It flips the entire screen upside down and there’s no good reason to choose a child with vertigo, unless they happen to also be a super-powered late-game lich. I’ve found ‘vertigo’ to be the most unpleasant. I’ve completely missed out what I expected to be one of the most important parts of the game and that’s the character traits, which can empower, weaken or simply aim for the chuckle bone. A smartly crafted platformer with randomly configured rooms and a clever sense of progression. Keyboard works fine but I find it awkward to go back. Not coincidentally, I was suddenly dying much less often. I used keyboard controls for the first couple of hours and found them perfectly acceptable but later I switched to a 360 controller, mainly because I’d unlocked the dash skill and it felt right to have it on the triggers. There’s less enemy variety than I would have liked, with later areas containing reskinned beasties, although many have new attack patterns, sometimes practically filling the screen and turning it into a bullet hell. But, as with the rest of the game, having a required ability is never enough – it must be used carefully and with skill.Īs to how the game plays from room to room, it’s very much like one of the better Castlevanias, with similar spells/secondary weapons, and health and mana recharges hidden behind background objects. This makes spike-laden mazes into tense traps. This may be as simple as killing every enemy but the more devious ones require the player not to look at the chest, or not to jump or take damage. Those challenge rooms are a fine microcosm for the larger game – they contain chests that can only be unlocked if the rules of the room are followed. Theoretically, a first generation hero could traverse many rooms, avoiding difficult encounters and ignoring the treasure hidden in certain challenge rooms, many of which require specific upgrades. While death leads to unlocks, it’s only a glorious death that leads to more powerful classes, stat boosts, elegant equipment and new skills. While unlocks are vital - particularly the enchanted runes that can be stacked to provide such wonders as quadruple jumps – the game is less about levelling up than learning enemy behaviours, patterns and the best use of your own spells and speed. It can be frustrating because the learning curve isn’t obvious – will victory only be found after a predetermined number of ancestors have died, their corpses stepping stones to the stars? Absolutely not. They’re barely capable of stepping through the gates before they fall onto some spikes or lose a fight with a demonic portrait. Besides, it’s always a pleasure to find certain rooms, knowing that you have the right skills to make passage a thing of simplicity, while others will make you curse and search for another way around.Įarly characters die extremely quickly. I do, but it’s rare to have an entire run, even a long one, that doesn’t reveal something new, particularly as the four environments have their own designs and dangers, and in later expeditions it’s common to dash through the castle to a different destination. That’s not to say I don’t encounter the same rooms over and over again. Each room is hand-designed but there are a great variety and repetition hasn’t become a problem for me after sixteen hours of play. The basic goal is to explore a castle, whose architecture shifts, and its equally unstable surroundings. Every death may be a drop of blood in the history of the quest but a character’s success, no matter how small, feeds back into the longer process. Like Spelunky, to which comparisons inevitably arise like mushrooms in a dedicated bachelor’s sock drawer, Rogue Legacy successfully combines short, randomised experiences with a larger challenge. As you travel toward a lonely demise, you will find treasure chests and scattered coinage, often hidden in torches, chairs or mushrooms, and every penny collected is available to your heir. However, this is a generational roguelike, or rogue-lite as the site brilliantly states. Rogue Legacy dispatches characters with a swiftness that puts the invention of Monsieur Guillotine and the efficiency of Amazon Prime to shame.

It is a roguelike after all, and one of their primary functions is to destroy all that you hold dear, whether it’s a particular handsome paladinous progeny or a level 60 character who is on the verge of ascension. It’s no surprise that Rogue Legacy killed my entire family to date. I could continue and I will, because this is compelling gaming, but I haven't won quite yet.

As I peeled my eyes from the window in which so many generations had perished, I vowed to remember my last and most valiant relation – a giant lich queen with a vampiric sword and a fear of chickens. I’m close to discovering all of the castle’s secrets and I’ve slain fearsome bosses, each taking me one step closer to victory, but my much-pruned family tree has been reduced to kindling.

Rogue legacy lich