It's the environment that catches my eye. Just like with the first images of games like Genshin Impact and Biomutant, I'm immediately drawn to Rogue Spirit's vibrant world of Midra, which has a distinctly Asian touch. But Rogue Spirit has more in common with Genshin Impact than just its pretty scenery. Whereas you can quickly change between four characters in Genshin, Rogue Spirit is all about possessing them, literally.
You, the prince of Midra, actually haven't been the prince for a while on account of your death. But Midra's priest's have brought you back to fight an army of demons that are looking to dominate your kingdom. Since you defeated those demons once before, the priests chose you as a safe bet to rid Midra of them again, and now you possess different enemies without their consent in order to be able to fight those demonic nasties.
According to the description on its Steam page, Rogue Spirit will let you possess up to 20 different enemy types, all with different fighting styles and abilities, and let you roam 10 procedurally generated levels that represent different biomes all over Midra. As this is a roguelike, you'll have to start over once you, er, die, but you can unlock upgrades between runs.
Developer Kids with Sticks is a studio based in Poland, and this is their first game. While the visual style may be reminiscent of Genshin and some battles have that classic one on one feeling from many a Soulslike to them, the fact that this is a small studio with a core team of six people should help manage expectations accordingly. Currently, this looks rather promising, but the animations could do with some work and it will be interesting to see if there will be any other ways the game manages to stay fresh for multiple runs apart from letting you control different characters, especially if you have to find and possess them first rather than to switch characters ahead of a run.
If you're curious, you can try a demo for the game on Steam—currently, there's no fixed release date, but Rogue Spirit is set to release into Early Access sometime this year.
