The action roguelite thread

The thing I dislike about Dead Cells, and some others of its ilk, is they try and build a whole speed run component into it, where you are rewarded for achieving things faster and that’s just not how I want to play these games, rushing forwards as fast as I can, no thanks.

They nerfed a bit that reward, it isn’t especially needed to beat the game.
You also have another reward for killing 60 enemies without being damaged, which is the opposite of the speedrun reward, precisely for people not interested in that.

So I finally tried Boyfriend Dungeon on Switch when it was on sale this week, and that game is delightful.

The roguelite gameplay was simple, but satisfying as upgrades started stacking. And once one weapon tree was maxed out, the game kind of removed the brakes from upgrading other weapons. So it took about 5 hours to max out my first weapon and beat the first “dunj”, and then like another two to upgrade the rest and beat the other “dunj” and final boss.

But the “dates” (which can be completely platonic), were goddamned charming. Maybe I’m into dating sims now?

Voidigo is on the last humble bundle choice. Some first impressions

The style is pretty crazy. Everything is colorful and somewhat weird, although you already can see that with any video. This extends to the game elements: one of the first weapons I gained is some kind of bundle of rats that fire (homing) rats, and one of the first powerups was called bright idea with a bulb icon… which is literally a allied bulb called ‘Bright Idea’ who zaps enemies who get close.
The game also has some humor in the text descriptions. Like a powerup that increase your rof, instead of a weapon upgrade, it’s a ghost that accompanies you and the game explain that scares you, increasing your heart rate and adrenaline…

I guess if you read that and thought ‘that sounds fun!’ you may well like the game, and if you thought ‘that sounds dumb. This game is dumb’ you surely will hate it.

How weird is the art style in the game is interesting. It’s weird, alien and otherwordly…but not in an offputting way. The animations of some things made me thing ‘this is cute!’. Or other things are like… fluffy, or shiny, you know?

The main gimmick of the game is how it tries to make more dynamic boss fights. Instead of having normal levels, and a boss fight at the end, the boss appear on the middle of your run, and you have to complete the ‘intermediate’ goals (hitting some void energy totem thingie, usually one per stage) to unlock part of the hp bar of the boss. You can do one, fight some with the boss, run away, then search the next one and repeat, or you can try to ignore the boss, do three thingmagingies in a row and then kill the boss from start to finish.
To understand it, I also have to explain every world is composed of six connected mini stages, and you can come and go from one to another freely, and the boss also can do it (although at least at first, it seems he is slow to do it, so you have room to breath). The boss also can destroy the scenario (the walls) changing the geometry of the level on the go.

The combat feel is somewhat simplistic, but still effective. There are tons of feedback when you hit or kill something. Very Nuclear Throne.
Another thing to comment is the other side of the ‘colorful graphics’. And it’s that things can get to be a clusterfuck of chaos and color and moving things once the combat intensity increases, making harder to notice things. They actually try to compensate for it, the sprites has noticeable silhouettes, there are ground markers for any aoe attack, etc

The game is pretty damn accessible, with seven different difficulties (the 4th one is the default ‘rogue’ one).

There is of course metaprogression, but I still have barely advanced in the game to form an opinion of it. edit: seems to be more about unlocking starting weapons, starting powerups and unlocking new characters, than gaining power.

We love a good ol’ roadmap in this thread, so here is Synthetik 2

I’ve had my eye on that one. How twitchy/kinetic is it?

A bit of a teaser for RoR 2 expansion.

Neon Abyss is free on EGS.

I bought Rogue Legacy 2 on the EGS sale (it was cheap!, 6€)

It’s like Rogue Legacy 1 (although I never played a lot of it), but… a better game.
-It has a bit more differentiated classes
-It’s bigger in content, with more classes, more biomes, rooms and more relics. But they have put some features borrowed from the competitions like:
-mini bosses with random traits like in Dead Cells
-more metroidvania progression with permanent upgrades that open new paths, like Dead Cells.
-skill crits for some weapons, like a brow that does crit damage when releasing the arrow just in time, like Dead Cells.
-more dialogue and little storylines in the hub with a reward, like Hades.
-the new game+ had a custom difficulty features, like Hades.

