Top-Down Roguelike Guidus Zero Launches in Early Access

ign.com:

Steam’s Early Access recently got a new addition: Guidus Zero, a top-down dungeon crawling roguelike developed by indie South Korean studio Izzle.

The story takes place in a world where a war raged for ages without a clear victor. After it ended, the central continent was declared a neutral zone. A massive sinkhole called The Scar opened on that continent, and from its depths comes a mysterious substance known as Black Blood that spawns corrupted beings. It’s unknown how this sinkhole came to be, where the Black Blood is coming from, or what waits in the deepest regions of The Scar. That’s where you come in.

You’ll join a cast of characters in The Scar, traveling deeper and deeper beneath the surface while facing all manner of enemies that have been corrupted by the Black Blood. You’ll have several different controllable characters to choose from, each with their own strengths and abilities. There’s real-time action combat with a bit of a twist: You and your enemies move between tiles on a grid in which you can only navigate in the four cardinal directions.

When an enemy is about to attack, an exclamation mark will appear above their head and the ground will be highlighted showing where their attack will land. Different enemies have different attack patterns — some strike directly in front of them, some hit a long line, and others target a larger area of the grid. You’ll face several enemies at a time, forcing you to stay on your toes and react quickly to dodge attacks.

While moving, you can roll to make yourself invincible, but each roll consumes stamina. And since you can’t move diagonally, you’ll need to be strategic about which direction you move and how often you roll. You don’t want to end up trapped between attacks you can’t avoid.

Combat isn’t all about avoiding damage, though. You need to be able to dish it out too, but how you do that changes depending on what character you pick. Before each run, you’ll choose a character and their starting trait. In classic