Any chance I get to play a new rogue-like, I will take it. Just this summer, I’ve been lucky enough to review Chenso Club, Neon Blight, and The Serpent Rogue. This time around, I’m taking a look at Despot’s Game: Dystopian Army Builder, a title that’s been in Early Access for almost a year and is finally ready for its 1.0 launch. This rogue-like, however, incorporates an auto-battling combat system instead of the typical twin-stick affair in rogue-likes. How does meshing these two together pan out?

I’m not usually a fan of strategy in video gaming, I tend to just want to jump into mindless action or scour a large open world. So when I went into the tutorial for Despot’s Game, I was a tad overwhelmed. While the fighting doesn’t start until you give the game the go-ahead, the planning phase requires a lot of careful thought that weighs the pros and cons of what you’re about to do, sometimes boiling down to choosing who to let live on your squad or who to save.

In Despot’s Game, you’ll spend quite a bit more time preparing for your battles than actually battling. You can acquire more members for your team to ensure you can win the coming battles, but every time you switch to another room, your team consumes food. Run out of food and your team fights more poorly. Balancing food consumption means you don’t necessarily want a full team of 24, as they’ll eat far more than a team of 12 or 16 would.

Buffing your characters to make them more resilient and powerful in Despot’s Game is a must. In addition, you can manage who stands where as the battle starts. It’s ideal to have tanks in the front to absorb the brunt of the damage, whereas the ranged members and healers can keep their distance in the back to stay alive. There’s also mutations to enhance your characters and power-ups you can use at points, such as not needing to consume food in the next room to give you some breathing room while traversing each floor.

When things start crumbling in Despot’s Game, though, you can tell it’s a slippery slope and you’ll have to make crucial decisions to keep your run going. You do have the option to convert members of your party into a small amount of food, something that can be useful when certain characters are almost out of health and are basically dead weight. Plus, there’s random events where you can risk the lives of a random party member with the reward being coins, food, or anything in-between.

Despot’s Game is particularly hard, even for the rogue-like genre where survival is not the norm. Utilizing a lot of critical thinking and making tough sacrifices is penchant to victory, and it’s worth mastering food management to make it as far as you can, as you’re bound to hit a brick wall every now and then in Despot’s Game. At the sweet price point of $14.99 and earning a “Very Positive” rating while in Early Access, the challenge is waiting for you in Despot’s Game.

A PC preview copy of Despot’s Game was provided by tinyBuild for this review.

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Despot's Game

$14.99

8

Score

8.0/10

Pros

• Novel Concept
• Fantastic Pixel Graphics
• Masterful Soundtrack

Cons

• More Punishing Than Most Roguelikes
• Difficulty Spikes A Bit Too High