-The game is more accessible, with a ‘cheat’ menu where you can tweak the player and enemy damage and some other features. To be honest, I bought it because of this, because my idea is to alleviate the grind by making the game easier at first.
-Speaking of grind, yeah there is a TON of metaprogression, not gonna lie.
-And speaking of difficulty the game is HARD. I’m comparing it here with the ‘baseline’ of roguelites here, the most popular ones, Hades and Dead Cells. Even lowering the difficulty with the cheat menu still doesn’t make it a cake walk. Part of it is that I still only have 2 hours of metaprogression, yeah, but it seems to me the game is designed to be hard, that’s it.

I really liked the first game. Can you pick up new weapons, or are you stuck with whatever weapon your class gets. Can the game be finished yet?

Picked up Dead Cells last week. I prefer the combat and build variety of DC, but prefer the progression system of Rogue Legacy.

They are a bit rare, but from time to time you find a place that lets you pick a new weapon / talent / spell, even if it’s from another class.

I liked the first Rogue Legacy, so seeing the second for $10 is tempting. I don’t think I would want it to be tougher. Maybe I could talk myself into using the customizable options you mention.

I tried Skul: The Hero Slayer for a couple hours. I didn’t get into it. I wonder if that’s because I had what must have been some stupid good luck and walked through the first boss or two in the second run and then kept dying at the same tree after that. The unlocks did not impress. If something’s a straight number bonus, it needs to be big. +5% damage leaves me cold. I don’t think I’ll be going back into Skul, at least not for a long time. The Christmas tsunami of new games has arrived, claiming the next however many months.

Is Rogue Legacy 2 close to release? I noticed it’s still Early Access.

Current version is 0.8 and in their roadmap seems to indicate they are only missing the ending sequence and final boss, more translations, and some ‘additional content’.
https://i.imgur.com/W8LIBFv.png

Dominic Tarason’s blog pointed me to this shooter roguelike

Update within Rogue Legacy 2: 6 hours in, and while I’m progressing on it, I’m seeing that at this pace of metaprogression, I’m going to need 80 hours to finish most of the manor. I was tempted already to use a trainer lol. The game is good, but not ‘80 hours good’, for me. I will get bored and leave the game before that.
In fact it’s what I did, I used a trainer. I restrained myself and only got like 17 ‘free’ upgrades, equivalent to 14 extra runs? that I have skipped. Now I’m continuing to play normally, unlocking the classes and rest of stuff. And yeah, the game is more fun now.

Well, technically you could be really good with the game and barely need 12 hours of progression to beat it, but I’m not that good. It requires a bit too much finesse with the controls, as it expects you handling combat mixed with double jumping, air dashing, the air spin kick, to avoid the enemies and their projectiles.

On the other hand, the game bosses aren’t as hard as I feared. It isn’t like in Dead Cells or in Hades where they are real tough obstacles to beat, and the levels aren’t as hard. Once you are good enough/progressed enough in upgrades to beat a biome while keeping a decent amount of health, you are also good enough to beat the boss of the biome without needing to do a dozen attempts.

The game is REALLY designed around the concept of campaign progression. Not only in the shape of the upgrades, but how you advance in the game. To my surprise, it isn’t like Dead Cells where you do a single run from beginning to end in ~75 minutes and that’s it. The levels are longer, but the bosses are defeated permanently and you can unlock the teleporters of new biomes to jump to them in the next run. So a day you beat biome 2, and next day on a different run you jump to biome 3 and beat it.

A new fps/roguelite wll come in 2022

And these two are isometric shooters:

Looks a bit like Don’t Starve?

with the last one being available already on EA

Yeah, Anvil is already on Game Pass, but being early access, I’ve stayed away from it.

Does the first Everspace game count as an action roguelite? Because I’ve been playing it obsessively for a couple of days now.

I think so.