I got to do a playtest for a game called Heroes of Anirea, a roguelike that features tactical turn-based RPG elements. Naturally, this got my attention, as these elements are heavily involved in some of my personal favorite games. Since this is a playtest, I won’t go too heavily into the details, but I will give a summary of my thoughts.

The story I got to see was a bit of a prologue, which does a solid job of setting up the key narrative. It doesn’t look like anything out of the ordinary for the genre, as it’s a kingdom attacked by a mysterious adversary that ends up being too strong to contend with at the early stages of the game. While most of it wasn’t surprising, there was an element that I wasn’t expecting, and I enjoyed not seeing it coming.

The prologue also served as a nice tutorial for a lot of the base gameplay mechanics and does a very detailed job in the explanation. After the prologue, you do a series of missions in a book that includes skirmishes, cutscenes, shops, and a boss. It felt very abrupt to get to this, so I’m hoping that when the full game is released, there is a smoother transition to this part of the game. It also gives you full access to every aspect of combat, and I’m also hoping that when the game comes out, these get an official tutorial. For example, I didn’t realize that there was an elemental strength and weakness factor right away and had to catch that as combat progressed. With that being said, combat was a lot of fun and had all of the elements of this genre of gameplay that make this my absolute favorite.

Every character has a melee attack, special attack, and a special ability. The special abilities are really cool. One of the characters gets a fun power surge, some use really powerful attacks, and others can warp any unit on the battlefield to another location. For the special attacks, they use action points, but I wasn’t entirely sure how to properly use the points, so maybe more context would help make that smoother.

So while I think the game would benefit from more explanation and transitions in the final cut, the gameplay is fun. Like the story, it sticks fairly traditional to the tactical turn-based combat genre. Though instead of every unit moving at once, every unit is part of a turn order that moves one at a time. Instead of massive armies fighting each other, it’s three units versus a handful of enemies. With a smaller scale, it works in the game’s favor to have units going one at a time since it was easy to turn the tide when I had several units going one after another. Though challenging when it was time for several enemies to move. The difficulty seems to find its most balanced when there’s a mixture in the order of ally to enemy attacks.

The presentation is where the game really found its unique charm. It has a very aesthetically pleasing art style, and I enjoyed the music a lot. I was really having a fun time with the boss where the music changed to a vibe more suited for the situation, and it helped to really set the scene.

Overall, I thought this was a very solid playtest. It’s got all of the needed elements for a fun game in this genre. With a more fleshed-out tutorial for all of the mechanics, I think this could be a really fun game. Nothing I saw really made the gameplay stand out from any other game in this genre, but it has a very unique presentation that I really enjoyed. If you’re interested in this title, make sure to give Heroes of Anirea a follow and also follow their Kickstarter if you want to see this game released. I am planning on backing the game myself when the Kickstarter goes live.