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Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.
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Aramatus immediately caught my eye, as I consider myself a big fan of the roguelike genre. These days, it seems like most roguelikes tend to rely on 2D graphics, while Aramatus features fully realized 3D graphics powered by Unreal Engine, set in a post-apocalyptic Paris overrun by demons, making it something I wanted to check out when given the opportunity.
One of my favourite roguelike games is Returnal, which I fell in love with on the PlayStation 5 back in 2021. At a glance, Aramatus borrows the fast, frenetic third-person shooter action of the former, with Counterplay Games Inc. adding its own unique twist. Aramatus is set in a demon-infested Paris, where a cataclysmic event known as the Vanishing has transformed the most promising of humanity into demons. Players assume the role of a gunslinging immortal, summoned to earth by a holy order in the hopes of eliminating the demon scourge.
I was given access to the first biome in Aramatus, which consists of roughly 13 rooms and eight sectors. Sectors serve as the primary combat zones within the biome, while the total room count also includes the interstitial spaces between hostile encounters. These transitional areas function as pit stops, where players receive a random boon, such as weapon upgrades, secondary abilities or healing pools, along with other RNG-based modifiers.
In Aramatus, players can wield a range of modern firearms, including automatic rifles, shotguns, precision weapons and submachine guns. Weapons are divided into tiers, which determine their effectiveness as well as their secondary firing modes. Secondary fire adds variety by introducing both practical and fantastical abilities, such as grenade launchers, flamethrowers and energy-based sonic blasts. Players also have access to a powerful melee option in the form of a scythe, which, like a weapon’s secondary fire, operates on a cooldown timer.
Augmenting your toolkit further, in addition to the powerful melee and secondary fire mode of your weapon of choice, Aramatus features unique special attacks that players can earn by clearing rooms. With only the first biome currently playable, I was only able to discover two of the unique power-ups, including a Max Payne-style bullet time augment and a devastating groundpound AoE attack.
Progressing deeper into the first biome of Aramatus unlocked additional enhancements for my special abilities. These included an extended radius for my ground pound and increased damage per second for my firearms, depending on proximity to enemies.
Other notable upgrades I encountered during my time with the Aramatus demo included homing-style shots, extra melee charges and additional projectiles that trigger after landing a hit. Ideally, the full release of Aramatus will introduce even more over-the-top upgrades that allow players to push builds to their limits, as those moments of excess are often what make roguelikes so compelling.
As far as the first biome is concerned, Aramatus presents a contemporary Paris transformed by medieval and Gothic-inspired characters and demonic creatures. The setting blends modern architecture with otherworldly corruption, creating a striking visual contrast. The art direction is strong, featuring stylized character designs that lend the game a comic-book aesthetic while remaining grounded in a recognizable real-world environment.
Gameplay is fast and responsive, with each weapon offering distinct advantages suited to different situations and playstyles. Secondary attacks feel impactful and can often determine the outcome of an encounter. Death can come quickly in Aramatus, though players begin each run with three charges of a health-replenishing item that can help offset mistakes. That said, falling into pits frequently caused moments of disorientation, which were sometimes compounded by enemy mobs closing in for a swift defeat. With further balancing ahead of release, these scenarios may become less punishing.
From a technical standpoint, Aramatus performs well and delivers strong visuals, with the exception of some noticeable judder early in the experience, likely related to shader compilation. I was also unable to get the game to recognize my controller, whether using XInput or Steam’s controller override. These issues are expected to be addressed as development continues toward release. On the subject of controls, keyboard and mouse input felt responsive and intuitive, and will likely remain my preferred way to play the game.
Overall, the short vertical slice of Aramatus that is playable is already promising and something that fans of the roguelike genre should definitely keep on their radar.
Galactic Vault is a fast-paced FPS roguelite where you build weapons to their full potential while infiltrating high-security vaults.
In Galactic Vault, big corporations hoard all technology in a dystopian future. As a former VOLT operative, your mission is infiltrating and plundering tech vaults to recover cutting-edge equipment. Start with low-tech weapons and unlock advanced options with hard-earned currency for stronger starts.
Discover attachments … Read More
The post Galactic Vault – Beta Demo first appeared on Alpha Beta Gamer.
The thing you need to understand about Fogpiercer is that this deckbuilding roguelike, in which you control a train battling Mad Max-style road bandits, knows the secret joy of artillery. It is one of the few games that recognises that while it's satisfying to hit an enemy with a shell from a howitzer, it's even more satisfying to target the space next to them and use the force of the blast to give them a sideways shove into a wall.
It's a mechanic that puts Fogpiercer into the same fine company as Into The Breach.
