Rad

Rad delivers a superbly addictive and frequently harsh roguelike experience that stands among the best of them, though you'll sometimes curse the game's randomness for ruining your run.

RAD is a gorgeous and addictive entry into the Roguelite genre with creative powerups and a groovy soundtrack.

RAD is a fun, weird, rogue-like game that is incredibly approachable for all players. Whether you love the challenge of sudden death or you just want to branch out, Double Fine has made a game that caters to both sides and has fun doing it. The heavily 80’s inspired content is refreshing and quite enjoyable from the soundtrack and over-saturated colors to cassette tapes and floppy disks as currency. Every death is met with joy and curiosity as to what horrible cartoonish monstrous limbs I’ll mutate in my next run and I could easily play for hours on end.

Double Fine delivers a great roguelike with old school elements and a well-designed difficultly that is hard, and sometimes fair. While it is not perfect in some regards, RAD will keep you engaged in this post-apocalyptic post-world with his well-designed ‘80s theme.

An engaging 80's world is the playground for a romp through a procedurally generated dungeon crawl. But it's not really the changing landscape that spices up the experience, its the wildly shifting abilities earned via in-game mutations that drastically alter one run to the next. The package oozes style and has enough substance to back it up. I just find it lacking that last little bit of polish to help me decide how I want to play, not how the random number generator is going to direct me.

Conceptually it’s quite familiar, but the game injects a lot of bizarre fun and skill-based gameplay into what can otherwise be a very serious, numbers-based genre.

Double Fine has done it again. They've chosen a crowded genre like de roguelike games and gave it a spin to offer something new and interesting with RAD. It's a shame it fall too short on contents despite its good manners.

Rad is a great roguelike that constantly evolves to give you plenty of options the more you play, with unique mutations and a different world to explore on each playthrough.

Rad is about what you expect from the modern rogue-like game in terms of features and structure. If you dig the 80's aesthetic, or rogue-likes in general, there's a game that you can sink many hours into here.

And that's the key to RAD: the unknown. The player's powers are randomly-generated, and so is the world they step in to. But each is beautifully animated and exciting to use and explore. You'll die A LOT, but the game gives you so much each playthrough that you can feel forward progress. Your bank account will grow, allowing you to purchase new items. You'll get stronger, more aware of enemy attacks. You'll get radder.

You can’t go wrong with RAD and experiencing yet another imaginative title from Double Fine.

Roguelikes don't get much more bodacious than RAD. If you take a trip into the Fallow, good luck making it out. You're going to need it.

I've had a lot of fun with RAD, even though I can tell I've really only scratched the surface. Trying to work with suboptimal body modifications is pretty funny in and of itself, and discovering new mutations and lore has been intriguing. I don't think any studio other than Double Fine could have made the post-apocalypse this entertaining.

Overall, RAD is a great time. A simplistic roguelike with a humble, yet ingenious mechanic. Its biggest downfall is a lack of multiplayer, which is disappointing, as teams of different mutants roaming the Fallow would’ve provided a new level of fun and extended replay value. That said, for what it is, it’s well done. The variety in its power-ups, map generation, and character selection keep things fresh, and the gameplay evolves alongside the mutating characters to remain entertaining and addictive. Throw in witty dialogue, a super-looking dystopia, and a wonderfully thought out soundtrack, and you have a roguelike that is truly rad.

If you are a fan of top-down roguelike dungeon crawlers, keep RAD on your radar. Bonus points if you like this kind of 80s neon aesthetic and the world-building it provides. It’s a good choice for those who just want a quick gaming session—or a long one if you really want it.

Beautiful, bold and a lot of fun. RAD is a great game and a great roguelike. There is a lot of variety and every run is truly unique. There are some good persistent upgrade features that make every run feel like you're edging towards eventual victory. You could play this game for a very long time until you see everything and I really want to see everything. If you like roguelikes or a great deal of variation in your gameplay, you'll not be disappointed spending your cash on this quirky title.

With its twisted style and humour, RAD offers a fresh take on the roguelike, proving there’s plenty of life in the genre.

RAD is a lot deeper than it looks at first glance, and a lot more challenging too. Both are good things, and the procedurally generated layouts and mutations guarantee that variety will always be served. Sometimes you’ll play for minutes and other times for hours – I’m about eight hours deep so far – but the more time you spend with RAD, the more likely you are to click “New Run” when you finally die.

Rad isn’t really dramatically reinventing any wheels, but it’s the perfect wee game to have sitting on your HD for some casual fun. You can bust out a run in its delightfully weird world in an hour or so and have a slightly different experience each time. It may not inspire the sort of rabid devotion of something like Spelunky, but it’s a great gaming snack between meals.

Double Fine enters the roguelike genre proposing an experience that, although is dazzling at an artistic level, it presents some frictions in its gameplay. The limited variety of skills and objects that you can use and a series of shallow combat systems end up creating a title that, despite being a worthy product, fails to meet the expectations it generates in the first minutes of the game.

RAD was a fun experience and one that I’ll likely revisit in the future. However, it’s pacing made it difficult to play for long periods of time. It’s a decent distraction but it just doesn’t hold up as a game you might want to binge all the way through. Luckily, the rogue-lite formula fits perfectly into small distractions like this.

RAD doesn’t really bring anything new to the table, although if you like the genre, we’re sure you’ll enjoy its sense of humor, its gameplay and its visual style.

Looking at RAD as a whole, it's a solid roguelike that shines in creative ideas, setting, and visuals. At the same time, it falls for the usual tropes, so if you're not a fan of roguelikes, you have been warned. Difficulty and repetition are exaggerated here, but it's due to repetition in powers and level design, which makes grinding for progression even more tedious than it has to be. For a $20 purchase, this is certainly a good new roguelike for fans of Double Fine and the genre.

There is a disconnect between Rad’s appealing world and character design, art direction and writing, and its frustratingly difficult gameplay. The world is fun to be in, with no lack of clever, imaginative touches but its combat can turn the experience sour. Gamers with grit and patience will discover a lot of layers, secrets and maybe even a little unexpected pathos but many will be turned away by the early game’s barriers.

It’s the kind of game that, if players are willing to look past its rougher edges, can provide hours of entertainment, and give them an experience both familiar and entirely off the beaten path.

Really, the only thing that RAD is missing is Richard Simmons. As a game, there's a bit of a misfire in that the one area where RAD looks to distinguish itself from its peers actually hurts more than it helps, but the core action remains sound, and the nostalgia trip back to my childhood was like a precious gift. I question just how many 30-somethings are out there looking for a new time-draining roguelike to play, but regardless of just how niche RAD's audience turns out to be, I'm very glad that Double Fine gave it a crack.

It isn’t bad but we’re sad that there’s not more to it. Mutations are pretty gnarly and this VHS vision is pleasingly neon but unfortunately there’s little to this roguelike beyond its ’80s infatuation. [Issue#166, p.90]

It's just that the joys of Rad require more work than necessary to obtain, and that work can feel awfully thankless at times. Double Fine's hyper-colorful take on an '80s synthpop apocalypse makes for some gratifying nostalgia at the best of times, but there's a reason why, eventually, we all moved on to grunge.

The more often you get stuck with the same items and abilities, the more redundant and shallow the game feels.