Loot River has a wild concept for a roguelike. It has the same action gameplay one would expect from the genre, in that players take on enemies and bosses and try to collect as much loot as possible before dying. The catch is that every environment in the game takes place on the water.
To get around, players will have to manipulate the environment. It’s part puzzle game, part roguelike. The combination is certainly unique. Among the launch platforms, Loot River is around the 70s for review scores. What exactly does this game do better than other roguelikes, and where does it lose its shine?
8 Best: Tetris Plus Dark Souls
It was touched on in the intro but the roguelike gameplay deserves to be elaborated on in Loot River. It is like a combination of Tetris plus Dark Souls. The game is very unforgiving. Players need to “git gud” as soon as possible if they wish to survive. The combat, challenge, and overall gothic art style are close to Dark Souls.
The Tetris bit comes into play with movement. Every environment in the game is on water. Players can move rafts around like puzzle pieces. To progress, sometimes these puzzles will take a while. It takes some getting used to, but the overall gameplay of Loot River deserves a big thumbs up.
7 Worst: A Lack Of Progression
This challenge can make some players throw in their towels early as almost everything is lost upon death, and there is no way to retrieve it like in a corpse run in other roguelikes. Players will collect weapons, accessories, two types of currencies, and level up like in a typical RPG on their runs.
Between areas, they will be brought back to the hub world so that they can spend Knowledge. This currency can unlock weapons players can find in each successive run. There is no way to increase any stat permanently though and that is a detriment to the otherwise interesting gameplay loop.
6 Best: Always Saving
Loot River is always saving progression. It doesn’t matter if players take steps into a dungeon or grab a single coin. If players end their session, they will restart exactly where they left off upon reloading the game.
There are exceptions, though, like boss fights. Still, this is a huge feature that more games should implement. It is also just nice knowing that the action can be paused at any time. That’s something even Dark Souls doesn’t have available.
5 Worst: The Map
Loot River has a map, which should be a good thing. While it can help with navigating a little, the map could be so much better. It is constantly pushed out to a far distance. There is no way to zoom in on it either. This is distracting because players have to practically walk up to their screen to see what is going on. That is true for console players at least.
Even at that extreme measure, the map isn’t as detailed as it could be. No map at all would be a worse setup for a roguelike of this nature, but it’s still worth almost noting. Hopefully, a patch can add in a zoom at least.
4 Best: Traps Working In Your Favor
Some games make enemies invincible to traps or things in the environment. It doesn’t make sense for something like spikes coming out of a wall to harm players but not enemies. Thankfully, Loot River is in favor of giving the player some extra options for killing enemies.
For example, the first area, the Sunken Village, has fire traps on some barges. Activating it will spread the fire at an alarming rate. Players can dock their burning raft onto one with a bunch of enemies, dismount with another raft not aflame, and then watch the chaos ensue. Using traps to the player’s advantage is the sweetest victory in a roguelike or in any game that allows it.
3 Worst: Artifacts
Besides unlocking weapons with Knowledge, there is another feature of progression that is permanent: Enemies sometimes drop Artifacts. These can be activated in the hub area and will never disappear once collected.
Any sort of reward system is appreciated in a roguelike. However, these Artifacts seemingly work more against players than anything else. They are more for players to increase the challenge of Loot River rather than lower it. There is one that will decrease fire traps or one that will increase the number of enemies in a dungeon. There is always a catch. Some do purely help players, but they are rare.
2 Best: The PS1 Graphics
Loot River’s art design is retro like so many other indie games out there. It’s not like a typical throwback game though that harkens back to the 8-bit or 16-bit console generations. Loot River looks more like a PS1 game.
The camera is top-down but up close it appears the developers are using basic 3D polygonal models. It’s a good look for a roguelike. It adds to the horror element since everything is just a little off stylistically.
1 Best: Check Out The Assist Options
There are not a lot of assist options in the game. However, one is more than some AAA games offer. Indie developers are getting more keen on giving players options so that more people can play their projects.
Players can jump into Loot River’s menu and turn Easy Mode on. This is a separate function and is not related to a difficulty level, which this game doesn’t have in the first place. Easy Mode instead just makes enemies hit for less damage. The game doesn’t say how much less but it is enough that beginners will see the difference in their health immediately.
Loot River was released on May 3, 2022 and is available on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.