I like a game that chucks me into the thick of it with minimal preamble: Just beat me up! I'll learn! Klei's new co-op brawler is one of those: You can handwave the NPC welcoming committee who tries to explain the controls and just start swinging a hammer at forest monsters within seconds.
My kind of game. I've only played about an hour of Rotwood, which released on Steam in early access today, but for $11 (even less right now since it's on sale), I'd already recommend it to my friends.
They've invested as much in lesser games just to have something new to play in co-op, and I've even been enjoying Rotwood as a solo game.
Rotwood's roguelite structure is typical of contemporary game design: In the first biome, you hop between 2.5D forest glades, bashing away at the enemies in each before moving on to the next, which might contain more enemies, a shopkeeper, or a surprise.
After clearing a room, you're sometimes rewarded with a new power. These are minor bonuses at first—move faster when you enter a room, shoot a projectile after every three melee attacks—but as in games such as Slay the Spire and Risk of Rain, you get more and more OP as you stack on synergistic powers and upgrade them.