Blade Assault

Blade Assault is a game with few, if any, "big" original ideas, hearkening to Dead Cells and Risk of Rain 1 with its platforming roguelite action. It's a well trod formula, but Blade Assault's strength is in its solid and accessible execution. Comparable titles withhold many conveniences and mechanics for much longer than this game does, both within runs and between runs (through metaprogression). By not "withholding", I mean this game gives access to four responsive characters with satisfying movement and attack mechanics from first boot. Immediate access to low cooldown dashes, double jumps, and generally precise movement means that characters are fun to control from the outset and only get better during runs. Characters' skills have fun quirks that keep them from being a braindead cooldown rotation and are both upgradeable and swappable during runs for alternate moves. Elements of metaprogression like inter-run currency and permanent character upgrades take a (comparatively) trivial amount of time to unlock and essentially behave like a short probation period before the player is given access to a standard suite of pre-run customization and bonus options, and the game feels balanced around the completed state of this probation. Of the inter-run currencies, once the aforementioned metaprogress is completed, the player will harvest enough of these during a run to interact with their intra-run mechanics; no grinding failed runs to accrue enough to afford a good run here. Between the multiple characters, skill upgrades/swaps, the game's elemental perk slot system, and the RoR "artifact" style items, there's plenty of room here for exploring different builds, and it features a Dead Cells/Slay the Spire style difficulty escalation system to maintain challenge. In build synergy games like this it's hard not to want more, though, and stat relationships can be opaque. Also, fights can be a visual mess till you're accustomed. A STEAL if bought on sale.

Great music and pixel art. Good rogue like

Despite it saying it supports controllers, it would not detect mine. I tried turning the controller on before turning on the game and during the game, nothing. I tried looking in the options and also nothing. I tried rebinding the keys to see if it would pick up the controller that way and it didn't.

the first "boss" is way too hard. How often should you try? The fun of the game quickly decreases. Again, there were programmers at work who want to see us suffer. Thank you.