App Army Assembles - Will Immortal Rogue stand the test of time?

Quick Description: a cool looking hack-and-slash adventure game which sounds super ambitious for a one-man development team, Kyle Barrett does a great job of encompassing quick, arcade action with decision making, collection, and rouge-like experiences. The only downside is his music choice which is repetitive but overall Kyle, bravo!

Graphics: Everything screams retro and pixel art to me. You transition between different times and different environments that are more than just pallet swaps, but rather completely different takes on each dystopia. Making your way through the Iceland, to Crooked City Streets, a Tron-esque Cyberpunk world and more. I didn’t get bored of the graphics which looked beautiful even on my iPhone 7.

Sound: Everything is Cyber Punk and awesome, giving me the Daft Punk vibe that Disney had found when using the techno artist during their production of the Tron Remake. The sound is clear and gets stuck in your head, but it is the same song over and over again as far as I can tell and does get a little too repetitious. Not a bad song, but not your favorite after a few hours.

Gameplay: Immortal Rouge plays like the one-swipe vertical displayed game of your dreams. Movement is done by swiping with your thumb in any 360-degree direction and is limited to a dash rather than continual movement.

The movement, however, is fluid and fast enough to where I didn’t feel like it was a hindrance and the mechanics rather made the fluidity of combat stronger, where tapping could either execute combos with your light weapon, tap-and-hold down on the screen to charge (for a long and short time) a heavy weapon attack (that also slowed down time), and chain any combo of the three provided you had your combo-charge meter ready for the next decision.

The game plays in a dystopian chronological order going from level 1 being 100 A.D. and with each completion of the level moving you up to the next (level 2 200A.D., level 3 300 A.D., etc.) Each new level is slightly randomized with different scenarios on what you can choose to do based on that year’s political affairs.

“Religion is being replaced with science and industry across the Kingdom. A young Saint seeks to restore the people’s faith after a brutal plague.” Do you “Hunt the Saint” or “Hunt the Plaguebearers”?

Sadly, I felt like these situations although cool to add and have a binary decision on what I’ll do in the game’s world, had little impact on the gameplay itself, the only real decision I could make that would have impact that I noticed would be if there was a third option which helped further my abilities and experience in the world.

Difficulty is high and only gets harder, I could never make it past the 6th level and am enjoying every minute trying to do so though. There are some clipping errors and crash bugs but overall I’ve not noticed anything making it unplayable.

It's basically a swipe to move, tap to slash game with a story of sorts wrapped around it. In each small level you sort of move through time periods which gives the graphics a change, but the graphics don’t add anything to the gameplay.

The story as you progress isn’t even really a story - it’s a snippet of exposition at the beginning of the level determines the enemies in the levels, choices like “The townspeople are rebelling against the evil establishment, chose to fight the townspeople or the establishment”. As far as I can see, regardless of the choice, the outcome is the same apart from the graphics.

To control the game you swipe the screen to move and tap to fight enemies. Every now and then you can tap and drag for a bigger more deadly move. You collect gold and blood which you can use to enhance your weaponry and research upgrades that you can apply to your character, making them more deadly as the game progresses, its then a challenge to see how many levels you can survive for.

The gameplay itself is solid enough and the upgrades are varied and interesting to play with, but the story really doesn’t do anything or have an impact on anything, not that I have seen anyway. The controls feel like you should hate them but they actually worked fine for me, the slow moving enemies made the initial thought I had that my fingers all over the gameplay area would be a hindrance, but it was actually ok.

I think if the developer did something with the story itself, it would add another layer to the game, more than just see how long you can survive. The graphics are nice and stylised, the music can do with a few different tunes and the controls are fine.

Other than that I would say that it’s one of those games you are going to either be happy to play it or just not care about it. For me, I am ok with the game, I just think the extra story aspect and music would make it even better.

This is a game that has great potential. The music is appropriate and good, if repetitive. The controls are simple and work well on the small screen. Swipe and tap and that’s it. The graphics, like so many titles these days,are ultra simple.

I was intrigued by the idea of a roguelike game that has you surviving as a vampire into the future and having your choices affect the future levels, so to speak. But after almost an hour of gameplay I found little variation, no matter which choices I made or paths I took.

I’ll play it a little more and give it a little more chance to surprise me, but ultimately I think this is going to be a story of unrealized potential. To paraphrase Shakespeare, much ado about very little.

