Imbroglio
Step into the gaming world with Imbroglio, one of the top $3.99 games in the App Store! Crafted with creativity and innovation by Michael Brough, this captivating Strategy game is bound to grab your attention. With its content rating of 9+, it caters to a wide audience. Ever since its release on 18th May 2016, it has been constantly updated, with the latest version rolled out on 9th May 2020.
Whether you have a liking for Strategy, games, Imbroglio is sure to keep you hooked!
User Ratings
Join the crowd of 97 gamers who have given their verdict on Imbroglio.
Ready to take on the adventure? Get Imbroglio now from the APP STORE.
Dive into Imbroglio
"Every individual element of Imbroglio’s design coalesces into an elegantly complex whole. Nothing is out of place. It’s the kind of game that I just want to think and talk about all the time." – Pocket Tactics review
Finalist for Excellence in Design, Independent Games Festival 2017.
Named best game of 2016 by iPhone GameCast.
Named one of the ten best British games of 2016 by Kotaku UK.
Honorable Mention for Best Mobile Game in Game Developers Choice awards 2017.
Survive in an ever-shifting labyrinth filled with vicious monsters and valuable gemstones. Choose your hero, arm them with magical weapons, spend runes to invoke special powers, and fight for a high score in this deck-building tactics game where the deck is the dungeon.
At least four enigmatic enemies to battle.
Eight different heroes to play as.
Thirty-two weapons to level up.
What’s Fresh in the Latest Update?
Discover what’s new in the recent update of Imbroglio on 9th May 2020:
Sorry it hasn’t been a smooth release, thanks everyone who’s let me know what’s up, hopefully this version fixes all the main issues!
- fixed another game center crash on startup with previous version.
- fixed problem with displaying draft scores.
- fixed problems with Anchor stunning the wrong things.
- fixed problem with ranged weapons when using Brainspoon.
- fixed problem with Starshine not working correctly with Figurehead.
Mizzenmast expansion is available to purchase! 4 new heroes, 16 new weapons, and a new game mode: Draft.
Hear from the Players – Imbroglio Reviews
Find out what gamers are saying about Imbroglio:
Imbroglio rules in many ways. Its awesomeness is impossible to overstate. It is challenging, clever, complex, and boss.
A truly incredible game, and it explores its mechanics to its utmost.
Very responsive and talented developer with skills all around. We have probably spent 4 full months of our life playing Imbroglio and look forward to playing a lot more with a revamp of the basics and Mizzenmast. Who needs a battery-roasting game world when you can explore a perilous 4×4 grid with brilliant gameplay? Update: crying with laughter at using the Shopkeeper. Using Lightkeepers Candle (gain runes at start of game) and Bonesnare (when runes are gained, hit the enemy here) killed us BEFORE we COULD MOVE Im imagining Elephant Man bawling out we AM NOT AN ENEMY It is an awesome, brilliant and darkly amusing new world. We thought Imbroglio would be tough to follow up on and if so, a little hard to reinvest in. Oh our goodness do we love playing again. Must buy. Just buy. Likely the smartest and most original solo designer on the App Store.
You can read other reviews for general impressions of the game, but in general this is a near perfect game. We love the new draft mode, except that you can only play the level you create once. It takes too long to be recreating boards over and over to only be able to play it once. Unless we are missing something. Please please change that so we can play each board unlimited until we decide to move onto the next board.
Imbroglio is possibly the most elegant game we’ve ever played.
Its entertaining, and you dont realize the hours are going by. We think theres a bug, though, where if you unlock a character and then delete and re-install the game, it wont unlock them again unless you beat your high score (saved in Game Center). Be wary of this; hopefully dev can fix it one of these days.
We’ve never wrote a review till now. This game is the one that deserves it. Its challenging, has high replayability, and is mostly fair. 90% of our losses in this game are our own fault. Occasionally the wall shifts will trap us in the worst possible position, but plan accordingly and this shouldnt be an issue. We’ve been playing this for years now. Its the only game that we’ve never deleted from our phone.
One comment on recent patch – you can still use Harry build with now-outlawed range-ish options by copying a friends board that used them back when they were legal. We would prefer to see, and ideally help develop if we were better, a new Harry meta. We like that last sentence.
We’ve played hundreds of games for 30 years. We are very picky and most games bore us. This game is great. It can be replayed over and over because you can change the tiles that the character attacks from.
Perfect for a train commute. Turn based, challenging, doesnt get old. Love it!
One of the truly rate games where skillful play is more important than luck or IAPs (of which there are none except for the expansion pack). A massive variety of weapons, adventurers, and monsters; All balanced to perfection. At first, you won’t know why you are dying so fast, but keep playing and the light will come on. And… IPhone X native screen support!
One of the best games on the app store. So excited for an expansion! Thanks Brough!
