When comparing Caves of Qud vs Pixel Heroes: Byte & Magic, the Slant community recommends Caves of Qud for most people. In the question“What are the best roguelikes/roguelites on PC?” Caves of Qud is ranked 11th while Pixel Heroes: Byte & Magic is ranked 47th. The most important reason people chose Caves of Qud is:
Mutations are one of the biggest parts of Caves of Qud. Want to be a two-headed beguiling spider-thing? A four-armed flying plant-man? You can. There's also lots of armor, weapons, and equipment, which can be found enchanted, as well as a bunch of "spells" (mental mutations) and skills.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Tons of customization
Mutations are one of the biggest parts of Caves of Qud. Want to be a two-headed beguiling spider-thing? A four-armed flying plant-man? You can. There's also lots of armor, weapons, and equipment, which can be found enchanted, as well as a bunch of "spells" (mental mutations) and skills.
Pro Fantastic User Interface
The UI in Qud is very well designed, which helps to make it easy to get into.
Pro Over 60 factions
Befriend or become enemies with dozens of different factions—crabs, turtles, robots and even trees to name a few.
Pro Interesting and original setting
The game is set in a post-apocalyptic world that feels truly unique. Caves of Qud's world is like no other, and everything from the creatures/characters you'll encounter, to the items you'll find, and the locations you'll discover is different from what you would find in most rogue-likes.
Pro Unique idea
Unique content and idea of "retro-future" make this "not another rogue-like", in a way.
Pro Unique and evocative prose, art and music
Extremely well written, with highly evocative prose which brings this unique world to life. The fantastic writing is supplemented by a unique art style and sublime otherworldly music.
Pro Huge, procedurally-generated world
Pro Pixel perfect
Graphics and fonts are pixel perfect.
Pro Retro look, sound & feel
Authentic 8bit visuals, sound & music. Also with authentic low screen resolution.
Pro Quick save
A feature that should be necessary for all mobile games, quick save allows the user to set the game down at any time by saving quickly, making for a game that can be played in plenty of short bursts without loosing any progression.
Pro Humorous with nerd culture references
The game has a good sense of humor with many inside jokes referencing things such as Tolkien, Lovecraft as well as modern day dev. culture.
Pro Tons of loot
Cons
Con Can be difficult to get started
The beginning of the game explains little, depending on what attributes you put points into in character creation will have a high level of impact at the start of the game. This is not explained to the player, so if you do not put 18 points into "toughness" without having a very particular build in mind that will have some way of dodging or avoiding attacks, the result will just be plenty of death with little advancement.
Con Cooldown simulator
Con UI is in the way
UI is in the way, literally. Even with the overlay mod you'll have issues. The original overlay is too bulky and hard to read.
Con Limited starting characters
Starting characters are limited and random, which can be frustrating, especially when the game is centered around restarting many, many times.
Con No roguelite features
Pixel Heroes subscribes to Roguelike rules where there is zero carry over from previous playthroughs. When compared to the small amount of progression seen in Roguelites this may be a turn off for some users.
Con Status effects overpowered
Status effects have too much of an advantage over the player, which means a focus has to be on countering them, leaving other elements to not be focused on due to being under-powered in comparison.