A vampire hack and slash. It doesn’t have anything new to offer against other games of the same genre, but the graphics are a good retro example, the gameplay is easy to use, and the general plot is well told. There are multiple choices at each level, allowing you to follow your quest in your own unique way, although I must admit it does seem a little repetitive at times.

With the relatively short levels, the game moves along quickly, allowing you to choose a variety of upgrades as you progress. Although there wasn’t anything new to offer, I enjoyed playing Immortal Rogue, but I’m not sure how much longer I could progress without it being too much of a muchness. However, it’s not the worst game I’ve played this year, and I’ve been happy enough spending time on it.

It's a hack & slash game where you slide to move and tap to attack and hold the tap for special stronger attacks. The controls when you start playing take a bit of time to get used to, once you get used to them it's fine, reminded me of old arcade games.

I love pixel graphics and that was a plus for me, the music gets a little annoying once you get in combat so I had to turn it off, the fact that's a roguelike gives it a lot of replayability you get to choose who you want to kill, and can buy new weapons and stuff by collecting good, it's one of those games that you enjoy in short bursts.

I liked it and as the other reviewers said it has a lot of potential to be a really good game, extra story would make it awesome I'm looking forward to see the updates and keep the good work!

For me personally this game turned out to be nothing spectacular to say the least. Besides, the game's cause did not help the fact that I am not a big fan of hack-and-slash action, so I had to make a certain effort to check it out in the first place.

As soon as I launched Immortal Rogue I was sadly surprised that it supports only portrait mode, which is not at all how I prefer to play games on my iPad. The gameplay seemed too repetitive, which is how it probably should be taking into account the game's roguelike nature, but there are certainly better implemented examples out there.

The graphics and sound are almost non-existent, which definitely made things only worse. The story did not captivate me a bit to the point of not caring at all. I heard that the game has been developed single-handedly, which once again proves the case that it is almost impossible to create a masterpiece-ish title when going solo.

It is likely targeted at that caste of hardcore gamers, who prefer feeding on poorly looking retro-styled games with some "grand idea" behind them, but as I am not one of them I wash my hands of Immortal Rogue once and for all.

Immortal Rogue is a hack n slash roguelite RPG with one touch controls. The controls take a little getting used to, but with a little perseverance you will be dashing around the battlefield in zigzags, delivering three strike combos before dashing away like a malevolent whirlwind, and crashing back with the "hold down and drag to aim" heavy dash attack.

The gameplay is satisfying, and there are enough variations in the weaponry to keep gameplay interesting. There is an unlock system to keep you motivated, ranging from servants who give you various perks at the start of each level, to increase in probability of certain weapons in the shop.

The roguelite aspect manifests in a randomized three options to upgrade your character to at the end of each level, and one choice of randomized weapon to purchase from the shop which appears at the end of most levels.

When you die all this progress is lost, and you are free to try a new build. At the beginning of each level you are given a binary choice, these choices have an effect on the next world and seem to focus on the centralization of power, giving you the option to attack either the emerging ruling class or the unruly peasantry.

The decisions you make have no effect on the gameplay. After a couple of worlds Dracula takes notice of you and sends his minion to be your first boss battle. Whether you like Immortal Rogue or not will depend on the standards to which you hold it, as a one man project it is impressive, it has atmosphere, good sound design, and satisfying gameplay. My biggest gripe is with its system design, which is where much of the charm of indie game design is.

The world generation is inconsistent, and the binary choices you make to shape it at the beginning of each level lose their gravity when an ice age resets civilization every couple of hundred years. Then there is the lack of gameplay effect based on your decisions, I decide to attack an aristocratic dinner party, but I end up fighting minions in the streets anyways. Is attacking hysterical and defenseless civilians a challenging gameplay choice? No.

However the option of doing so would turn the binary choice system into more than a world skinning mechanism. Raising the notoriety of vampires and increasing the difficulty for every aristocrat who escapes the massacre would introduce a risk/reward mechanic.

The second point of system based frustration I encountered was with the upgrade/weapon system. In a run I would often encounter every skill upgrade to boost throwable heavy weapons and take them should I find one, only to die six worlds in without having found a single one, but encountering the same unusable item in several shops. Unfortunate results of the RNG, it feels some more structure could benefit the leveling system.

If the system design was more complex and better implemented this would be a great game. Instead it is a fun game with a frustrating amount of potential.

Seemed like an interesting concept and story that ended up getting lost in the repetitive and uninspired gameplay. My choices didn’t seem to have much if any real effect on things.

I love retro games but wasn’t really a fan of the graphics in this one. After a while I simply lost all interest in it.