Rogue Waters is a Gift to the Roguelite Fans - gamescom 2024

Roguelite is a popular genre that was spun off from a much more punishing and hardcore roguelike one, and it’s one of the most popular genres in the modern day, at least in the indie game sphere. We’ve had hundreds of roguelites storm the popularity charts. Rogue Waters looks poised to join their ranks!

While some of them share some elements sometimes, they’re mostly doing their own thing. The Binding of Isaac is about getting the best out of the item RNG, Darkest Dungeon is about mitigating the losses, FTL is about crew and resource management, Hades adds a narrative to this unlikely genre. One of the most important and popular games in the genre was Slay the Spire – it made the deckbuilders accessible and added an interesting path progression. The latter element was then embraced by many games, Ice Code Games implemented the similar path progression in their upcoming swashbuckling roguelite Rogue Waters, and it makes so much sense.

Rogue Waters is a tactical turn-based roguelite in the pirate setting with some interesting twists. It’s set on a usual square-filled grid where you place your units. You can attack, defend, and use your environments, but you can also do something special. Many a game pits you against terrifying sea monsters, but the developers of this title thought – what if you were in command of these creatures instead? Yes, you can summon a Kraken in a tide-turning (pun intended) move.

Another hugely interesting element of this game is how dynamic it is. Every time you attack, you advance a tile, and your opponent retreats one as well. This leads to tons of strategic options – you can throw enemies overboard, make them collide into obstacles or into each other for huge damage, you can set up damage chains, traps, various manoeuvers. And this also gives the game additional flavor, as it quickly reminds you of the back-and-forth duels from Pirates of the Caribbean and other pirate-themed flicks.

Another important part is building up your crew. Following the roguelite pattern, they get randomized strengths and weaknesses in addition to their skills, so you get to pick and choose the ones you feel will fit better. You can always change and recruit new ones, but only before you start a run – can’t change your crew in the middle of a naval battle now, can you?

Speaking of naval battles – what would a pirate-themed game be without them? Ice Code Games managed to perfectly integrate them into the main gameplay loop and not have them entirely divorced from the tactical game you’re playing. You chart your course on the Slay the Spire-style progression map, where you can discover and fight enemy ships that you engage in combat with. But pirates don’t sink ships, they need their booty! So what you do is aim at specific parts of the enemy ships – their crew, their hull, or cannons, to do lasting damage that will be translated into the tactical portion of the game that directly follows as you board their vessel and start the fight.

The entire game is pure fun, especially for someone who loves roguelites as much as I do. The Ice Code Games studio specializes in tactical games – their flagship, Hard West 2, won several awards. And we have full confidence in saying that Rogue Waters will blow it out of the water (pun, once again, intended)!