1-Bit Rogue Review

It’s tough for a game like 1-Bit Rogue to stand out in a market flooded with roguelike titles. It doesn’t introduce any novel mechanics and it’s likely too shallow for veterans of the genre. It’s endearing enough to rise up to the passable mark, but doesn’t offer enough content to pass that point.

1-Bit Rogue is a perma-death adventure about leading one of five heroes through a 50-floor dungeon and it revolves around three primary actions: moving, fighting, and looting. Each one counts as a turn, and your enemies move as you do. Combat plays out in a linear blow-for-blow fashion, and there aren’t any special skills that you can use to spice it up. And, unfortunately, there’s a miserably small variance between the five playable classes. The only differences you can expect are entirely passive and it doesn’t help that it costs a solid chunk of change to unlock new characters.

There’s not much to look at during your journey - it’s about as graphically barebones as it’s possible to be, and you won’t experience sprawling levels with truly varied scenery. Although randomised, each floor is pitifully small in scale. It gets better as you go though, and your surroundings do change slightly as you delve deeper into the dungeon.

Combat doesn’t require any deep decision making, but there’s an ever-present element of risk versus reward. While defeating enemies typically results in increased HP, it also wears down your weapon. Weapons - or spells, for the magic-based classes - aren’t necessarily in short supply, but they’re all destructible and they don’t last more than a few hits. As you start to encounter more difficult monsters, you’ll have to decide if it’s smarter to kick ass or run away. There’s not much strategy here, however, as you don’t have access to an inventory or the ability to swap out weapons.

The only other decisions you can expect to make include purchasing varying bonuses from two types of statues scattered throughout the dungeon, and whether you should open the medicine-stocked chest before or after you tackle the next enemy. Every run left me feeling like I was just going through the motions, entirely at the whim of lady luck. For me, solid difficulty and the feeling of skill improvement are two essential parts of the roguelike experience. The difficulty is certainly there, but there’s just not much player skill involved.

I can’t say that your decisions don’t factor at all into your ability to beat the game, but understand that they don’t play a central role. Rather, success becomes more likely as you purchase permanent HP upgrades for your characters. I appreciate the persistant upgrade system, but like the rest of the game, it’s too shallow.

Together, the lack of skills, the homogenous classes, and the exclusion of an inventory feel like one giant missed opportunity that could have easily pushed 1-Bit Rogue past mediocrity. Still, despite the minimal amount of player input, it does have its moments of fun. And, if you find yourself enamoured with it despite its problems, there’s a reasonably priced visual upgrade that adds a much-needed splash of color.