With so many supremely high quality Roguelikes available to play, it can be hard for newcomers to jostle their way to position. Lots of the Roguelikes I’m given to review will immediately conjure up a beloved title, and this doesn’t always help a new game out. If I’m reminded of The Binding of Isaac or Hades then a game will have to be pretty good to keep my attention. This was very much a problem for Storm Lancers, which feels like Dead Cells but with a retro sci-fi aesthetic.
The opening cutscene of Storm Lancers is incredible, and immediately got me excited to play the game. When the two main characters’ space ship crashes on an alien planet, they have to find a way home. Thankfully some cute aliens possess them, and give them superpowers which helps with this mission. It’s a pretty simple setup, and gets you into the action nice and quickly.
Upon starting your first run, you won’t really have a whole lot of abilities at your disposal. You can merely jump, or use a gun and melee weapon to take on any foes in your path. I have to admit this left me a little worried, but despite being a Roguelike Storm Lancers has a whole host of more permanent upgrades you’ll be able to grab.
The first of these is the slide, which basically functions as a dash. You’ll use this predominantly to avoid taking damage, and immediately after obtaining it the combat becomes immeasurably more enjoyable. If you manage to get deeper into a run you’ll unlock skills like an air dash and a double jump, which will make all future attempts at freedom more entertaining and more likely to succeed.
More than anything though, it’s good weapons you’ll need to beat the nasty aliens and hard as nails bosses lurking around every corner. You can only carry one of each weapon type at a time, so you’ll spend a lot of your playtime in Storm Lancers figuring out which you enjoy using the most. I tended to appreciate the slow but brutal swords coupled with guns that inflicted damage over time, because combined they were incredibly useful in most situations. You might enjoy lightning fast claws or shotguns though, so make sure to check all those chests.
Guns and swords alone can’t make a Roguelike though, so it’s a good job there are other upgrades to grab. These passive buffs encourage very particular types of play, because most of the time they have massive drawbacks. Collecting more cash is great, but taking extra damage is a hefty price to pay. One of my favourite buffs would cause my bullets to bounce between alien creatures, but if there’s not an enemy nearby to do so it just targets you. It’s a cool way to make you really have to think about the perks you pick up.
Most of the Roguelikes we see nowadays have ways to upgrade yourself between runs too, and Storm Lancers is no exception. There’s a currency you get mainly for killing elite enemies, and you can spend it on all sorts of permanent buffs on your crashed spaceship. All the usual suspects are here, from health upgrades to revives and even better starting gear. It’s definitely not an original setup, but for those who appreciate that constant improvement it’ll be appreciated all the same.
There are plenty of things I enjoyed about Storm Lancers, but all in all I just felt like it missed that special sauce that’ll keep me coming back. The biggest issue is that the combat is fine, but nowhere near as good as the best the genre has to offer. Alongside this there’s also the fact that the random nature of runs barely seems to exist. Every run of the game just feels identical, and while I’m sure enemy placement or the layout of stages does change somewhat, it’s really hard to notice and the game just feels repetitive because of it.
Storm Lancers is far from a bad game, but when held up against the titans of the genre it’s just not able to hang. If you’ve completely exhausted your Roguelike backlog (which admittedly I struggle to imagine is possible) then perhaps this sci-fi romp will excite you. For the rest of us though it’ll just make us dream of playing better games, and that’s a real shame.