Sometimes it’s neat to see how older play styles that have been around for decades can, at least in spirit, get new life in newer generations. While I actually have never been much of a fan of the Boulderdash franchise, it has been around since the very early days of gaming, and I’ve bumped into it quite a lot over the years. Mixing together some action and puzzling elements, your goal was to collect all of the gems on a given level before revealing and then leaving through the exit. The challenge was in making sure you didn’t end up unleashing an avalanche of boulders as you tried to do so, since they’d quickly crush you. While Pit Panic has elements in common with other more modern games, given the fact that it’s a roguelike if nothing else, much of that same original spirit is in place as you’ll find every move you make could easily lead to your downfall.

While in most games that involve digging of some kind your objective is to keep moving further down, in the case of Pit Panic you’ll instead be moving up in the hopes of making your escape, but picking up plenty of loot as well along the way. To help you with this, you’ll have your powerful omnitool to help out, allowing you to clear blocks, grab items, and more. While starting out your challenges will tend to be simplistic, trying to be sure to clear the right blocks and build yourself a path for moving your way up, it won’t take long to run into a wide variety of traps and other threats that you’ll quickly realize are almost all intended to kill you.

Early on, there’s no doubt that the game tends to be very focused on trial and error experimentation, and a lot of learning the hard way just how many varied ways you can die along your way. Whether it’s a matter of being impaled, crushed, burned, or any number of other fatal outcomes, you can expect a bit of frustration as you slowly come to understand all of the rules concerning how you interact with a variety of different blocks, items, and general situations. As you progress into new biomes the nature of the obstacles in your way will continue to change and get tougher to deal with, but that’s also where the fun lies, in fighting and managing to survive just a bit longer, getting further, and eventually making your way out. For the most part the game does a great job of feeling familiar, sneaking in a pretty wide variety of elements that will challenge you, and feeling pretty refreshing with its own take on roguelike action that deviates from the norm.