REVIEW – A procedurally generated game where the world is close to being destroyed by dark energy that distorts the wildlife, resurrects deceased creatures and brings little good. Storms also make things worse, and our goal is to keep moving while also surviving everything, and in the end, the task is to take out the creature called Morbus. All of it will not be easy, to put it mildly. (In fact, expect to die a lot.)

Dies horribilis.

Our hero

…must bring the dark, lonely place back to life because the dangerous creatures will not give you peace of mind. He must defeat his enemies, dig through corpses, dig into the earth and pick up plants. You can get the materials you need for crafting (even transforming potions or food) from the latter. Slowly we need to explore the world, discover its wonders, and slowly, we need to equip ourselves with more robust, better gear. However, we need to scan everything to do it all, but what we get will not always be the same. The map of the world is mainly predetermined, but the enemies and events placed on it are not and happen randomly. It’s up to the player how events unfold globally, but not 100%. There will be variability as a result, and if you get caught up in events, you will be resurrected in the nearest town, but the equipment you carry will be dropped. It’s not easy to find everything, especially if you’re running from something before you die (chances are it will happen to everyone at least once), but you can balance that out by having fast travel work quite reasonably. Death while searching for that bag? Poof, your item bag you looked for is gone!

But what’s the point if your character’s combat feels slow and tired? It is probably why our hero might bite the bullet a little too fast, and I wouldn’t consider the controls to be that outstanding either. Oh, and we haven’t even mentioned the weapons: well, they can break in a short time, and of course, most of the time, it happens at the most inconvenient time, resulting in more severe curses leaving our system. At first, we can’t carry much with us, so we will often rely on the random ones on the ground. There’s a bit of a Don’t Starve feel to the whole thing, but it’s still about five and a half miles ahead of The Serpent Rogue (I swear I wrote rouge at least twice…). It will be worth flipping through the journal often because this is where the game gives us a summary of what we’ve found and what we’ve researched so far. Our character (there are two to choose from), ah, I see why this game got shoved on my back, wears a plague doctor mask. (I sound better than that with minor post-production, hah!) For that, the game gets half a point. Of course, it could be a bit more stylish than that. Oh no, we’re down to the bottom of the first page. We are running like the game’s populace from the corruption. And rightly so.

The audiovisuals…

…is interesting. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but somehow the use of muted tones makes me think of miasma theory, so there are indeed substances in the air that are not precisely harmless without the proper equipment. The animations could have been improved, but they serve the purpose, so they’re not too bad. But maybe I have the feeling that the visuals are somehow simple. That’s not the point, but rather how tense the game feels when you have to think about what you’re taking with you and what you’ll have to leave on the ground as you head to your next rest stop. There is no shortage of surprises, and I would call it ingenious, but the profound water effect applies here too.

I mean that The Serpent Rogue doesn’t tell you the whole story, so experimentation is needed. It can be divisive, but genre-wise, it might even be an imaginative choice. Maybe not that when you run out of food, you can’t replenish your vitality bar, which means you can’t run away from your opponents. It suddenly occurred that the effect of the corruption storms (that’s their name…) is surprisingly well portrayed. The beast taming is pleasing, and the music responds quite well to our events. It speeds up in preparation and slows down after the fights. This dynamic approach for the music suits the game well.

Do Starve

The Serpent Rogue gets a seven out ten because although it is considered to be in the action-adventure genre, survival is also a factor in the product, so it tries to hold more marshmallows to the fire at once. Except that it is a roguelike, and as such, it may not appeal to everyone, as it may not be a serious, mainstream genre after all. So it’s not that bad, but there are elements in it that could have been better. I thought a lot about whether to give it a six and a half out of ten or a seven out of ten, but after some consideration, I’m going with the latter score. If you’re waiting for a PD-like character but in a different genre, it might be a better idea for you to wait for Thymesia.

-V-

Publisher: Team17

Developer: Sengi Games

Genre: action-adventure-survival-PD

Release date: April 22, 2022