For a genre defined by unpredictability, roguelikes often sound incredibly boring. These are beginner games, cast in the image of famous predecessors – you at least have to know what Rogue is, and first-person shooters speak for themselves. They are also firmly guided to dryness by the system. As a result, their marketing materials tend to read like anatomical checklists, the same vital organs being passed from developer to developer.
Vagante’s Steam menu certainly didn’t set Minecraft on fire: procedural generation, “choose how you play,” “hard but fair,” some unabashed debts to Spelunky, and a bunch of RPG-style upgrades. I probably don’t need to tell you this is a pixel art event. But then I played for 15 minutes and was seated by a little dragon and I realized that Vagante is a quiet original game. Apologizing to developer Nuke Nine for being an arrogant asshole, here are some highlights from my own creation.
Vagante is gloomy, but gloom grows in you. I’ve checked it out on the Switch and in many ways it’s definitely the worst platform to play it because Vagante loves the dark and it loves the pixel wide pressure plates and the spikes waiting under the ladders like bushes Cats are like dogs below, and arrow traps in the far corners must be foreseen rather than spotted.
Here’s a console trailer for Vagante ahead of the new platform’s release.
The title screen gives you a brief glimpse of a stunning forest – tree trunks twist like silk, the moon rises majestically from the last, the daylight fades away, and a carriage rolls to the left on a sloping copper surface. It glows like a glowing manuscript. The game then throws it all away, sending you into the dank stalactites and fog of war of the cave system. You do return to the surface of the second area, which has the atmosphere of a sleeping pond pierced by sunlight. But after that came the catacombs, which – well, you can imagine.
When you can see it clearly, it’s a rather beautiful game, with some glossy organic color choices and elegantly soft sprite animations that make Nuke Nine’s taste for shadows incredibly perverse. But after a while, your eyes will adapt. The feeling of peeking through a keyhole will teach you to linger on details, especially those with sharp edges: glowing mushrooms, beautifully patterned tree trunks, rusted sarcophagi in the background. There is a neat intersection between aesthetic appreciation and more practical goals. It feels like you’re being trained to savor the world, even as you learn to carefully lower yourself into the dark and scrutinize the treasure room for slate or green lines.
Vagante is surprisingly not frustrating – For a game with such an unhealthy fix for traps.I can’t count how many times I’ve been scrolling through levels taking care of a successful combination of device features, only to be thrown on spikes and react in some way no With a howl of rage, but with a kind of Mr. Bean’s weary indulgence of laughter. Gee, those spikes! Where will they show up next? Maybe it’s Stockholm Syndrome talk, but the trap never feels unfair, no matter how unexpected. Part of that’s because they can fight enemies too – there’s nothing more satisfying than seeing the goblin king’s charge be brutally reduced by falling rocks – and partly because of some thoughtful unlock pacing in the early game, which ensures you’re usually Will return from the depths to try new lessons or backgrounds. Speaking of that…
Wagant has severely curvy course. The starting options sound pretty conventional – mage, knight, and rogue – but when you get your hands on a new piece of equipment, they morph, leading you to a myriad of hybrid styles. Your wizard may happen to get a very sweet hammer that spits out homing balls and drains health. This might convince you to ramp up strength and vitality on a bookend-level campfire, rather than the mage’s unique enchantments and alchemy-based skill paths. After a few levels, your once-mana-thrower has turned into a brawler, carrying some lightning with them for close encounters.
Instead, your knight might stumble upon a stack of overclocked spellbooks and intelligence-boosting gloves, and decide to put brains before muscles — at least until you find a pair of sandals that turn you into Sonic the Hedgehog. Even if you religiously stick to three or four unique skill paths for each class, there’s some decent range. A rogue can be a somersaulting archer or a light-fingered ghost. Savage can be a drunk berserker or ninja druid. Dog trainers can do all sorts of things to dogs, often causing pain to dogs.
And then there’s the background – a dramatic sparse cherry modifier that’s both helpful for newbies and a delightful slanted challenge for seasoned players. Ascetic, for example, boosts your stats at each level, e.g. the longer you go without equipment. “Illiterate” gives you charred helmets and bombs, but at the cost of learning spells. I love fantasy games when mixed with archetypes I’m all too familiar with, and Vagante executes its lessons with engrossing shenanigans.
