Loot River Falling Into Place For 2022
If you’re looking for something new to play, could I suggest Loot River as there’s a playable demo available on Steam right now, and it’s an absolute belter as far as I’m concerned.
Fusing two of my favourite games in a paint-by-numbers pitch, the game is Dark Souls meets Tetris, and the thing is, it’s a bloody good comparison, as that’s precisely what it feels like. Well, it’s a pixel art aesthetic compared to the sun-dodging dark fantasy 3D, but fantastic nevertheless.
From straka.studio, Loot River is a dungeon crawler from a top-down perspective where you control the floor panels beneath you. Quite frankly, this mechanic is genius and not remotely a gimmick, despite the idea and the very visual Tetris-like components.
Besides navigating through the dungeons, this serves as a problem-solving challenge (you have to ensure the parts match up – male and female to some degree), but it’s a very effective combat strategy if you can pull it off.
Unlike other Souls-like titles where you can lure in characters one by one, backtrack, then take them out. The process in Loot River is similar, but the moment they step on the same ’tile’ as you, shift it out of sight and deal with the threat individually. Alternatively, if it isn’t a boss, you can conveniently drop them off somewhere else, leaving you to explore and smash some jars.
The game is neither one nor the other, taped together in a ‘top title mash-up’, as the floor puzzle elements blend with some very fluid combat. It’s essentially taking the best aspects of the two benchmark games; only there’s no Tetris theme here. Boohoo.
Loot River combat is pretty decent, allowing for evasion and hit and run tactics. There’s one dungeon to explore in the demo and not enough time for folk like me to grind away and OP the opposition. In fact, the Loot River demo serves up an even playing field as everyone will experience the same thing as in the full title it’ll be procedurally generated.
The game will be heading to PC and Xbox in 2022, and I can honestly say that this is immediately a title that fits into the ‘most anticipated for 2022’ category. No, I haven’t written a feature on that. Best of all, it’s coming to GamePass, and having installed the service, I’ve found out firsthand why gamers are so fond of it.
We’re very excited to have partnered with Microsoft in bringing Loot River to Game Pass. We think it’s great value for the consumer, and it helps us share the game with as many players as possible. We’re honored that Microsoft chose to partner with us for this, and can’t wait to share Loot River with the rest of the world in 2022!
Miro Straka, straka.studio
Understandably, we can’t wait that long, so do yourself a favour and try out the demo now on Steam. It’ll be well worth your time.