From the moment you step into the protagonist’s shoes in Deadzone: Rogue, you know what you’re in for. You awaken in a derelict spaceship, with classic video game amnesia, armed with a gun and a bad attitude. It’s straightforward stuff. The room you’re in has a few things to interact with but you can’t do much right away. Examine the pot plant by the door and he’ll growl, “It’s a plant.” This is the kind of level we’re operating on, and I’m here for it.
In a lightning-paced roguelite shooter, that’s kind of all you need. There’s a gun, there are enemy robots, and when you kill them sometimes they drop bigger guns. Indie studio Prophecy Games have nailed the assignment in that respect. But Deadzone: Rogue also follows the now-standard template of rewarding you with a choice-of-three every time you clear a room.
You can either take a new weapon (you can carry two, and upgrade either their level or rarity in safe zones), run-permanent buffs, or items that tweak specific abilities. These might add or increase elemental damage, grant health regeneration, increased movement speed, greater durability, or put spins on your grenades. As is often the case, success in a run can come down to the buffs and weapons you’re lucky enough to stumble upon, but Rogue offers many different combinations and elemental buffs, so there’s always room for experimentation.
You can also earn two different types of currency, one of which pays for weapon and armour upgrades. The other unlocks upgrades that persist through runs, like increased health and damage. It’s all so simple and uncluttered that at first you’d be forgiven for eye-rolling your way through your initial run – that is, if not for the gunplay.
It takes a lot to nail the right feel in a sci-fi FPS. Guns have to walk the tightrope between feeling satisfying to shoot and being interesting enough to be worthy of the genre. Deadzone: Rogue’s arsenal is nothing overly outlandish, but the gameplay feel is exceptionally good. For an early access game it’s incredibly well polished, and although the AI is nothing to write home about (enemies either wantonly zerg you stand still, shooting you in the open), the feedback and kick to each gun is super good.
Difficulty feels fairly even across the content in this early access build, with one glaring exception when the game throws three bullet sponge giant spider zombies at you and lets you get on with it. I spent a long time and many different gear compositions trying to beat them until I lucked in to build that gave me huge damage spikes and some sponginess of my own. It helped that I also had two drones to take aggro and deal extra damage. You can team up with other players, which may make things easier, but I’ve played exclusively solo thus far.
Deadzone: Rogue delivers what story there is via the odd datapad entry, but the visual storytelling is more effective and compelling. Blood-spattered corridors and roving murder-droids reveal what you need to know, and build an undeniably creepy atmosphere. Every room you enter grants you a stealth cloak that won’t break until you shoot or hit something, which usually gives you time to scope out the way to the exit and recon the enemy types, but you’re probably better served leaving datapad perusal until you’ve smoking holes in everything with a circuit board in its head.
Graphically it’s pretty slick and shiny, and thankfully isn’t yet another pixelated retro-themed boomer shooter. Flickering lights and heavy shadows work together to obscure threats, and if you move too fast it’s easy to get a mouthful of chrome-plated foot you didn’t see coming, but you do have a short-range motion tracker in the minimap.
Overall Deadzone: Rogue is a great early access title that will only get bigger and better. Bosses exist mainly as gear-checks, but they’re spaced out enough not to be a pain and taking them down is always rewarding, even if the actual gear they drop could be slightly more exciting. But that’s a minor complaint in what is otherwise a well-polished early access title that has me super-excited to play more.
Deadzone: Rogue is in PC early access on Steam now.
