One genre I’ve become rather fond of recently is the rogue-like. There’s just something satisfying about short jaunts punctuated by mayhem where you’re progressively getting stronger. But most rogue-likes tend to have you descend into dungeons in the quest for victory. Today’s game is a reversal. You start as a reanimated corpse in the depths of a dungeon and work your way back up. It’s called Skeletal Avenger, and it’s being made by the folks at 10tons, known for Tesla vs. Lovecraft, Crimsonland and many more. But I don’t recall ever playing a rogue-lite by them before.
In Skeletal Avenger, you slowly advance your quest for vengeance against the monster that wronged you. Both winning and losing provides rewards, but your primary goal is to destroy your nemesis. To see some more ways that 10tons explains a reverse rogue-lite, read the handy list below:
What does reverse rogue-lite mean? In Skeletal Avenger it means this:
- Instead of delving deeper into a dungeon, you ascend from the depths towards the surface.
- Instead of starting alive and then dying, you start undead
- Instead of playing until dying, you play until you or your nemesis dies.
- If your nemesis dies, the spirit of the avenger is freed and you’ll gain rewards.
- If you die, your revenge fails – but there’ll be always more grudges to settle.
- The rewards make the next avenger stronger – even failures grant coins for smaller improvements.
- The cycle continues – one avenger after another.
One of the core features we love are the self-decapitating special moves: The avenger will remove his head and use it as a weapon! What the head does depends on the head gear and there’ll be plenty of variation. The head might explode or it might vomit necrotic slime. Or maybe it rolls like a bowling ball.
Skeletal Avenger sounds promising, but don’t take my word for it. Check out the trailer and press blast below, and see if you want to check out this crazy undead romp on Steam and eventually consoles.
10tons Reveals Hack’n’slash Reverse Roguelite Skeletal Avenger
Tampere, Finland, May 27th 2020 – multiplatform game developer and publisher 10tons announces Skeletal Avenger today. Skeletal Avenger is a roguelite hack’n’slash dungeon crawler with a twist: Instead of one infinite quest the game has an endless amount of shorter quests with an actual ending. The game will launch in early access late 2020.
“Skeletal Avenger is a hack’n’slash game at its core. We played a lot of Hades and it’s probably one of the main inspirators for this game. We spiced the hack’n’slash core with some unique concepts like special moves which all include self decapitation. We’ve also shaken some roguelite conventions like continuing until death. In Skeletal Avenger the game starts from re-animating after death and then progresses towards a kind of spiritual release through vengeance. Each quest for revenge may end because the avenger dies or because the target for the revenge dies.”, lead developer Sampo Töyssy comments.
“Vengeance is the main concept of the game. All the quests start with an obituary – a small procedural story. It describes how the reanimated avenger was mistreated and who was the perpetrator. The quest is won by killing the perp and completing the revenge. The quests yield coin and gear, which makes the next avenger even more powerful and the game continues.”, Sampo continues.
“In some way the undead invasion started by 10tons’ popular Undead Horde continues in Skeletal Avenger. The games are completely different but they share the same style and the idea of undead heroes. Our customers seem to like these themes as did we, so we are really excited to create another game around them.”, Sampo concludes.
Skeletal Avenger will be released on early access Q4 2020. The first platforms include PC and consoles. 10tons has plans to support several next-gen console features like high resolution rendering, high refresh rates, and more.
Skeletal Avenger is built using 10tons Ltd. proprietary game engine technology and is primarily targeted at PCs and current & next-generation consoles. Details on other platforms will be announced at a later date.
