I'm all the time looking out for a very good tile-based roguelike, and this Finnish fever dream of imps and ice trolls looks as if it may have the juice
I like a powerful polygon rely as a lot as the following man, however for my cash, fantasy worlds are greatest delivered to life by top-down, 2D tile graphics. Within the phrases of my colleague Josh Wolens, “We do not want graphics. Probably the most highly effective GPU of all is the thoughts.”
It is why I’ve dumped numerous hours into roguelikes like Caves of Qud, Tales of Maj’Eyal, and Dwarf Fortress’s journey mode: All I want is a few evocative sprite work and a few good taste textual content to chew on, and I am off to the races. Or, as is extra seemingly the case, being brutally murdered on my solution to the races by some form of ogre or minotaur.
Given my proclivities, it is no shock that Tuoni caught my consideration. Introduced by developer Outdated Canine on Reddit final month, Tuoni’s a turn-based, tactical roguelike with an emphasis on buildcrafting, Finnish folklore, and—for bonus factors—a scrumptious CRT filter.
We have had loads of Nordic inspiration in videogames since Skyrim’s heyday, however I am all the time glad to see Finnish taste on show. In comparison with Norse mythology, Finnish folklore—as you would possibly count on from a spot the place winter can final for 200 days of the yr—skews gloomier and darker, with extra primordial emanations than martial heroism.
That taste appears nicely represented in Tuomi. Its Steam web page says its procedurally generated worlds are inhabited by “silent however all-seeing forests” the place “spirits drift between timber and water” and also you “would possibly even cross paths with Näkki by a darkish pond or glimpse the traditional wrath of Iki-Turso rising from the depths.” I do not know what both of these are, however I’ve by no means met a pond-dweller or deeps-ancient I did not like.
In screenshots, the participant character battles Maahinen imps and inspects Suli, a form of troll that is “coated in icy vapor from its crystallized again.” As a lover of nouns, I am notably thrilled by the glimpse at a personality’s stock, the place we will see objects like Jumal’s Snowsteel Cloak and Kalam’s Deathblade, a “shadowed blade of the moon-child, misplaced beneath fenlight.”
That is the good things.
A gameplay trailer additionally provides us a take a look at Tuoni’s ability development system. As an alternative of being restricted to a single, outlined class, characters can freely choose expertise from archetypes like Arms Fighter and Battle Shaman. I’d begin out as a run-of-the-mill axeman, however after spending a couple of stat factors in Mystics and buying a pair Frostborn expertise, I could possibly be hitting enemies with arctic blasts and stacking further frost injury on my melee assaults.
Whether or not or not that’ll be sufficient for my character’s long-term survival is a query for a later day, however not less than it looks as if I will get to examine some attention-grabbing creatures earlier than they knock my cranium in.
Outdated Canine is aiming to launch Tuoni a while in 2026. A demo will “hopefully” be obtainable later this yr. You may wishlist Tuoni now on Steam.