separate, equally specific complaint: Pereelous offers no meta-progression between runs. A failed attempt yields nothing carried forward into the next one, a choice several reviewers contrast directly and unfavourably with genre touchstones like Slay the Spire, where a lost run still unlocks new cards or relics for future attempts. Taken together, these two complaints describe a game whose core loop can feel like pure chance without either in-run agency or between-run reward to soften that randomness.

A smaller but concretely disliked mechanic compounds the same frustration: weapons degrade with use and require repair, which more than one reviewer frames not as a meaningful resource-management decision but as an added friction layer stacked on top of a combat system already governed heavily by chance. Specific, reproducible bugs surface at different points in the game's post-launch history too -- one reviewer describes a slot-destruction action intended to cost 25 coins instead consuming their entire coin total in one go, while a separate, later reviewer reports combat occasionally skipping straight to the reward screen without properly resolving. Neither complaint is corroborated by a second independent source in the sample gathered for this review, so both are reported here as specific, named bugs rather than confirmed widespread issues.

One balance complaint stands out as more serious than routine grumbling: several reviewers report that fleeing from combat, including against the game's final boss, can function as an effective free victory, an exploit that more than one reviewer says undercuts the stakes of the game's biggest fights entirely. A cluster of narrower balance notes rounds out the criticism -- an overpowered "chain" weapon that reviewers say trivialises encounters once acquired, and elemental status effects like poison and burn that reviewers describe as inconsistently effective depending on whether the player or an enemy is applying them -- alongside a shared wish among several reviewers for more biome, enemy, and merchant variety, given the game's comparatively short overall length.

Steam's own achievement data offers a rough, if imperfect, window into how players actually engage with the game's harder content. Of sixteen tracked achievements, the most commonly earned, slotBig, sits at 51.3%, and a plain win achievement sits at 41.9% -- both consistent with a game most buyers do complete at least once. But completion drops off sharply toward the harder-content achievements: winAll sits at just 4.2%, and the toughest challenge-related achievements, challenge and winChallenge, sit at 2.2% and 1.7% respectively. That steep late-funnel drop-off is broadly consistent with a game whose core loop many players finish once, but whose harder optional content -- and, this review suspects, its heavily randomness-dependent combat -- discourages the sustained repeat play that would be needed to chase deeper completion.

Set against the wider field of small-scope, mechanically novel roguelikes this coverage tracks, Pereelous's clearest strength is a genuinely inventive core hook executed at a genuinely inviting price. Its clearest weakness is that the hook's inherent randomness isn't yet balanced by either meaningful in-run counterplay or any between-run progression to soften a bad spin, leaving a small but real cluster of reviewers wishing the slot machine gave them a bit more to work with.

Verdict

Pereelous takes a genuinely distinctive swing at the dungeon-crawler formula, replacing direct combat with a slot machine of weapons, spells, and hazards, and its small Very Positive review sample rewards that novelty and its very low price with real enthusiasm. A repeated, credible concern about excessive RNG, a total lack of meta-progression, and a few specific, reported balance bugs and exploits are worth knowing going in, but at under eight dollars, this remains an easy, low-risk recommendation for roguelike fans curious about its central gimmick.