Developer: Black Forest Games
Publisher: Black Forest Games
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Rogue Stormers – Review
Roguelite (and roguelike) games come in all shapes and sizes but are often single player experiences. While most games in the genre often have a certain gimmick that makes you come back for more, it’s still sad your friends can’t join in on the painful parade. Rogue Stormers tries to do things differently by adding offline and online co-op capabilities. Dive into seven tough-as-nails levels, alone or with up to three friends, but beware, this game doesn’t lie on its back that easily. You’ll soon be wading through the bodies of your foes, over and over again.
Story
Games such as these often lack a story but the developers of Rogue Stormers did their best to add a bit of a setting. You’ll find yourself in Ravensdale where ‘Goop’ has become the new gold, so to speak. As expected, where there is a certain valuable resource, (the) people tend to get greedy and eventually bat-shit crazy. With Ravensdale slowly becoming a cesspool of evil, a few gun-crazy knights set it upon themselves to clear the world of the evil forces that are trying to get control of all the Goop. That being said, you’ll simply get a few introductory scenes when you boot up the game and that’s it for the most part, and for a game like this it’s more than sufficient, as you’ll constantly be dying anyway, thus you’d have to wait for any proper story progression.
Graphics
Rogue Stormers looks like a rather colorful mix of steampunk Goblin monsters, atypical heroes and small stages where you’ll feel trapped most of the time. The overall appearance is very appealing, and it’s mainly the very ‘in-your-face’ gunfire and explosions that put the icing on the cake. While everything has a rather simplistic style, things stay detailed enough to show the care that has been put into designing the entire game. That being said, as you’ll be playing the same levels over and over again, a bit more diversity in enemy models would have been nice.
Sound
As you’ll be storming in guns blazing, the music moves more to the background, treating you to an orchestra of gunfire, explosions, blood splatters and the grunts of your enemies. While it would have been nice if the game had a very explosive soundtrack to accompany you on your road to certain death, it’s actually just fine the way it is.
Gameplay
Rogue Stormers is a side-scrolling twin stick shooter with roguelite elements. This means that you’ll be plowing through different levels with heavy weaponry at your disposal, but if you slip up and die, you’ll have to start back from the first stage. However, seeing it’s a roguelite game and not roguelike, you’ll be able to save a bit of your progress (kind of).
Each of the heroes (one at the start of the game, four to be unlocked) will gain experience during their violent escapades and this will allow them to level up. When doing so, they will have the chance to pick a perk, which grants them permanent passive bonuses, which will be saved, even after the character has long been destroyed by the goblin armies. This means that this game is a lot of shoot, gain experience, level, add perks – repeat. Luckily, this small motivation of being able to choose extra perks will motivate you to keep on trying and adds a certain feeling of ‘progress’, even if you’re stuck in one of the levels, over and over again.
There are also perks, weapons and upgrades that are tied to the current ‘life’ of your hero, these will then disappear when you die. These small upgrades can either be bought with money in the levels themselves, drop from chests or can be looted after boss battles and so on. As you’ll come across many secondary weapons, it’s best to try out different combinations, especially when you’re playing multiplayer. The game does offer a fair amount of extra weapons, so a certain diversity is to be found.
Unlocking the extra heroes will prove to be quite tricky and it’s actually quite sad that the game doesn’t offer you more than one hero to pick from at the beginning of the game. It would have been quite fun to choose from a bigger set of characters when you start playing the game with multiple friends, which would also make it a tad more clear who plays with which character. Nonetheless, unlocking new warriors will feel like well deserved achievements and also drive you to keep on pressing forward.
The controls prove to be very responsive, while it will take some time to get used to navigating through the many traps. Being able to shoot with the second stick makes things quite easy to aim properly, but when you’re getting swarmed it’s sometimes a bit hectic to see a proper escape route, especially when more than one player is dabbling around on screen. With the increased difficulty in the multiplayer mode, things tend to get a bit hectic when you can’t dispose of your enemies quickly.
Even though it will take some time to get through all of the stages, as this game is certainly no walk in the park, It’s sad there are only seven stages to fight through. While the overall time spent in clearing them, and the fact they are slightly randomized every new attempt, will take a decent amount of hours, a bit more would have been even better.
Conclusion
Rogue Stormers is a title that relies a lot on its appearance and its great mechanics. While it doesn’t bring that much new to the table, the game is simply a very fun twin stick shooter with roguelike elements you’ll either love or hate. If you like a challenge and a decent amount of gore and weapons, this small title will keep you occupied for hours to come.
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