REVIEW: Degenheim

Roguelike games have become incredibly popular in recent years. With games such as Hades and Returnal setting the bar high and showing the world how to make a flawless roguelike, many games have taken the winning formula and put their spin on it. If you like puns, insane characters, and brutal fast-paced combat set to an adrenaline-pumping soundtrack, then look no further than Degenheim. This game has you dashing around a battlefield slicing up weird and wonderful bad guys with a roster of fun and unusual characters to choose from! Fight alone or squad up with a team of up to 3 to take on the battle that awaits in the many levels of chaos that Degenheim throws at you.

Now normally here I would talk about the plot of a game. To be absolutely honest, there is an extremely vague plot about the president calling up heroes to save the earth, but for the most part, there isn’t really a story, and for me, that is a good thing. Instead, the developers Highrise Studios focus all their creative energy on making weird and wonderful characters and giving the game a distinct sense of humour. Throughout the game, I thought – why am I fighting ballerinas, boxers, and swan necks that come out of the ground and spit at me? Also, why are giant pigs and chickens watching from the side? And why is one of the characters just a giant strawberry called Straw Barry!? And then I answered my question, with a question – why not? Degenheim is one of the most random games I have ever played and that is probably one of my favourite things about it. I was excited to see who the next character I unlocked was or what boss the twisted minds of Highrise Studios had invented for me to fight next! Their focus is on the player(s) having fun and making them laugh along the way.

Now speaking of laughter, I will say the comedy in this game is very adult. It clicked with me, however; it has a similar sense of humour that you may see on an Adult Swim show. Think Looney Tunes but for lewd, twisted-minded adults…aka me. Every boss I came up against made me laugh at the character design and the NPCs are just as comically written. Some of these NPCs include Hank The Dank Trainer who is a classic gym bro and Napoleon Born-To-Parteh who is a frat boy Napolean…I told you this game is extremely random!

The gameplay is for the most part fluid and fun. At first, I was struggling a little with the combat, but after remapping the buttons a bit I was able to find a more comfortable way to play and was soon blazing through the game (TIP – if you are playing on mouse and keyboard remap the dash button to right-click…trust me!). It has all the classic Roguelike elements such as when you die you lose the power-ups you picked up throughout your run and go back to the start. You earn points and then use those points to upgrade your character's stats to make them stronger for the next time.

Degenheim is a game where you need to commit some time to grinding. At first, it was a little overwhelming, but once I upgraded my characters and studied the different enemies along with their move sets, things got a lot easier, and I started to get into the rhythm of the combat.

Some of the playable characters clicked with me and some didn’t but that is more due to my preferred style of gameplay more than anything else. The character that clicked with me the most was Tail.R Swift. Whenever I played as her the bad guys knew I was ‘trouble when I walked in’ and every time I took a hit, I was able to ‘Shake It Off’ and after every round, I would say to the corpses of my enemies ‘Look What You Made Me Do’. But in all seriousness, her play style was one I knew ‘All Too Well’…wow once you start Taylor Swift punning it is almost impossible to stop so, please ‘Don’t Blame Me’. Aside from giving me the opportunity to show off my Swifty knowledge, this character did play the most fluid for me. She was agile and had two swords, so she was perfect for aggressive twitch-based combat. I found that once I had discovered the character I liked the best it was hard for me to try any others. I had access to 7 characters, but the developers say there will be as many as 20 different playable characters! So, there will be someone for everyone.

My only real drawback with the game is that some of the environments felt a bit samey and I did find myself longing for a few more arenas just to spice things up. This however was made up for by the awesome soundtrack! One moment I am bopping along the cool techno, the next I am headbanging to heavy metal electric guitar riffs. This game knows how to get your adrenaline pumping!

Although I did not have access to everything the game will have to offer on its release, I was able to experience enough to know that this is a lot of fun and it got a few genuine laughs out of me several times. I can only imagine how much fun this will be to play with my friends…if I had any. Keep an eye out for the upcoming Steamfest Demo starting October 14^th.

Degenheim Fact Sheet