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Brave warriors, it is time to assemble and to die. That's my takeaway from the PC Gaming Show trailer for AfterQuest, which blends up all your nostalgia for the pixelly RPGs of yesteryear with the roguelikes and lites of… today-year. Your party's gonna die and come back a bunch, is what I'm saying.
The trailer gives us a glimpse at a series of battles that are very much in the OG Final Fantasy (and plenty of other RPGs) vein: colourful warriors facing off against ghouls and goblins and monsters in turn-based battles. We get a little look at the roguelite parts too: a tidy loot roulette offering us a choice of three different bits of equipment, each with gameplay-altering effects like stun chance and heal-on-hit.
The look is very nice indeed: a pleasant-to-look-at medley of vivid pixel art and fantasy backgrounds, but it's the info sheet that piques my interest most. You tell me something is a roguelite, I'll assume my party members are all going to absolutely eat it and that I shouldn't get attached. AfterQuest tells me I am wrong: it's very lore-focused, and you're encouraged to get attached to your lil guys and learn their personal stories.
That approach even extends to the game's villains, who apparently all have their own sad reasons for becoming bad guys that you'll have to reckon with as you fight them. Though not while you fight them—the devs at Ember Arcade are quite clear that the game is more or less divided in two: on runs, you'll be fighting, while you learn all the backstory stuff in between.
If that sounds up your street, then you can wishlist it now on Steam, and the full game is coming soon. I'm not sure how long the demo is; I'm hoping for at least three tragic backstories before I have to start from scratch.
