During the holidays we had the opportunity to play a preview version of Blightstone, a new tactical roguelite from Kepler Interactive and Unfinished Pixel. Let's see what it's all about!
The structure of Blightstone is quite reminiscent of Slay the Spire and various other roguelites, although here the battles take place on an open battlefield with normal turn-based combat rather than cards. The map of each area we traverse has multiple branches and various points of interest where we will encounter battles, events, shops, quests and other surprises. The plot assigns us the leadership of a group of heroes on a glorious quest: victory over the demon Korghul and the destruction of the nightmarish Blightstone that corrodes and corrupts everything in its path. The roguelite nature of the game is cleverly justified by the story, since if our team falls on the battlefield the Chronomancer Xander (who is something like the Master Splinter to our ninja turtles) will turn back time so we can try again, stronger and wiser.
In my opinion the most interesting feature of Blightstone is the combat system, which is as it should be in any roguelite: fast-paced, interesting and addictive. When we encounter combat we are transported to the battlefield and gain complete control over the movements and attacks of our units, so the battle is not static as it is in Darkest Dungeon for example. Each unit has specific skills depending on the class it belongs to and will, of course, have the opportunity to acquire additional skills and passive abilities by leveling up during each run. Additional characters/classes are gradually unlocked and become available for subsequent runs, while there is also permanent progression between runs, so even a short-term defeat leaves you with long-term gains.
I played the preview version of Blightstone for a total of about 12 hours and came away with a very good impression. The game offers the familiar addictive feeling of "just one more run," the battles are fast-paced but sufficiently challenging and tactical and the progression gives the feeling of continuous progress towards the final goal. The only question mark at this stage, which will obviously be answered in due course, concerns the quantity and quality of the overall content in the full release, but what I can say with certainty about Blightstone in its current state is that it has all the right fundamentals to evolve into a very good and entertaining roguelite. If you are a fan of the genre I recommend adding it to your wishlist and if you feel like helping the developers with its development by offering feedback, Blightstone's Early Access is available today on Steam. We wish the developers every success and will be closely following the game's progress until its final release.