There are few deckbuilding roguelikes more celebrated than Slay the Spire, which has ruled the genre roost since 2019 when it blew everyone away and got a 92% review from PC Gamer strategic director Evan Lahti.
Its sequel where "everything is bigger" is releasing into early access March 6. Great news for the PC gamer team, which crowned it our Most Wanted game last year—not so much for anyone dropping a deckbuilder in the same week.
58BLADES, the studio behind upcoming rock paper scissors-themed deckbuilding roguelike Handmancers, announced yesterday that it would be moving the game's planned release date "slightly further into the future" in response to Slay the Spire 2's launch. StS's release date trailer arrived a single day after Handmancers's announcement that the game would release March 9.
A post on X from 58BLADES explains the studio's reasoning. "Our original plan was simple: drop Handmancers during #TurnBasedThursdayFest. You watch the showcase and boom— 'Handmancers Available Now.' Perfect, right? Then literally the next day we saw the news."
The statement continues that "you'll be playing it, we'll be playing it, everyone will be playing it. We're huge fans and insanely excited. But launching a deckbuilder the same week as Slay the Spire 2? Yeah… we'd get absolutely crushed."
58BLADES also said that the extra time would mean Handmancers will launch with an extra boss and more "polish" and "balance work," explaining that "we'd rather launch Handmancers at its best than get instantly buried under a legendary sequel."
Avoiding prominent launch dates like this is a trend we saw all over 2025, with games like Demonschool hurrying away from Silksong's surprise release date. It makes sense to dodge any heavy hitters on the calendar you can; in 2025, nearly half of the almost 19,000 games released on Steam got less than 10 user reviews all year. Over 2,000 weren't reviewed at all.
2026 games: All the upcoming games
Best PC games: Our all-time favorites
Free PC games: Freebie fest
Best FPS games: Finest gunplay
Best RPGs: Grand adventures
Best co-op games: Better together
Even two years after release, Balatro is one of the biggest and best roguelikes going—there may be no one more keenly aware of that than developer LocalThunk, who's managed to keep a low profile despite his game selling millions of copies and scoring crossover after crossover.
In a recent anniversary blog post titled "Bad Grades," LocalThunk looked back on his earliest forays into game development. "I think about that version of myself a lot now," he wrote. "I didn’t know what was coming and even if I could warn myself I’m not sure what I could have said to prepare for the insanity. I’m not even sure if there’s a lesson to learn."
His first game was a four-word ladder game in command line, something he cooked up during an Intro to Computer Science class. He "wasn't a good student" by his own admission, but it inspired him to drop out of the engineering program he was in to pursue a degree in programming. It set his education back a year, but he was passionate about it—engineering, on the other hand, was a bore.
"It was hardly a choice at all," he wrote. "I wasn’t any good at [programming], nor was I aware of what may await me after graduation, but … I had created a few programs that convinced me this is the thing for me. I want to make things with code."
He was behind on classes, "barely passing" as he went, but he kept making projects in his own time. "Small programs with no audience," he calls them in the post, but they were thrilling to make, so much so that it distracted even further from school.
He calls it "the best time of my life," and he'd probe the frontiers of his interest even further with his most ambitious project yet: a grand strategy "land-grab simulation" in the vein of Europa Universalis. Nothing like the madcap poker game we eventually got, but the right food for his nascent passion. Crafting it took more all-nighters, more rough prototypes to share with friends and family, and more bad grades.
Naturally, he never anticipated the "success, baggage, attention, heartache, fear, stress, and joy" that this obsession would eventually win him. He's still staying up late, still scrawling ideas down, and, of course, still programming. He ends the post by assuring fans that still includes Balatro's hotly anticipated 1.1 update, and thanking them "for allowing this terrible student to keep staying up too late."
It's good he didn't forget where he came from after buying those golden shoes. The timeline for that 1.1 update is still "it's done when it's done," but in the meantime there's plenty of disturbing merchandise to peruse, should that sate your Balatro obsession.
2026 games: All the upcoming games
Best PC games: Our all-time favorites
Free PC games: Freebie fest
Best FPS games: Finest gunplay
Best RPGs: Grand adventures
Best co-op games: Better together
The supremely ugly situation of politics these days has put me off most forms of political pop culture. I don't want to watch movies about fictional presidents, I don't want to watch TV shows about the government, and I sure as heck don't want to play games about political wheeling and dealing.
At least until today, when I tried the demo for Prime Monster, a 'card-based political roguelike' (so the dealing is literal) where the government is made up entirely of monsters. No, not the horrible, terrifying kind of monsters we get in real life. Fun fantasy monsters like vampires, orcs, ghouls, goblins, and witches. Isn't that way more appealing than reality?
