Playing Every Game in the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality
PEGBRJE: ‘Rogues Like Us’ and ‘No More Kings’
Monday Monday Monday
Rogues Like Us is a roguelike adventure game crafted by oddByte, an indie studio based in the United States. Players answer the call of fame and adventure, looking to clear out the dangers of the mysterious Arventous to achieve the glory of saving the town. The only issue is that death is brutal and will strip everything gained, so get ready to go again and again.
The familiar gameplay loop of roguelikes is on full display here. Players are sent in to an unfamiliar and randomized set of locations to defeat monsters, get loot, and make the local boss pay for daring to attack the town. The player is equipped with a dash move, a ground slam attack and a sword laser, with the latter two abilities being on a bar-based cooldown.
The adventure is full of choices, from statues that can give great boons at a significant cost, ‘quests’ from nervous adventurers, weapons to pick between and even the path itself. There is no need to clear out the entire region if one does not wish to, although that does mean that the player may miss out on some loot. Death at any time is an automatic end to the run, giving a stats screen of the current achievements before sending the player back to the town with nothing but their original starting sword.
Adding some of the more modern features to the genre is the town itself. Players can mix and match armor sets that they find in the wild to gain bonuses to their attacks, increase speed of certain skills, and more. The weapons found in the blacksmith are not actually available, but instead indicate which weaponry can be discovered on the corpses of adventurers out in the game. Both the armor and the weapons can be uncovered thanks to the ‘chest’ loot system, which is rewarded to the player through various ways such as defeating area bosses and purchasing them with crimson gems. These chests will give a random item from either the weapon, armor, or enchantment loot table, allowing further customization of the avatar before setting out. It’s a nice way to keep the player engaged as they keep trying to get farther and farther, defeating bosses and ultimately dying at the hands of a missed button press.
Rogues Like Us lets you customize your attempts at victory as you keep on trying to see how far you can get. The controls may take a bit to get used to depending on previous experiences, but can be completely remapped to your choices and needs. There’s even local co-op so that you and a buddy can cut down enemies together. If you want a roguelike that can keep you (and possibly a friend) on your toes with a simple yet rewarding loop, then here you are.
No More Kings is a puzzle game based on the logic of chess by Christian Montoya, a solo indie dev in the USA. Given a starting piece, players will attempt to capture every piece on the board so that the only remaining piece is the King, and then capture them to find the solution.
The starting piece can be anything, but the goal always remains the same: find the path to victory that involves collecting all of the others before taking out the king. Each piece uses the same move that they would in a normal chess game, but the twist is that the player takes over the piece upon ‘capturing’ it.
For example, if the starting piece is a Knight and the player captures a Rook , the Knight disappears and the player’s highlighted piece is now that Rook. This makes it like a logic pattern puzzle, attempting to discover what order the pieces need to be captured in so that the King can be successfully taken at the end. At first the solutions are simple before adding multiple paths the player can take that can lead them to dead ends.
No More Kings is purposefully simple and easy to understand so that the puzzles can be that much more challenging as the game progresses. The logic and pieces never change, but their layout becomes increasingly cluttered across the 150 puzzles. Once a single piece is moved, the timer begins and the faster you do the better the score. But that only matters if you can find the solution in the first place. If you wanted a relaxing puzzle game to progress through, this is a great addition to your library regardless if you enjoy chess or not.
Oh, and there’s a dark mode, featured above, if your eyes don’t appreciate the white glare.
