What a busy time it has been lately for games! I have lost all count of some of the great releases in the past few weeks. With games like Breachway, Beyond Galaxyland, Ara History Untold, Frostpunk 2 and Worlds of Aria keeping me entertained, it is a good thing I decided upon a laptop upgrade. That’s right! My old man potato laptop jokes will soon be a thing of the past thanks to my shiny new machine, although it will take me a while to get it setup.
Today I decided to feature two games. It has been a while since I’ve done a double bill episode, and what better way to celebrate Halloween’s approach than to listen to my rambles.
Pyrene
It took me a while to get around to trying this out, and I am so happy I did. Pyrene is a dungeon crawler of sorts with some great storytelling. Even as I find the roguelike genre oversaturated, Pyrene’s excellent worldbuilding and mechanics help it stand out.
Pyrene is built off some intriguing Basque mythology, something I don’t think has been featured in any game before. I might be wrong on that, but it’s a refreshing world to explore even with the deckbuilder constraints. After the player’s village is destroyed by a demonic threat known as the Herensuge, they must rebuild their village while trying to find a way to save themselves from the hordes of monsters that plague the Pyrenees.
This in itself is a great gameplay loop: as you explore the world and discover lost people from the attack, you gather resources to rebuild your village. Wood allows new structures like the Market to grab new items for your next run, for instance. Recovering people who were scattered from the Herensuge’s attack provides you with new characters to play, who have their own unique powers. While the story is fairly light, it does very well for the roguelike genre. The heroes have their goals and ambitions, and the gameplay supports their motives.
Let’s move onto that gameplay! Pyrene is a mini dungeon crawler of sorts with the usual branching paths that many roguelikes take. In combat, you have to navigate a small battlefield teeming with enemies. The mechanics are simple enough: you move onto enemy monsters to attack them. Their hit points and yours become how much damage you deal and take. If your HP is higher than theirs, they die but you take damage equal to their hit points. Many monsters have special abilities, like the Skeleton needing to be killed several times before leaving the board. You cannot return any pathways, and you can only land on zones you haven’t previously landed on.
While enemies don’t attack you until you attack them, this brings in the difficult choices. Staying the night costs provisions while revealing new squares on the battlefield, but all surviving enemies gain an extra HP for every turn they stay alive. The goal of these missions is to find the Altar to advance, and it’s a lot of fun juggling your health and supplies to escape. Winning a map heals the player and provides new cards for your deck. Some maps have vendors to gain new relics or upgrade cards you own already. It’s a great mix of exploration and gameplay, and Pyrene knows how to balance challenge and fun.
This is a solid roguelike deckbuilder, and for just 15 dollars, you’re getting a lot for that money. Roguelikes are an ocean teeming with sharks, and Pyrene does everything well enough to compete with the best of them.
Rogue Waters
We need more pirate games! Shadow Gambit The Cursed Crew is up there among the best, and Rogue Waters gives me strong Shadow Gambit vibes. R.I.P Minimi Games. They went out on a high, but I still miss them.
Rogue Waters has everything I asked for from a fantasy pirate game. Turn-based combat where I can kick the shit out of the enemy crews? Check. Getting revenge on an asshole captain who tried to kill me? Check. Summon a mighty, magical Kraken to slaughter foes? You have that as well. I was not expecting Rogue Waters to be a roguelike, but it handles all its systems pretty darn well.
It starts off as many pirate games go. You are on the hunt for a great treasure with your immortal captain and fellow crewmen, and go through the tutorial phases. They are pretty well made, and cover the basics such as combat movement, how to disable enemy ships, and so on. As turn-based strategy goes, Rogue Waters features style over substance, which is not a bad thing! Enemies can be smashed against objects on the battlefield, and that magical Kraken gives you a once-per-big-battle nuke against a line of enemies. It might not be the most complex or interesting combat out there, but there’s enough bells and whistles to keep strategy fans sated. It’s always fun to play!
Rogue Waters is pretty interesting, as the road to fighting your traitor ex-captain can be quite short. However, he is one overpowered cookie with huge attacking power, so it is expected to lose often against Blackbeard and his fellow sycophants. That’s part of the loop however, as your own people never die permanently. You just return to your pirate lair where you can upgrade your ships, recruit new crew, and embark on another expedition. There are a bunch of story quests to carry out as well as side missions, and Rogue Water’s gameplay is fantastic so far.
These are just early impressions, but I am liking Rogue Waters a lot so far. The fantasy pirate elements are great, and the turn based combat mechanics have just enough depth to keep them interesting without feeling repetitive. You need a pretty powerful machine to play it, as I got some pretty significant frame drops even on a fairly high end gaming system. Besides the performance and a few bugs, I’m feeling good things about Rogue Waters.