Vagante is a feast of time travel style. The differences between builds are most noticeable in how you probe and move each program layout. At first glance, it all seems simple — a jump, a ledge grab, a platform you can jump off or jump over — but again, the possibilities quickly multiply. Dash and teleport spells let you bypass chokepoints once you’ve calculated their range. Grappling hooks and climbing gloves allow you to bypass heavier bosses and shoot arrows from the ceiling. The triple jump and angel wings can pretty much get you flying, though the lure of getting some airtime underground can be a burden. There are gear that allow you to breathe underwater, or go through walls. Weapons also shape your understanding of geography. They all have different attack times, arcs and ranges – the flail is a particularly tricky but very fun toy with dramatic clockwork and anyone crawling behind you.
Vagante has environments that can be sneakily destroyed. After a few hours, I realized that water has physical properties and volume. You’ll find the level slowly submerged, corpses floating around, and a rat paddling away recklessly as the exit fades. You can even manipulate bodies of water for tactical gain—perhaps saturating a baby fire-breathing dragon’s lair with a drill wand. Don’t get me wrong – this is not Noita. This morphing is a long way from breaking the rules of the game, but in some ways, it makes it more appealing. Noita (which I love) is a chain reaction of bubbling pits, with whole caves often self-destructing before you even see them, and Vagante’s space possibilities have to be carefully teased out.
Vagante is about people who lie to you. What does this strange new broadsword do? Heck, it’s a cursed blade that can’t be unequipped, it’ll sink you like a stone. What is this tempting violet potion? Oh heck, it just cuts your fire resistance in half. It’s best to start stocking up on those recognition scrolls (which need to be recognized in sequence), as item properties switch between levels with little regard for other game expectations. As I found out the hard way, green brew isn’t always a potion of regeneration. Mages will find it easier to navigate this maze: The Alchemy Skill Path includes an unlock that automatically recognizes all potions. You can also feed your unwanted items to the mysterious anvils and cauldrons that dot the levels. Be careful though – the results aren’t always beneficial.
Wagant has a brutal difficulty increase in the mid-game. Things may loosen up a bit when you first step into forested areas where the sight lines are relatively wide (and elven snipers), but make sure the catacombs slam on the brakes with new forms of spiked traps and facehugger pompous. Invisible hands, and ghosts invisible until close at hand. Finally, Rift is a terrifying mix of deadly droplets and enemy types that will punish you for sitting still.
There are also level bosses who have rapidly evolved from cartoon mascots that can sometimes be defeated with a simple blow to evil knights and demons who can kill you in a few hits. Bosses hold keys to chests and optional areas, but if your inventory is already depleted with enchanting tools (or you’re trying to run fast), they can usually be skipped and practical. Even if you’re bullish on your chances, it’s important to stay healthy for the later stages: You can always recover a little at a campfire, but prevention is better than cure.
Vagante lets you do things after death. There are some interesting options for slain partners that stop one player’s clumsiness from hindering the fun of others. You can resurrect yourself as a skeleton who cannot use equipment but can scout and scoop items for those who are still alive. Thankfully, skeleton players recovered their flesh between levels. Die like a skeleton, fear not, you can always reappear as a ghost, which is basically a very frustrating lighting fixture. Since there were no players before the console was released, I couldn’t get comfortable with multiplayer, but let’s just say, it has a lot of charm.
Wagant has a mysterious caravan driverEvery time you start running, he appears in the lower left corner, staring coldly off-screen. How many heroes have this ruthless ferryman brought to an ignominious end at the hands of a necromancer or an angry shopkeeper (yes, Vagant has those too, no, they won’t let a thief commit a crime the first time)? How many more lost souls did he hide in the Tardis-like depths of that covered carriage? Was he ever an adventurer himself? Is he a job profiting from audacious megalomania – perhaps sharing his delivery between Wagant and Hamlet of the Darkest Dungeon – or a monster incarnation of the forest itself, sent to use the The promise of gold-turned-healthy hats to lure the unwary? Does he have the slightest remorse for his actions? When will it end? Also, does his mule have a name? Why can’t I pet them?
All in all, Vagante is the definition of a hidden gem. Although you should definitely use the identification scroll before equipping. I’m glad I played it on the Switch, albeit with eye strain, because the smaller screen really reinforces one of my favorite things about the game – its compactness and refinement. Roguelikes are often sold as variety shows, but I love them just as much because of their economic sense, the same parts unfolding into many diabolical combinations. The Vagante is indeed a refined little Swiss Army Knife, though arguably it didn’t make the headlines.
Granted, it doesn’t have the original chaos of Noita, where a single damage teleport unlock can take you halfway through, and you don’t even need touch controls. It also doesn’t have the personality and sensuality of Hades, nor the conceptual ingenuity of Loop Hero. But because of its deceptively straightforward nature, it’s easier to pick up than many of its peers. Mind you, it’s lunch time. I’m going on a cave trip again.
