This is TorNis, from Twitch. I was first on livestream to beat on Insane difficulty this game (Vanilla SoTS), then the same happened with all expansions. I played this Roguelike too much. Perhaps too much. But it's worth every hour of my strugle versus the game. I cannot describe the feelings of joy once you beat the Pit for the first time.
Short info about the game:
- If you are old veteran of Roguelikes, such as ADOM, DC: SS, Nethack, Tome - you will love this one
- SotS: The Pit is a turn-based progressive grid-tile roguelike with advanced gameplay
- You will die a lot, learn from your deaths, collect recipies from your previous attempts. Knowledge = Power
- Know your enemy, your items, your skills, your enviroment, manage it and make the game's RNG bend to you, not you bend to RNG

I've sunk a shocking number of hours into this Pit and I am in the paradoxical situation of not recommending this game. It has many good points. But it is a sadistic game designed to trap a certain type of gamer who confuses difficulty as gameplay. And I fell for this trap hard. I have completed this game on the normal difficulty. I have also died trying more times than I can estimate. Was the journey worth it? No. I offer a metaphor for what it's like to win this game. It's like a casino with thirty floors. You start with a hundred bucks. And you've got to play at every table at least once. But you lose a dollar every five minutes, because the game has a brutal food clock. Yeah, Good Luck. For masochists only.

Hands down my favorite rogue-like on steam. ( I <3 U 2 FTL )
I've put in over 125 hours of starvation, ammo depletion, broken equipment and death and death and death. I love it and I still have yet to get close to beating this game. Not only did the game start with a crazy amount of resources, recipes, weapons, monsters and skills, but they kept adding to it! New characters, psi abilities more recipes and monsters. What do I do will all this random junk in my backpack, everything can be used to craft something new. And on top of that it has a great Sci-Fi dungeon crawl feel. Starving, saving your laser ammo until your skills are up and worrying if your combat knife is going to break on the next attack. The greatest game I've never beat!

Easily the most hidden gem (roguelike-wise) on steam. An ACTUAL roguelike with tons of stats, numbers, skills, crafting, etc. Well worth the money.

For fiction in general, not just videogames, there are works which attribute their success to being innovative and others that rely on typical genre conventions but are constructed well enough that generic elements fail to make them weaker as stories/movies/games/whatever. Between these two loosely defined and ocassionally overlapping categories, Sword of the Stars: The Pit is the latter. If you have experience with roguelikes, especially older ones, you have seen the elements that make it up before: heavily randomized level layouts, a prominent hunger mechanic to penalize idleness, and turn-based movement and combat. If all you care about is new game mechanics, this roguelike may not be for you.

Yet what Sword of the Stars: The Pit lacks in innovation it more than makes up for in polish, setting, and play style diversity. Each of the classes, with or without the additional ones from DLC, feels sufficiently different that relying on the same strategies in a universal manner is going to get you killed. With a host of stats and systems for gunplay, psychic powers and melee combat there is a class or two for everyone.


Chances are you will still die, of course. As rogue-likes go, this one is relatively forgiving, but the key word is relatively. You will still ♥♥♥♥ up and get murdered or starve, possibly several times in a row if you are unlucky or careless. If all you care about is getting to the end of a game, this probably isn't for you. If you can accept and embrace failure, however, Sword of the Stars has plenty of fun to be had on the way to the reaper.

A science fiction roguelike. It truly is Dungeons of Dredmoor with a future theme in almost every way. It has lots of classes. gear, systems, enemies, levels, and just all around great gameplay. It is turn based, you go forward in the levels with the gear you start with and what you find, with turn based combat, lots of chance systems with lockpicking, hacking, and the like. If you enjoy Dungeos of Dredmoor I gurantee that you will absolutely love this.

Final Verdict: Must-buy for fans of the genre, and strong reccomendation for the curious.

I have almost 500 games on steam, and another 1000+ console games. I keep coming back and playing this. It's fun!

An excellent and entertaining rogue-like. If you're into delving into the remains of a science fiction laboratory multiple times, with an assortment of varied characters, this is a great game.

(This review is based off of having all the DLC that have been released as of 09/13/2014)

This is one of my favorite roguelikes.

However, it's not for everyone.

+ Large variety of loot
+ Graphical style is mostly good
+ Great sci-fi setting
+ Good variety of classes
+ More lore than meets the eye
+ Lots of modes of difficulty
+ Plays great on a controller (I play with a 360 controller)

- Occassional bad and inconsistent graphics (especially some character portraits)
- No way to unassign skill points immediately after you assign them
- Race specific loot is frustrating
- Inventory management is frustrating. Wish they did something similar to RE4
- Crafting - very punishing to experiment when crafting (ex. you try to craft an item and that combo of items doesn't work - now those items are destroyed. However, there are ways to find recipes to avoid this problem. It just takes awhile to get them).

+/- Drops are highly based on luck. You need a lot of things to survive in this game, ex. a certain weapon, food, medpacks, armor, and it can either take a while to get what you want, or you may not get it at all. I love this because it challenges me to play in a certain way, but this may not appeal to others.
+/- Just like any good roguelike, it will take you a long, long time before you ever win. If you enjoy roguelikes, this shouldn't be a problem.

