At the time we did our podcast on action roguelikes, I already had a copy of Demon's Tier+ on the way from Limited Run Games, but it hadn't yet arrived. Now it has, so I thought I'd spend a little while playing it this evening just for the sake of providing some initial impressions.
It's good! If you listened to the podcast already you'll know this already, but it really is good. Simple and accessible, yet a good level of challenge on offer to keep things interesting. A nice variety of enemy types, each of which need to be dealt with in different ways. Some absolutely lovely pixel art, both for the characters and the bosses in particular. And a soundtrack that sounds like a Squaresoft game from 1992. Genius.
There's an interesting risk versus reward thing going on where you accumulate currency as you go, and this currency is required to unlock new characters or purchase upgrades — but if you die in the dungeon, you drop it all. You then have one chance to make it back to the point where you died to retrieve your stash, otherwise it's gone forever. And the only way to actually keep your loot is to either escape from the dungeon with a magic rope, or clear the "tier" you're currently exploring.
The twin-stick shooter format works well with this. There's a relatively deliberate pace to the blasting rather than it being super-frantic, and there's some fun special abilities to make use of. The "dodge" move — actually more of a block, from what I've seen so far — is especially helpful in boss battles when they get a bit bullet hell-y. And oh they do.
So far I'm impressed! It's a nice "coffeebreak" sort of action roguelike, with individual runs not taking very long at all, making it eminently friendly to those times when you just feel like you want to play something, but nothing too complicated. I'm sure I'll be coming back to it quite frequently!
Discover more from I'm Not Doctor Who
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