We can hardly read the tiny text! We agree with other reviews, the game is confusing and the instructions make no sense! Only worth1$ IMO.
Will always have a place on our phone. This game is incredibly rewarding when you figure out how to succeed. It makes you feel smart. And it’s fun. This never gets old.
This is a great app! However, we just downloaded IOS 11 and now we cant get it work at all. Please fix.
Been playing off and on for a year now, we really think it’s up there (yet nothing like) Tetris.
We just can’t open it. Reinstalled several times but it just doesn’t work.
Imbroglio is a simple, yet engaging game that will keep you coming back. Setting up fun boards to play on is great and the options for how to play are many. Please address the app crashes caused by iOS 11. The app often crashes on startup, but once you get it going (after potentially many tries) it works fine.
This was one of our favorite time wasters but now it crashes when we try to open it.
This game makes no sense when you first start so it seems like it is no fun right off the bat. There needs to be a tutorial showing how to play. We had no idea what we were doing for the first 15 minutes and then we quit out of frustration.
2017 update Some Nice tweaks here. They haven’t completely changed the game, but it definitely feels different. It’s made us go back and revisit some cards/tiles we hadn’t gotten familiar with before this update. … This is still one of our favorite all time games (on ANY platform), and can’t recommend it more. We’ve dumped a good 300+ hours into it now, and still have yet to hit the score ‘ceiling’… But can’t help trying at least once or twice a day. =oD update 10-2016 Holy cow!!! An update with two new characters, 16 new cards AND. A new game-mode?!?! We couldn’t update then throw down the couple $$ faster! Bullet Hell Monday was working its way closer and closer to our 2016 GOTY list’s #1 spot, but this update just blew everything else from this year outta the water. And after at least 200+ hours playing this game, we still have yet to move past Jeska. So two more characters and a bunch of new cars combos will keep us going for quite some time. This has become our favorite iOS game ever. It’s even moved up past many greats and slammed into the #2 spot on our favorite games of all time list, right behind Metroid II. We’re going to be playing this in 20+ years… If you haven’t experienced the insane genius of Michael Brough’s games, I’d FULLY recommend you do. Even if you aren’t into strategy/roguelikes. Zaga33 made us a Roguelike fan. 868-Hack made us obsessed with the genre, and Imbroglio turned out to be the crown jewel of it all. GET THIS GAME!!! updated notes – Imbroglio has wound up being our main go-to game over the last month or so. In that time, it’s beat out 868-HACK (which is still a mind-blowingly amazing game, and still one of our favorites of all time…) – which puts this one as another title that’s made it’s way onto our list of all-time favorites. It’s basically a shoe-in for the #1 spot on our 2016 GOTY list, and many friends would have no problems telling you that we are obsessed with this game. We have bought Teeny Titans, Adventure Time Game Wizard and Battlefleet Gothic Leviathan since purchasing this, and we haven’t spent more than an hour or two with each of those games BECAUSE OF Imbroglio. It’s that engaging… It’s that freak’n good. Original review**Michael Brough has been a favorite developer of ours since we ‘discovered’ Zaga-33. Thankfully, he’s been sticking it out on the iOS platform for years and given us multiple must-own/’staple’ titles for the touch-screen; Helix, Corrypt, Glitch Tank, and one of our favorite games on any gaming platform, ever – 868-HACK. Well, now we have Imbroglio, a ‘spiritual successor’ to 868-HACK. And while we don’t think any game will ever come close to clicking with us in the way that 868-H. Has, Imbroglio is definitely one of Brough’s best. A rogue-like/tile-based puzzle game with deck-builder (not collector, but BUILDER) elements. How this wasn’t thought of before now is beyond us, but we’re so glad that Brough was the one that brought it to the iDevice – there are few other developers that could have managed to translate this game from an idea to the touch-screen as well as MB has. The rate at which you’ll unlock new things (at first, scoring 32 to unlock deck-building – then 64, 96, 128…) guarentees that you will know what you need to know before new elements are added to the game. Now, while this game is INCREDIBLY deep – it’s also INCREDIBLY approachable. You move your character (one of 4 that you originally start out with, each with their own special features) on a 4×4 grid/maze, trying to collect as many gems as possible. Enemies appear every 4 turns – gems appear at least 4 movements away from the gem you just collected – the ‘maze’ rearranges with every gem you manage to collect – and your attacks depend on what tiles you’re standing on at the moment, which means you’ll have to place your character on the right tile before trying to attack enemies (who have various amounts of health and mana – either of which can be depleted in order to dispatch them with the tiles that correspond to either attribute) – with the amount of ‘gems’ you collect as your score. You’ll also be leveling up, using special powers, leveling your cards up and all-n-all, just having a blast (if it clicks with you, that is). I’d recommend watching some videos before purchasing if you’ve never experienced a Michael Brough game – but if you’re already a fan of his previous releases, chances are, you’ll enjoy the stuffing outta this one.
