Leap of Fate

My first hour with Leap of Fate was humbling in the best way. I picked Aeon, the shadow mage, assumed my roguelite experience would carry me through, and watched the Crucible of Fates swallow me whole before I reached the second chapter. Coming back was not a chore. It was compulsive. What Clever Plays built here is a top-down twin-stick action game threaded through with roguelite structure, set in a cyberpunk-inflected New York where magic and street-level grime share the same zip code. The core loop runs through six chapters, each laid out as a pyramid of cards drawn from a tarot-inspired Deck of Fate. You pick a card, fight or loot or upgrade, and the adjacent cards beneath it are revealed. The pyramid format means every run branches differently without ever feeling like a map you are memorizing. Combat cards carry a skull rating for difficulty and a treasure rating for reward, so there is genuine strategic weight to each choice before the arena even loads. The four playable characters are the game's strongest argument for multiple playthroughs. Aeon is the well-balanced starting point with a reliable ranged attack. Big Mo, the cyborg technomancer, brings a laser cannon that mows through crowds. Mukai is the close-range spirit channeler who rewards aggression. Rasimov, the rogue occultist, feeds on the souls of enemies he kills with his abilities, earning upgrades and health in the process, which makes him feel genuinely different to pilot. Three of the four require unlocking, and because each character has their own story told through illustrated cinematics, the drip-feed of lore gives you a reason to persist beyond pure score-chasing. The skill system reinforces this: instead of gear drops, you spend Mana on a randomly generated skill tree each run, split into Passive, Attack, and Mobility branches. The layout shuffles every time, which means you cannot pre-plan a build, only adapt to what appears. Some runs that adaptation feels inspired; others, the RNG is simply not on your side. Two mechanics define survival once enemy density spikes. The Glyph is a character-specific offensive spell, collectible and swappable across runs, with everything from explosive traps to crowd-freeze variants. Shadow Walk is a teleport-dash that lets you warp across the arena without taking damage, and when upgraded it can leave behind a decoy or damage enemies in its path. Relying on basic attacks alone stops working fast. The game is really asking you to chain these tools together, and when a chain clicks, the combat feels genuinely kinetic. The arenas are compact and cluttered by design, which cuts both ways: it keeps pressure high, but it also means dead ends appear exactly when you least want them. A loose difficulty curve makes the game approachable early, with boss encounters providing the sharpest spikes. Permanent upgrades carry across deaths, softening the roguelite's otherwise harsh restart penalty without removing the sting entirely. Where the game shows its indie seams is in enemy variety. Critics broadly agreed that repetition creeps in after several runs, and the card events, while varied enough early, eventually cycle through familiar territory. The story setup, four psychologically fractured mages confronting their own fears, is more atmospheric mood-board than deep narrative. It sketches character rather than building it, which suits the pace but may disappoint players who wanted Shadowrun-level writing. The voice acting, notably, punches above the budget. So does the overall aesthetic: the cyberpunk fantasy palette is confident, the visual effects pop, and the soundtrack keeps the tempo without becoming exhausting. For a small Montreal studio, the craft is real and the intentionality shows.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

Be the first to comment on Leap of Fate.