Double Dragon Gaiden: How roguelite elements add to the classic beat ’em up

The legendary Double Dragon brothers return for a tag team, bash the action with a roguelite spin! It’s the year 199x in an alternate New York City. The city was devastated by nuclear destruction, leaving chaos and crime that swept the city. Billy and Jimmy Lee cannot sit still and allow this chaos to continue (with the help of some new and familiar faces and you – of course) and take it upon themselves to rid their town of their four major criminal gangs.

Dynamic level selection

Once you’ve decided to take on the four major gangs, it’s up to you to decide in which order you want to take on them. Each gang takedown is a mission, and the order in which you pick the missions will determine how you experience the levels. The first level is the easiest in terms of number of mission sectors, enemies, and overall difficulty. When a gang is defeated, all remaining gangs level up, expanding their lair and recruiting stronger and tougher minions. This way you can experience different sectors of the missions in multiple playthroughs.

Purchasable upgrades

As you progress through the game you will have the opportunity to earn in-game cash. There are a variety of ways to earn money including performing special KOs, completing bonus objectives, maintaining combo and special KO chains, and more.

This money can be spent on random, purchasable upgrades for your individual tag team fighters. For example, you can strengthen your duo by upgrading to increase the damage of melee attacks for one fighter, and then increasing the speed at which SP is auto-regenerated for the other. Conversely, you can save your money to buy revives or turn your remaining money into tokens at the end of a playthrough.

token shop

Tokens are in-game currency that you can use to purchase additional unlockable items. They are earned by exchanging your remaining money at the end of a playthrough. Once you’ve collected enough tokens to spend, head to the Token Shop where you can spend your hard-earned chips.

Purchase items such as unlockable playable characters (keep an eye out for familiar faces), tips on how to improve your gameplay from the developers themselves, in-game art (including the city map and character concept sketches), and music.

game modifier

Having trouble building your token stash? It might then be time to change your gaming experience. When you start a new game, you’ll have the option to tweak the game’s difficulty (including the ability to play permadeath for an extra challenge or infinite continuation). The harder you make a playthrough’s difficulty, the lower your cash-to-token exchange rate will be, giving you the opportunity to end up earning more tokens.

Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons coming to Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S this summer. More information about Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragonsvisit DoubleDragonGaiden.com or follow @modusgames on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Discord.