Lostaris Demo

4 minutes of reading / By /

Lostaris is an Action Roguelike that sees us awaken in a strange world without memories or a sense of self. The only truth we know is that we hear a voice despite nothing but the grass swaying in the wind around us. It tells us to go forth, and we dutifully obey their request. Before teleporting off this safe haven, I’d recommend getting used to the controls. The wasd keys are to move, Enter is to attack, and Crtl is to dodge. You’ll also have a limited special attack with the F key. Currently, there is no controller support or ability to rebind keys, which hopefully will be added later. Now, knowing how to defend ourselves, we’re set loose in this randomly generated world.

The first thing that will likely strike you about Lostaris is the art style. It nearly looks like vector graphics, but not quite. With its monochrome color scheme and abstract shapes that make the world, Lostaris unique visuals immediately capture one’s eyes. It is grid-like in nature. Each grid corresponds to either an arena filled with enemies or one containing an event. The latter can be NPCs, merchants, or mysterious statues beckoning you for a permanent sacrifice of your health. Some items or certain events don’t do anything as of this version of the game. I’d suggest just hoarding the souls you collect from defeated enemies in exchange for purchasing health. You start with five hit points, but there is no passive healing. Either you pay, or you fight on, wounded as you are. It encourages a cautious style of play, knowing full well how costly a single mistake is. For every hit point you heal, the price doubles. To reset the price, you need to meet another health merchant later, which may not happen given this is a roguelike.

Attacking a basic enemy will stun-lock it. If you get the first strike, a foe is virtually defenseless as you continue your offensive. It is easy to get cocky and forget they never fight alone. If you get too greedy, you risk an enemy charging you from the side or a projectile finding its way into your back. Each foe has unique characteristics that change the flow of the battle, and one needs to take them into consideration. Some burrow underground, only popping out to ambush us when we’ve stood in one place too long. Others make a B-line toward you to always keep up the pressure. And a few prefer to stand back, shooting projectiles at you. They synergize, allowing for many unique battles with a relatively small roster of creatures. One addition that would benefit the gameplay dramatically is to have more arena variety or obstacles in them so we don’t always have unrestricted movement. As it currently is, most of them are empty and flat, with some having destructibles scattered around. It is worth looking at titles like Binding of Issac to see how their rock formations and pits contribute to room variety and combat variance.

Regarding game stability, I’ve experienced no crashes or noticeable glitches. Granted, the content that has yet to be added may seem like glitches. Things like purchasing a stone tablet item that I’m not certain does anything. Lostaris does not have a framerate cap. This enables us to use high refresh rate monitors without an arbitrary limit. It is an incredibly lightweight game to run and its options settings are limited to whether you’d like to display it in fullscreen. When it comes to the sound design, it is satisfying. The whoosh as your character dashes around and the slashing noise when hitting an enemy make combat feel impactful. However, I’m hoping it will feature more than one music track when you enter a battle in the future. Considering this demo only lasts for four stages, there is not much I can infer about the total musical variety there may be.

After you come to grips with how Lostaris plays and make it into the fourth stage, it will test everything you’ve learned with a boss fight. I will not go into detail to avoid spoiling its crescendo before the demo ends, but it was a pleasantly challenging encounter that left me wanting more. It’s been a fascinating journey making it through this demo. We fought bees, plants, and even an extraterrestrial-looking boss. Our character has awoken in a world that takes her continued breathing as a personal affront, yet she flips the script by harvesting all their souls instead. Where this story goes is anyone’s guess. Ultimately, Lostaris was a fun action title that shows a great deal of promise. The methodical combat encourages focus. Each enemy serves a purpose on the battlefield. And it is free to experience via this demo.

 

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