Take up your sword in Rogue Melee, a new upcoming indie roguelike. Jump into the Dungeon and fight your way through rooms of monsters as you make your way down to hell. We got to check out the demo for this game, and while it may look like a lot of what you’ve seen before, this game still has a lot of fun in store.
Can I play as a pew pew wizard?
Firstly, I cannot discuss the story, as it is not shown, at least in the demo. You’re thrown right into the dungeon with your controls shown on the floor of the first room and a randomised floor layout to get through. Fight your way through rooms of enemies, collect coins and upgrades, buy new gear at the shop, and search for hidden rooms. The game isn’t doing anything new with this setup. Plus in the demo, there are no permanent unlocks. You can find different characters in your travels who, once unlocked, provide different styles of gameplay. My favourite was the wizard who starts with the ability to fire beams from his sword.
Control your controls with ease!
The Rogue Melee demo already comes built in with both controller support and button remapping. This is fantastic if, like me, you found the bombs being on X a pain and moved them to RT instead. You can also add modifiers to your run, such as no items and hardcore mode, to unlock achievements. The full game’s achievement list is already shown on Steam, but nothing has been unlocked for me while playing.
From what I could see, though, many of the achievements you would get through regular gameplay. I’m sure there’ll be many hours of gameplay in your future to naturally unlock most of them.
Gothic, creepy, and kinda cute?
The art style is the perfect mix of creepy and cute, with enemies being not only visually distinct but also having very different behaviours. This extends to the bosses, too, where you will die repeatedly, but you’ll always learn something new about their patterns. No death felt unfair; it was always my fault, but luck is a huge factor in how well your run goes too. The Rogue Melee demo has a very limited pool of weapons and abilities, which I hope are greatly expanded for the full release. I ended a lot of my runs with nearly the exact same build.
The menus are also incredibly easy to navigate and are perfectly in keeping with the aesthetic of the game. Everything you really need is here, and since it’s such a visually simple game, you don’t need a whole load of graphics options. Windowed mode simply sets the game to a standard preset. However you can easily adjust the window size by dragging the edges and the game will scale accordingly. Though some windowed size presets would be a nice addition.
Even once I played enough of Rogue Melee’s demo to formulate my review, I still found myself drawn back in to play more. It’s so easy to pick up and play; it’s ideal for handhelds. I can see it being especially popular on the Steam Deck or if it gets a Switch port. I’m very excited to see the full release of this game, and you can bet that I’ll be playing it once it comes out. There is currently no release date.
Developer: Szepad
Publisher: Szepad
Platforms: PC (Steam)
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