It has been a while since a traditional roguelike RPG caught my eye, but no longer: Path of Achra is a dark fantasy game of an ancient earth where gods and sorcerers battle with mighty warriors and heroes. You're an adventurer on the path through Achra seeking the Obelisk beyond, which you do via a series of little mini-roguelike dungeon areas, each small enough to fit on a single screen.
Self-described by the developer as a "broken build sandbox," Path of Achra has that special sauce that lets you really enjoy mixing and matching all kinds of weird starting classes, origins, and gods—all of which give you powers—with its ten paths of magic and abilities. That's stuff like elemental magics, but also necromancy, astral powers, psychic abilities, and blood magic.
Achra's combat is all about triggering effects: Combining stuff like when you move, when you hit, or when you stop near an enemy to cascade into further powers and scythe down enemies at scale. You might trigger a lightning bolt on your attacks that then triggers its own hits, and so forth, or summon weak allies on purpose because you've got buffs when they die—that sort of thing. It's well-equipped with an automove command to move and attack for you when you're sure a level will be a breeze. A great feature for this kind of die, die again game.
- This 'overwhelmingly positive' Steam Next Fest autobattler demo feels like someone bolted a Path of Exile-style map onto Halls of Torment, and I fear for my future productivity
- This fascinating Lovecraftian RPG has me determined to build an army of ghoul-slaying cats—and no I haven't been driven mad by forbidden knowledge, why do you ask?
Achra actually released inEarly Access on May 1, 2023, but has updated with speed and regularity since then. There's a demo that's out already, which is actualy just an older full version of Achra. It's made by a solo developer, Ulfsire.
After playing the demo, I can say that Path of Achra is probably for you if you've ever looked at a poster of an oiled-up barbarian with a huge sword fighting a wizard that's riding a wooly mammoth and thought "hell yeah." Or if you're already into traditional roguelikes.
You can find Path of Achra on Steam, where it's $10 and has a demo. You can get the demo on Steam or on itch.io.
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