Cursed Loot - More of a blessing than a curse, really

Cursed Loot is another in the ever-lengthening line of dungeon-crawling roguelikes that are filling up the App Store.

This one has a bit of heritage though. It started off life as an Xbox Indie title, and now it's made the shuffling leap across to iOS.

And it's done it pretty well. This is a game that feels like it's been designed for mobile, with a simple control scheme, a sharp play experience, and a reasonably tight compulsion loop.

All in all it's a neat production, with a few niggles, that fans of the genre are going to enjoy.

Yup. You pick a character then stomp around 50 floors of subterranean challenges. There are monsters to kill, chests to open, and little choose-your-own-adventure quests to complete or ignore.

You move around with a joypad on the screen. Walk into an enemy and you'll start swinging your weapon. You tap to open chests and interact with the environment, and if your health gets low you can tap a button to use a health potion, if you have any.

As you level up you unlock points to spend on new skills. Different characters have different skills they're more proficient at, but you can give them to anyone.

Some are passive, some appear as buttons on the right of the screen to be used whenever you fancy.

They've got a cooldown on them though, so you need to make sure you're not wasting them. There's loot to collect as well, and a variety of potions that have different effects.

Some of the equipment you find is mysterious. You either need to use a scroll to find out what they are, or pay some gold at one of the shops that pop-up during your adventuring.

You've got a lantern too. This illuminates the area around you, but it runs out of fuel, and you need to top it up. Run out and you're stumbling through the dark, which isn't exactly the most proficient way to explore a dungeon.

Yeah. I mean, there's not a huge number of original ideas here, but there are enough that you don't feel too much like you're constantly retreading old ground.

But there are a few niggles. The controls aren't great, and while you can use an MFi controller, if you don't have one you'll sometimes find yourself wandering into poison traps or spikes when you meant to head for a ladder.

That aside though this is a well polished and engaging scrapper. It might not be up there with the big boys of the genre, but it definitely has some spark. And quite frankly, that's more than a lot of roguelikes have offered recently.