"Set in a dystopian legislature populated by werewolves, scarecrows, goblins and other ambitious creatures, players must secure crucial votes while managing scandals, rebellious colleagues and mounting political pressure in order to cling to the top job," says developer Cavalier Game Studios, makers of 2017's time-loop adventure game The Sexy Brutale.
"Whether it's the vampires ensuring that the population have the calorie content of their blood tattooed on their necks, or the zombies implementing speed limits on walking—the nation suffers just the same," the developer says.
Luckily, you're rising through the political ranks to put a stop to these horrors… so you can inflict your own horrors, battling against political opponents like trolls and witches as you gain power and defeat your opponents. Sometimes by literally killing them.
"In the parliament of the Fractured Kingdom, rational argument is not required! You can bully, blackmail, threaten and commit grievous bodily harm in order to win votes. And that's just on the members of your own party!" says Cavalier. "Whether it's doubling-down on your problematic past social media posts, accepting free samples from an arms dealer or tear-gassing your own housekeeper—you're the boss and you do things YOUR WAY."
I had a quick go at the demo, playing as a very angry orc rallying against the troll party (they're trying to pass a lot of bridge-based legislation, naturally.) Using cards that let me launch attacks against my opponent (just crass verbal attacks, at least for now), rally my party to defend me, and fill my special ability meter that lets me harness my natural orc rage, we slung political smears and outrageous statements against each other in an effort to win votes from the members of parliament.
And unlike real politics, there's actually someone trying to prevent things from going too far. The Shrieker of the House is a Grim Reaper-like ghoul that keeps a close eye on the proceedings, so if you step out of bounds by, for example, killing a member of parliament, he'll start turning his burning eye on you. Color outside the political lines a few too many times, and… well, I'm not sure what happens, because I got away with all the dirty tricks I pulled in the demo.
Despite the fantasy setting and characters, Prime Monster sinks its fangs pretty deeply into real politics. Between rounds, a journalist accused me of accepting gifts in return for political favors—this was in fact true—and in response I could have done the right thing by paying back the value of the gifts. Instead, I did what real politicians do: I smeared the journalist by accusing them of accepting bribes. Yeah, a politician accusing someone of the thing they're guilty of sure sounds familiar.
You can try the demo of Prime Monster on Steam. The full game has made a campaign promise to launch later this year.
HIGH Easy to pick up and play.
LOW A lack of overall depth.
WTF Scoops the Clown.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi everyone. Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com.
The Spirit Lift is a roguelike deckbuilder that takes inspiration from haunted houses and creature feature films of the early ’80s and ’90s. A group of high school seniors get separated from their group on a field trip to a spooky hotel and get sucked into The Spirit Lift, where they must fight through 13 floors of terror in order to get back home.
Once a run begins, players take their group of teens through the cursed hotel floors in order to make it to the Penthouse and defeat the evil creature there. Each floor is different, with the theme depending on the boss that will be found at the end of the section. Every door along the way might hide cards or gear to help with the run, gold to buy cards from a shady wolf lurking around, or enemies trying their best to gobble the players up.
In combat, cards are played each turn to defeat enemies. Enemies telegraph what they will do when the player ends their turn, so using that information to plan out moves before enemies act is crucial. Unlike others in the genre, I have yet to find a card in Spirit Lift that actually serves as “defense” — there are no shields and no blocking. Options seem limited to attacking or debuffing enemies, which leads to a quick gameplay loop as it’s all-offense, all the time. That said, this speed is helpful in avoiding the maximum of 13 turns per battle — I haven’t found out what happens if a player uses up all of those turns, but I can’t imagine it’s good. Whether players win or lose a run, there will be points awarded that they can use for things like more starting health or starting with more gold on future runs.
There’s not much to the formula beyond what I’ve just described, so there’s not much depth in The Spirit Lift. There’s not much enemy variety, either. In my runs I’ve seen basic versions of bad guys, slightly healthier versions, and versions that do more status effects. There are some one-off enemies that introduce a new gimmick, but the well of new ideas seems to dry up fast.
What really kills the Spirit Lift, though, is the grind. It’s not the worst I’ve seen since each run is fairly short, maybe taking an hour to hit the final boss of the run, but the lack of variety is felt quickly.
On the plus side, players will eventually unlock five additional characters past the starting three after a few runs. Some are better with straight attacks, while others are better at buffing or damage-over-time, but they all tend to play fairly similar to each other. This means that after only a little while, The Spirit Lift has shown its entire hand.
That could be disappointing for players who love to dig deep into an experience like this, but despite how shallow it seems, I find that the spooky haunted house vibe is charming, it’s easy to grasp some of the powerful combinations quickly, and learning the full array of monsters allows players to quickly strategize each encounter.
The Spirit Lift won’t be a game for everyone, but there’s joy to be found for players who might like a smaller bite.
