Unclean Water

A familiar developer signature, in a new setting

Unclean Water drops players into the sewers of Marlene, tasked with escaping while fighting off "Night Moss assassins" using a combat system built around precise strikes, defense, smashes, and shield bashes designed to exploit enemy openings. It's the latest release from eTIRUe, a developer whose prior games clearly have an established, devoted following, and that context matters for how the reviews read. One reviewer opened plainly: "I'm a huge fan of eTIRUe and this is another great game from them," describing it as "a simple dungeon crawler where you go through multiple levels and fight bosses" — but tellingly, the same reviewer went on to recommend two of the studio's other titles, Ruined Nurse and Abyss School, as feeling "much better to play. No stiffness," and closed with "8/10, buy on sale though." That's a meaningfully specific piece of context: even enthusiastic fans of the developer's catalogue rank this particular entry below the studio's stronger work, which is worth knowing going in.

Where the game clearly succeeds

What isn't in dispute across the reviews is the strength of the art and character design. One detailed review broke its assessment down by category — "Art / Character design 10/10, Gameplay 7/10, Sound 8/10" — and concluded "the game is really fun and the characters are super cute. It all compliments each other very well and its fun all the way until the end." Another reviewer who reached the end of a full run, beating the final boss for the normal ending, compared the experience favourably to Crawling Lab, a clear point of reference for the genre this game is working within. The combat system's individual pillars — precise strikes, timed defense, heavy smashes, and shield bashes aimed at specific enemy openings — give the game more mechanical texture than a pure hack-and-slash roguelike, and several reviewers specifically credit that structure with keeping runs engaging across multiple difficulty tiers and extra game modes.

Replayability gets a specific nod as well: one reviewer called out "lots of extra game modes" adding real replay value beyond a single playthrough, and separately flagged the game's free DLC add-on as "a must have" that meaningfully enhances the base experience — a genuinely useful piece of buying advice for anyone picking the game up today.

The recurring "stiff" complaint, and a repetitive setting

The most consistent critical thread across reviews, including from broadly positive ones, is that the combat itself feels stiffer than the genre's better examples. That's a specific, mechanical complaint rather than a vague one — multiple reviewers use nearly identical language to describe it, and it's echoed by the game's harshest review, which argues the "gameplay loop is quite uninteresting" and that players spend "90% of the game looking at the floor checking for traps" rather than engaging with combat directly. The same critical review took direct aim at the setting itself, describing the sewer environment as "a very dull samey design" that could have used more visual variety even within the constraints of a sewer's inherently limited palette, concluding the experience "feels like Crawling Lab but lacking any of the fun parts of it" — a pointed comparison given how favourably other reviewers invoke that same reference point.

A more constructive piece of fan feedback echoes a related concern about impact and feel: one reviewer specifically asked the developer to expand ragdoll death physics beyond a single character, noting that a genuinely well-designed boss fight against "Nireph" currently ends anticlimactically because the enemy simply disappears on the final hit rather than reacting physically to the killing blow. That's a small but telling detail — it suggests some of the "stiffness" complaints may be less about the underlying combat mechanics and more about presentation and feedback on hits landing, which is a more fixable problem than a fundamentally broken combat system would be.

A specific technical issue, and a developer who shows up

One reviewer reported a concrete and reproducible technical problem: TSR anti-aliasing causing game freezes, resolved by switching to FXAA instead — a useful, specific workaround worth flagging for anyone hitting similar stability issues. What stands out about that same review, though, is what happened next: the developer personally reached out to help troubleshoot the problem directly, which the reviewer called out with genuine appreciation. That kind of direct, individual responsiveness lines up with the game's aggressive post-launch patch cadence, which has produced weekly, sometimes twice-weekly named updates since release covering new weapons, challenge modes, customization options, and further bug fixes — a studio clearly still actively shaping the game months after its initial launch.

Weighing the price

At $7.99, Unclean Water sits comfortably at the budget end of the roguelike shelf, and that price point matters for how forgiving players should be about the combat's rougher edges. A run through the main content, plus the extra modes and free DLC reviewers single out, comfortably clears that asking price on content alone, even before factoring in the game's evident post-launch support. It's a fair deal for anyone who finds the character and boss design as appealing as most reviewers clearly do, though it's worth going in with realistic expectations about combat feel rather than assuming the presentation guarantees an equally polished action system underneath it.

Verdict

Unclean Water delivers on its strongest asset without much argument — striking, well-realised character and boss design paired with a combat system with real mechanical depth in its individual pillars. Where it falls short of its genre's best is in overall feel: several reviewers, including fans of the developer's other work, describe the combat as stiffer and the sewer setting as more repetitive than they'd hoped, even while still finding real value in its extra modes and free DLC. Recommended for players drawn specifically to the developer's distinctive art style and character work, or fans of first-person roguelike dungeon crawlers willing to trade some combat polish for genuinely appealing presentation and an actively supported post-launch roadmap.