Hyperborea

As annoying as permadeath and no save file might sound nowadays, gamers are still pretty fond of hardcore roguelikes that push their nerves to the limit. Whether it’s because the satisfaction is greater after you manage to finish something difficult, or because people are just tired of the auto-save function, it would seem like roguelikes are more popular than ever.

Hyperborea appears to be an arcade dungeon crawler with role-playing elements at a first glance, but it’s actually a bit more than that if you give it a chance. However, you can apply classic strategies and approaches in here as well, which is great news for experienced players. On the other hand, newcomers might be a bit frustrated if they are not willing to put a bit of effort into it.

As for the story, there’s not a lot of it to talk about, and you can actually ignore this whole side of the game if you wish so. There are three character classes to choose from, and they all have different play styles, depending on whether they are faster, slower, stronger or more accurate. One of the classes is locked at first, which means that you have to play a bit in order to unlock it.

Most roguelikes challenge you to make it across the dungeon and find the door to the next level, which can be extremely easy sometimes, depending on how the monsters spawn. Here, things are much tougher, because you are required a certain number of resources in order to enter the next level, even if you find the door. Naturally, these resources are obtained by killing enemies, which forces you to spend a certain amount of time in each level.

Speaking of which, the action is very fast-paced and challenging, given the fact that everything takes place in real-time. On the other hand, the enemies respawn a few minutes after you kill them, which can lead to annoying situations. There’s very little strategy involved in the combat system, since it gets chaotic in a rush.

Even if it’s tough as nails and somewhat unfair sometimes, Hyperborea is surely going to find a decent audience, especially if more content is added in the future. Thus, if you don’t mind dying every other minute, this can easily keep you busy for a few hours.