I love this game. I love the variety of classes, the setting, the different types of weapons, the feeling you get when you get a sweet weapon that has awesome stats and fits perfectly with your build. I absolutely love the feeling that the whole game is working against you - it like a sci-fi survival-horror rpg in roguelike form, which I think is amazing. (I think it's survival-horror in the sense of its plot, in that you're going alone into a dark pit filled with monsters, knowing that you are most likely going to die... It obviously isn't scary though)

tl;dr - If you like roguelikes, and you like them difficult, get this. For me, this game is a 9/10.

I will never stop playing this game. It is a must-buy

Sword of the Stars: The Pit is a turn-based exploration / survival game somewhat similar to the likes of Dungeons of Dredmor. The basic character classes seem a bit limited and don't offer any unique abilities although certain classes are more skilled doing certain things than other classes. It's a tough game to win because even on easy, other than unlocking doors, it is not forgiving. But it's usually hard because you can't find food, you can't find a gun or the right ammunition to fight, or you can't find ingredients to craft that precise recipe to cure disease--not because you died in combat.

The combat aspect of the game are indeed fun. The levels are small, yet rich with monsters to kill and other stuff to interact with. Every 5 levels down, the enemies gets tougher. Then at the bottom of the pit, the game becomes 20x harder than the first 29 levels combined because, well, they throw 20x monsters at you.

Overall, the game is entertaining, but it primarily suffers from a bad crafting system that requires very specific ingredients for even the most basic items. Plus the crafting stations are usually nowhere to be found when you need them most. So ultimately you keep a bunch of items around in your backpack taking up precious space, but can never use them because that last ingredient will never be found. Still, five quarters was money well spent.

An excellent roguelike game all about exploring the dark, conserving items, dealing with enemies in an intelligent order and throwing HE grenades when you meet something new and scary. Plenty of different playstyles, a real procedurally-generated blast once you come to grips with the slightly verbose and imposing interface and skill system.

Sword of the Stars: The Pit is an excellent sci-fi themed 'rogue-lite' that has just enough depth to keep you engaged but doesn't feel all too complicated. Definately a good pick for newcomers to the roguelike genre.

It has a wealth of classes to choose from -- most of which fall in to the classic RPG archetypes or some combination of them. (at least in the Gold Edition, which seems to be the only edition available at this time).

There is really nothing much to say about SotS: The Pit but there is nothing really *wrong* with it either. I didn't expect anything mind-blowing going in to the game but I also got what I wanted -- a good, rogue-lite with random dungeons, crafting, a myriad of different enemies and several ways of disposing of them.

I enjoy playing this game. I dont enjoy it when i am on level 20 or so, and i die, and theres no load button </3 . Anyways, game mechanic is very simple.The dlc's add ALOT into the game content, so you should worry about repitition.

9/10

ENjoy ^-^

it's a roguelike

A mind wolf used a psi ability that induces fear, my murican sgt gunny says "no, I don't wana talk about my feelings".
the first time I have laughed at a game in a long time.

For fans of the genre, it's highly recommended. It's challenging and engrossing. You'll lose hours upon hours in it.

This game is immense....whether your a hardcore rpg fan or strategy gamer.....its got such randomness and challenges....you want to go in for more.

The support from devs and constant updates...make it evolve so you want more......that one more turn...like civ...but a roguelike dungeon crawler of sheer epicness..

If your reading this.....just dive in. seriously

Do you like the rogue-like genre and want to have the best options of all other games combined in one game?
Then in my opinion this game is a good choice!

Without all the DLC installed (I have them all because the devs earn the <2 dollar they asked for the DLC) you already have tons of skills, items and crafting options in the main game.

The gameplay is smooth and the graphics simple but clean.
Combat is turn-based, but the gameplay is fast.
And every monster have is own stats so you can really make your own strategy and use your book often to read about items and monsters you already discovered.

A lot of games promise you that no two games are the same, but only a few keep their word about that.
Everytime I play this game I discover new items and monsters even in the first three floors.
I didn't even change my main character yet and already have so much fun with the standard marine with his comprehensive skill tree.
The balance of the placement of items, objects, monsters, rooms, secrets and traps is fair but every time very different.

Off course you need some luck, but it really mind if you try different tactics.
The tactics are in the details of this game.
For example with Ctrl pressed while you move you just change your field of view without moving so you can not be surprised at your back. If you use all your bullets at low lvl monsters at the beginning you possible ends up with your inventory full of useless guns.

There is so much more positive to tell about this game, but my advice is to really try it yourself.
It's more than Dungeons of Dredmor in space. It have a lot of detail, it's more random and in my opinion the graphics are more fresh. And I like Dod!

It's a lot of gaming for <10 bucks.

A science fiction turn based rogue-like game. Extremely difficult and will have you saving your last bullets and screaming bloody murder at the computer when you have 1000 rifle bullets and no rifle. Good crafting system with lots of combinations and interesting options. Frustrating, fun, a worthy rogue like.