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Even with chunky headphones on, the desperate clack-clack-clack as I jab at an Xbox d-pad playing through the Chivalware demo is a constant drumbeat. This room in Paris is filled with high-end gaming PCs, and even with windows open, it's a desperate heat. As the last demo in a day filled with them, fellow players slowly abandon their posts and trickle out. Yet, I don't notice I'm the final one left in the room until I die at the end of a particularly lengthy roguelike run, glued to the intense action and so many biomes deep I'd been half-expecting a PR to cut me off anyway. Chivalware has the juice.
Clearly inspired by Mega Man Battle Network, any player of Capcom's real-time RPG series will be familiar with the constant maneuvering responsible for my d-pad twiddling in Chivalware. This roguelike takes the concept of summoning weapons on a grid that also contains enemies up a notch, having the tiles double as a color-matching grid. Chain together matches and you'll charge up your battery to spend on attacks, the most recent of your three colors dictating the weapon type you have in hand. Flub a match, and your energy is depleted, leaving you vulnerable to enemy attacks.
Caught in the net
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Make no mistake, you will need to dodge for your tiny, armored little life – enemy attacks come thick and fast, though are telegraphed just clearly enough to leave you cursing yourself for making silly mistakes. The benefit of the tiled arena is that each square is clearly defined, meaning each enemy type's unique set of attack patterns are pinged red, leaving you to weave through and around them like you're doing an MMORPG raid boss.
Early on, dodging these attacks is simple enough. A slow moving projectile may track across a single line, or another may sword-slash a couple of squares in front of it at once. These grow more complex, with bigger foes sometimes having sequenced waves of attacks you need to actually time your way through, and bosses that have screen-filling attacks that get tighter with each phase.
Put them all together, and even those easier enemies can turn up the heat alongside larger ones, making me weigh up which to attack and clear off the board in real-time as I weave to stay alive. A mecha scorpion's laser turret targets the whole of my side of the battlefield in a zig-zag barrage, as I try to avoid the imminent explosion from a burrowing Dune-like room. Add in shields that make some enemies immune to certain color attacks, and it's like playing Tetris while doing Five Finger Fillet. Even Aliens' Bishop would struggle with that.
Like the best roguelike games, it's not just the enemies that get stronger. Your Disk Knight can equip new floppy disks that alter their properties. New weapons – swords, guns, hammers, and more – are the most obvious, all of which come with vastly different attacks and battery usage requirements that also have me quickly calculating which I should be aiming to summon to deal with the situation in front of me. These range from attacks from combos that reward using a large chunk of battery to get off more powerful final strikes, to ones that you can charge up to dish out more damage if you get enough breathing room. One grenade launcher gets me out of a lot of scrapes, but if I'm startled before I can charge it up enough the blast radius also includes my poor Disk Knight.
Chivalware also features numerous per-run buffs and passive abilities that, in typical roguelike fashion, feel like they court the edge of being game-breaking as you imagine potential builds. Some might reward you for sticking with the same weapon type for a while, or for swapping it in and out as much as possible, with lots of room to debuff enemies. One quirky power I don't have enough time to master even transforms me into a hulking werewolf at the cost of a bespoke rage meter, able to dish out huge damage with my claws but only directly in front of me, and only for a brief moment. This roguelike has the right mix of moreishness. The Chivalware Steam demo is already calling for me to hop back in to try it again – though I'm worried about spending too much time matching blocks and mashing enemies before its full release Q4 2024.
Chivalware's retro flavor has me itching to get back to the best GBA games. Plus, in the similarly old-school Mina the Hollower review we say that "classic Zelda vibes channel Bloodborne to create one of my new retro-style favorites"
