It's bite-size Vampire Survivors in Slay the Spire's framework in Rogue: Genesia

Those 30-minute rounds of Vampire Survivors got you down? I'm really loving Rogue: Genesia, a nicely-made little Early Access gem that's got a roguelike mode putting structure over its weapons-and-upgrades horde fighting. The result is spurts of shorter wave survival with short rests in between that's easier to pick up and put down.

It's a pretty game, to boot, and has both a free demo and a nice price point at $3.

You jump from node to node, some are fights, others are treasure, but all lead up to bigger miniboss and boss battles alongside shops and the like. Some are battles with survival timers, others challenges to slay a number of monsters as quickly as you can, and yet more have those goals combined with battling elite foes.

Your job in Genesia is, as someone with a very powerful soul, to hop from world to world within a multiverse and save them from hordes of monsters. Near as I can tell, at least, but either way it's about cutting down hundreds and hundreds of monsters as they fall upon you in waves.

Developer Huard Ouadi is a technical artist and programmer, so the neat thing about Genesia is that it has very modern lighting, shading, and rendering techniques in play. Characters are 2D sprites, but they live in 3D environments with full lighting and particle effects, it's a 2.5D effect much like the vaunted visual design of recent JRPG hit Octopath Traveler.

You can find Rogue: Genesia on Steam and follow it on Twitter. Rogue: Genesia is developed by solo operator Huard Ouadi and published by French A/V outfit iolaCorp Studio.

Speaking of the invigorating flavor that is the reverse bullet hell horde battling game, the modern progenitor Vampire Survivors will finally release to 1.0 on October 20th, complete with a whole new engine.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.