Coming across either is a eureka moment, and makes me look forward to death so I can find out what the heck the blood cape does or why I’d want to equip a curse rune. Fairy chests unlock runes that grant powerful special abilities, but can only be opened if you pass specific challenges like making it through a monster-filled room without swinging your sword or navigating a spiky passage without taking damage. Plans for the blacksmith make new equipment available. Spend everything you can, though, because the balance is lost as soon as you start the next run.Įach randomly generated castle contains several unlocks aside from the omnipresent gold. Dying five rooms in isn’t such a bad thing when the 150 gold you earned buys ten more HP for every subsequent run, much less a double-jump or vampiric attacks. More importantly, the fortune your previous character accumulated can be spent to unlock better stats, stronger equipment, new classes, and special abilities. The first step is to choose an heir from three possible heroes of different classes, who also come with often-amusing foibles like cursing coprolalia sufferers or colorblind heroes whose runs are played in greyscale. That may not sound like great fun, but Rogue Legacy’s genius comes in after you die. The side-scrolling action is right in line with the norms set forth decades ago by Castlevania and the like, but the difficulty is even higher than the brutal games the NES generation grew up on. After that I started to make some real progress, but Rogue Legacy remains lethal for its entire length.

My first quest to avenge the king’s assassination failed before passing through a single room. The gameplay isn’t tightly tuned enough to raise this to the level of those classics, but this indie action/platformer is a worthy love letter to the punishing games of yesteryear. What if those moneybags in Castlevania made a difference beyond incrementing the score counter nobody cared about, and instead let you buy a longer health bar or a more powerful whip for your next trip through the castle? Rogue Legacy attempts to answer that question while taking cues from Mega Man, Ghosts ‘n Goblins, and others.

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