For me, The Spirit Lift gets 7.5 loops of elevator music out of 10.
Disclosures: This game is developed and published by prettysmart games. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Steam. Approximately 8 hours of play were spent playing the game, and multiple runs of the game were completed. There are no multiplayer modes.
Parents: This game is not currently rated by the ESRB. However, it’s safe to say that it has fantasy violence as players use cards that represent items like guns, baseball bats, and tennis rackets to attack horror monsters. No blood, no foul language, just creepy atmosphere.
Colorblind Modes: Colorblind Modes are not present.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles, but subtitles can not be altered and/or resized. There are no audio cues needed to play. The game is fully accessible.
Remappable controls: Controls are not remappable, and there is no control diagram. Movement is controlled by pressing WASD on the keyboard, or by using the mouse to click on the arrows on screen. Mouse is used to control everything else (card selection, selecting options in events, etc),
The post The Spirit Lift Video Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.
Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.
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The name makes this sound like something that’s either a mobile strategy game with deeply misleading Facebook ads, or something for the ‘Oceans are now battlefields’ crowd to play while they all wait and hope for Total War to go back to its historical roots. Lucky for me, you and all of us, Master of Command is the latter.
It’s a roguelike Total War game (bear with me!) set in 18th-century Europe during the Seven Years’ War, and puts you in command of an army that has to roam the countryside attracting new recruits, scavenging for supplies and upgrading your gear. Which sounds slightly mad given the historical context–I’m a general in the British Army, surely I have maps and supply chains, why am I wandering around fields looking for boxes of apples and hiring French regiments–but the narrative justification for all this meandering makes enough sense that I stopped questioning it pretty quickly and just rolled with it.
It’s not like the idea of coats-and-muskets armies being multinational forces was an alien one; the British army regularly included German troops, and Napoleon’s Grand Armee featured everyone from Poles to Austrians to the Irish. And living off the land was also a legitimate tactic; Napoleon himself relied on it all the time, which is one of the biggest contributors to his disastrous retreat in Russia, whose winter left nothing for him to scavenge. Putting a roguelike slant on all this is close enough to the time period’s reality for it to make sense.
And in this context it’s maybe the most interesting thing about Master of Command. We’ve played tactics games and shooters and card games with roguelike tendencies, but Total War’s enormous real-time battles are something new, and as a huge fan of that series I’ve been really impressed with Master of Command’s attempts at replicating Creative Assembly’s formula. And I do mean replicate: from the main menu down to the in-battle interface, Master of Command isn’t so much looking over Total War’s shoulders as it’s just tracing right over its lines.
Which is fine, because aside from cavalry being kinda broken and OP, and there being a few less tactical options for your units, for the most part Master of Command plays exactly like a battle in Empire or Napoleon Total War. In some ways it’s even better, like the way units will break much more easily here, resulting in lower and more realistic casualty counts, while some nice battlefield additions like a musket reloading progress bar over your units helps you better plan your tactics.
There’s a campaign and a loose act-based structure here, where you have to complete sidequests before tackling an end-of-level army, but the basic loop throughout remains the same. You fight real-time battles, you wander around reinforcing, having random encounters and messing with your army, then you get back on the battlefield and do it all again, juggling your resources and keeping an eye on your objectives the whole time.
I really like it. The battles are snappy enough that I never feel too bogged down playing so many of them in quick succession, and the roguelike structure makes me very invested in keeping as many of my guys alive as possible. I’d also like to take this opportunity to apologize to both the game and its art; I was recommended this game by many, many people last year and noped out immediately because the art shown in the game’s trailer looked so bad. On the screen, though? It’s fine! Many of the loading screens are better than fine, they look great!
Even if you’re not a huge muskets and horses person, the roguelike implementation here is still really interesting. Seeing these trappings added to an existing genre is something we all encounter at every waking moment of our lives these days, but the way it’s done here, and how it slides so seamlessly into your feeling of investment and control over your army, is fantastic. If this had just been a tactical RTS I’d be nowhere near as into it as I am, knowing how much it costs to replace every casualty I suffer and every musket ball I expend.
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The developers of Mewgenics, the cat breeding indie hit from the creators of The Binding of Isaac and The End is Nigh, are "getting a little bit excited" about what's next for the hit roguelike.
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Balatro developer LocalThunk has marked the second anniversary of his hit indie roguelike with a heartfelt blog post that ended: "Yes, I'm still working on 1.1."
The Rogue Prince of Persia might not be one of the most popular roguelites around, but it's charmed enough veterans and newcomers since it launched into 1.0 last year. We figured it would be ending its development run shortly afterwards, but Evil Empire (one of the studios now hard at work on the next Castlevania) isn't done upgrading it yet.
