When Kasedo Games approached me to review their upcoming indie videogame title Rezrog (developed by Latvian game studio Soaphog), I didn’t hesitate for a second. As you might recall, Kasedo Games is the publisher of recent indie hit-titles like The Metronomicon and Project Highrise. These were excellent games that managed to score well in my reviews. So let’s find out if Rezrog is cut from the same cloth and can keep up the winning streak.
Game On!
While playing Rezrog I couldn’t help but wonder why this game looked so familiar to me. After some pondering it hit me. I’d actually seen Rezrog before at the GameOn event in Lithuania last year. I was there with my own booth for MSI and didn’t had time to play the game, but I do remember Rezrog looked appealing. Inspired by board games, the game features tabletop game aesthetics. Its art style mimics paper board games with characters made of plastic and placed on plastic chips, while the environment is assembled from cardboard cutouts. It could be compared best to games like Hitman Go. Quite a surprise I was now given the chance to review the game. Such a small world.
Somewhere in the deceptively peaceful land of Rezrog, some travelers are brought together by a series of unfortunate events. A fierce battle occurs but the travelers are victorious. When they arrive at an abandoned Inn to rest and recover they can’t help but wonder; where did everybody go? The next morning they set out on a quest to find the Inn keeper, defeat the forces of evil and restore peace in the lands of Rezrog. As you might have figured out by now, the story setup for this game is relatively simple and not something that was the prime focus during development. That’s actually okay. In fact, the whole game feels relatively simple. You could easily pick it up, play for a few minutes and then continue with whatever you were doing. I would have sworn the game was originally designed for mobile devices. But looks can be deceiving as the gameplay is complex enough to require a mouse and keyboard.
Dungeon Crawler
Rezrog is a roguelike dungeon crawler with RPG elements that’s played from an isometric perspective. The game features a group of heroes each with their own feats (warrior, mage, paladin etc.) that you can level up and arm along your way. Dungeons are procedurally generated, meaning not a single playthrough / route of a dungeon will be the same. Before entering a dungeon, you need to select a character of choice who will go in solo. You can move around freely in the dungeon but when you approach an enemy the game switched to a turn-based mode. If your character perishes in combat you can select another character and replay the dungeon to save him. If you fail and manage to get all your party-members killed, the game is over and perma-death occurs.
The game can become quite challenging and you’ll need to upgrade and distribute items among your character wisely. You can’t focus on playing the game with one particular hero only, for if he dies and his skills and items are unavailable, you’ll face a daunting task with one of your “lesser” heroes. In order to further master the RPG-elements of this game, you can even study encountered monsters to learn their weaknesses and to use these against them in combat.
With 7 character classes to play, over 60 skills to upgrade and more than 120 enemies to encounter, the game certainly has enough variety. There’re around 100 dungeons for the player to complete and each one becomes increasingly more difficult. Rezrog is not an game you’ll be playing for hours on end. But Rezorg is a game you’ll be playing for hours. The game is easy to pick up and just about complex enough due to various RPG elements to be entertaining and challenging. Its aesthetics are great and if not too expensive, definitely worth your time.