This is the kind of game we comb the App Store looking for. It’s an actual game!! Fun to play, and challenging. The focused problem solving of this game is what makes it fun. We find it accessible without focusing on characters or world-building (which often detracts from actual fun) while also being challenging without being ridiculous (or relying on pay-to-win crap). We like the fact that it doesn’t spoon feed you: once you get over the learning curve, this is a game among games. Absolutely splendid.
One of the most addictive games we have played. A perfect mix of up front strategy and planning and turn based tactics. The add-on with the new game mode is all we play. We love the weapon limits and 4 day tournament feel. Great work!
Incredible depth and novel gameplay. Buy it.
It really is a brilliant game. If you’re considering picking this up – do it.
More puzzle than roguelike, this turn-based game is equal parts frustration and joy. Move around randomly-generated mazes trying to up your score and keep alive. Then, after you’ve gotten the hang of things (or you think you have…) build your own tile layout and start building things up in addition to staying alive. There’s plenty of unlockables in this fantastic game, there’s nothing quite like it anywere…
One of the most enjoyable games we’ve ever played on a mobile device. It takes a few minutes to figure out the strategies, but once you look at some of the leaderboards to get tips for board design, the game’s intrigue, play-repeatability, and genius just explode.
This is everything we want from a mobile game (fun, challenging, easy to pick up/put down, relaxing) without everything we don’t (freemium, IAPs that aren’t expansion packs). It’s held our attention an order of magnitude longer than most mobile games. The sound design is very nice and relaxing. The art is… Not well drawn, per se, but done with consistency and a cute aesthetic that makes the whole thing very charming. Beautiful game design from Michael Brough as always. Anyone who likes this should also get 868-hack. It’s a crime this doesn’t have more reviews.
Ok. We like this game. But it has a lot of wasted potential in our opinion. We’ve also played and love Zaga-33, also by the artist here, and we feel similarly about it, but not as strongly. Zaga is intended to be a random adventure, but it has a reachable goal. The unbalanced weapon upgrade goals remove a "sense of accomplishment" in Imbroglio due to the flaws we’ll hereafter mention. First and foremost, there are mechanics that make this an exasperating game that just need to be changed: 1) when you’re in a corner and on a ranged space, aiming at two enemies, sometimes the better choice is to move out of the corner, but the game only allows you to shoot; 2) If you can only unlock board changing for a character after you get a certain number of gems, you need to make the default board accessibly completable. These flaws inhibit straight playability for anyone and everyone. Not even looking at these problems, there are just some annoying aspects of the game itself that could be changed. First, the randomness of the game turns all aspects of strategy into a facade. Think you’re a pro? Nope, just lucky one shots, gem spawns, and mazes. Not very good? Maybe you’re just getting screwed by corner generation, spawns, and fixed difficulty ramping. Of course strategy games can be semi-random. That’s most RPGs. But when you depend on the randomness to succeed for the majority of your journey to 100 gems, that’s silly. Second are the screw-you-over movement mechanics. In Zaga, you have enough health for this to make the game interesting. It also feels somewhat realistic: you get trapped, you have to take a hit. However, in Imbroglio, you have 4 hits and an incredibly small map with walls. If an enemy spawns on an off turn, you have to take a hit. If you’re a certain character against a certain enemy, that can mean you literally can’t kill it. Even at full health. And if you run to a gem (if you can), another enemy will spawn in, creating a cycle of death. Imbroglio deserves a circumvention to this mechanic, like a pass option. That would require strategy, and would maintain the game’s intended difficulty. We’ll stop there with the problems and say that this is a noteworthy game: it just needs developer attention and a couple of buffs. To anyone considering purchase, try it out, it’s worth the money. However, we would recommend Zaga-33 as a substitute, though.
Like most Brough-verse games, it takes a little time for the game mechanics to sink into your brain, but once they do this is an impossible-to-put-down masterpiece. The dungeon floor as your "deck" of attack/ability cards that you move around on and how they level up based on where you and your enemies are when you defeat them forms the core of what makes this game so good. You have to balance care and risk in both pursuing the gem of each floor and killing enemies to level up your cards. The high score nature of the game keeps us coming back again and again after every defeat, most of which are our own fault. That’s the mark of truly good game design.
This is one of our favorite games that we don’t understand.
This is one of the best iOS games we’ve played. The strategy is a wonderful mix of preparation beforehand and adapting on the fly. Easy to get into but incredibly deep.
One of the top 4 or 5 mobile games we’ve ever played. Whether element of the game design is beautifully thought out and expertly combined. This new work continues to advance Brough’s pioneering explorations in the young art of digital game-crafting. It’s also very fun and terribly mysterious.
For those cerebral players that want a deep experience that doesn’t take hours, give this a try!
