Available on Steam Early Access ($16.99)
Developer: Motion Twin
Platform: Windows (macOS/Linux TBD)
I’m a sucker for rogue-likes and metroidvanias, so this is the perfect fit. Axiom Verge was the last x-vania game that felt this good. And with a couple hundred hours into one of this year’s early access darling, I feel confident recommending it to anyone. It has a smooth, pixel based art style and even smoother gameplay. It’s just a great game for short game-playing windows.
You play as some sort of nameless blob who, for reasons unexplained, are dropped into a dungeon. Starting out with only a rusty sword to fend off foes, you will die… a lot. Dying means restarting from the beginning, keeping only a small amount of gold, but its easy to get started again. As you progress through the level, enemies will drop blueprints that you can cash in at the end of each level. Collect enough souls, blue pickups that enemies occasionally drop, and you can unlock this equipment for future runs.
The game is still in early access on Steam ($16.99), but it is worth every penny. Completing a run and finally killing The Watcher, after many, many attempts, feels so satisfying that I almost always start a new one immediately. It’s not very graphic intensive and the mechanics feel so good that I wouldn’t hesitate in telling everyone to pick it up if they’ve got an hour (or hundreds) to get lost.