Our favorite game for several months now.
It’s an excellent game with tons of variety that works offline, works one-handed, is fine without sound if you want to listen to music or a podcast, and displays all of its accumulated consequences in such a clear way that even if you come to your stop halfway through a game, you can pick up instantly where you left off without having to remember anything.
Imbroglio is an extremely enjoyable rogue-like that is playable in both short and long sessions. The game allows you to create different combinations of characters and weapons before you start a round. The expansion that comes with the app adds many fun play styles and is definitely worth the money. Almost definitely the best game we’ve ever played on iOS, and possibly even our favorite of all time.
Worth every penny. Looking forward to trying Brough’s other creations.
Imbroglio is a really good game, with a few flaws that keep it below the developer’s previous awesome successes. The game has Brough’s usual sense of minimal style and emphasis on "here are the rules, here are the ways you can bend them." The action goes from breezy to intense moments where you’re suddenly counting spaces, or trying to figure out how to get back in ‘sync’ with an enemy. As puzzlers go, way above average. So why knock off a star? There are some design choices here that take the game from hard to masochist, and not the good kind: * The game is best from about the 20% complete to about 80% – outside of that it’s hard hard hard. Which might be okay if not for… * The board is a tight 4×4 – so tight that even the most inconsequential movement (or worse, slip of the thumb) sends a good game spinning out of control. * There are too many weapon choices – it’s fun to bend the rules some, but tedium-to-insanity wading through all of them. * This makes rebalancing updates awful – you finally get the hang of one thing that kind of works, and then you’re pushed back to "here try all these other options again" (the readmes will make you groan with anger, and quick to note of any upgraded weapons – which you’ll still skip because if they got upgraded they must have been really awful to start with.) ** (as an alternative, it would be nice if it let you elect an earlier ruleset, then reported any progress and which ruleset version was used.) * Even the most perfect run will leave you easily trapped and enemy-spammed to death above 210 stars or so. Put it all together – and you’ll see why you wonder what the W/L ratio is, given the extremely sparse "completed game" rankings. Is it 1 in 10K games played to success? 1 in 100K? Neither would surprise us. We don’t mind hard, or sometimes even frustrating. When it works, it’s great (probably why we’re writing so much) but the letdown over the most minor random roll, slip, or mis-step is brutal (also why we’re writing this much.) we’re still intrigued for what Michael Brough will come up with next, so this is still money -very well- spent. You’ll still play another round – you’ll just probably curse yourself, and him, while you do.
We’re starting to figure out this game as we go along, and we do like the concept and design, it’s the kind of game we enjoy. Frustrating at times but still enjoyable. We like that there are no IAPs.
We’ll get to the point, this game is completely and utterly about the RNG is uses. It’s charming as charming can be, but time and time again, the ability to get a nice jive going relies entirely on if the computer doesn’t screw you. And it will, time and again. Go ahead! Download the boards that others got top scores on. They won’t matter. You’ll get spammed a certain enemy or get stuck in a randomly generated corner… We want to say that strategy is involved, but we really truly can’t agree anymore. Our other annoyance is that it’s certainly not a casual game. The way the difficulty revs up isn’t based on your current advancement, but how many moves you’ve made from the beginning. That means, you can’t make any missteps, and if rng gave you a couple long routes early on, you might as well give up. And worse, since your health is so low, you are simply not allowed such "unfortunate circumstances." Making a challenging game should involve more than rng. And unfortunately, based on the rigid parameters this game gives you, that’s all you’re left with in Imbroglio. We would suggest just getting a pair of dice, guessing a number, and then rolling for it. You will have the same experience, ultimately.
In the highest days of Pokemon Go fever, we had a group of kids ask us what we were playing while on the metro. We were playing Imbroglio.
This game is both easy to just pick up and play when you need to kill time but it also has many layers of depth, from positioning to choosing your weapons and where to put them. It satisfies a need for quick games and engrossing gameplay. We highly recommend this title.
Great game to zone out while listening to audiobooks. We like the customizable maps.
All that this game lacks in visual polish it makes up for in depth. As a game designer we are in awe of all the complexity and intricacy the designer was able to cram into a 4×4 grid. It starts out as a survival/optimization game, turns into a deck building game, and at high levels of play is a procedurally generated puzzle game. It is surprisingly deep. Well worth your time.
This game is a masterpiece. On the surface it is a really simple game to start playing, and beginners will feel that it is random or get frustrated at the RNG. But despite looking simple – It actually takes a few months to master, the gameplay goes surprisingly deep. We’ve escaped with 4 of 8 characters – each one takes a lot of planning and clever strategy to master. Stick with it – this is our fav iOS game!
We’ve probably put 50 hours into this game and we’re still finding new play styles. It seems really convoluted at first but everything comes together after your first few games. Now we just want dlc with new heros and weapons.