Cloudheim

My first hour with Cloudheim went like this: I triple-jumped onto a goblin, lassooed it into a wall, kicked another one off a floating cliff, and then realised I had completely forgotten to look at the story. That tells you almost everything you need to know. The combat here is the star, and it earns that spotlight. The design question Noodle Cat Games built around, what if fighting-game juggling became the foundation of a co-op RPG, pays off in a way that feels genuinely fresh. Enemies are reactive and physical, objects fly unpredictably, and chaining a Runeblade's elemental spells into a Sentinel knockback with three friends produces the kind of chaotic, laughing mayhem that most co-op games promise and few deliver. There are four classes at launch, Runeblade, Sentinel, Breaker, and Ranger, and the good news is that switching between them is as simple as equipping a different weapon. Class skills level up through use, weapons gain enchantments from kits found in chests, and a Mana Burn system lets you keep casting abilities past their cooldown at the risk of entering a heavily punished overloaded state. That risk-reward layer adds a ceiling to the combat that rewards players willing to push it. The bad news is that the classes, while fun, feel a little thin past the early hours. The Runeblade in particular leans hard on being everything at once, melee, ranged spells, a bit of healing, which is appealing but also means the specialisation fantasy is blurry. Build variety past hour 20 is a real question mark that Early Access will need to answer. The other half of the loop is your sky-base on Odin Shell, a massive flying turtle that serves as workshop, shop, and hub between island runs. You forge weapons, run a shop selling loot to NPC customers, assign small creatures called Blins to gather resources passively, garden, cook, and fish. The base side of the game already draws fair criticism: the progression systems pile up fast, and the home-base chores can feel like friction after the high of dungeon combat. Dungeons themselves rearrange their rooms each visit, which keeps things from going completely stale, and biome variety across the five Early Access islands, from icy Frostvaldr to the desert stretches of Dustlanger, gives each area a distinct visual identity. The story, though, hits a wall. It currently wraps at the second island, NPCs mostly exist to point you toward the next quest marker, and the Norse-apocalypse premise is more backdrop than driving narrative. For someone who finished Disco Elysium three times looking for dialogue worth re-reading, the writing is the thinnest part of the package right now. The Early Access caveat matters here. The developer has been active with bug fixes and community communication since launch, and the 9-to-12-month roadmap includes more islands, systems, and story content. Co-op with up to four players is already the strongest argument for buying in early, shared progression, cross-session loot carryover, and the option to enable a chaotic PvP-adjacent "Unbridled Chaos" mode that lets you lasso your own teammates all contribute to a multiplayer feel that scales well. Solo players can finish the current content but will likely feel the rougher edges of the base-management pacing more acutely. The UI needs work, the building controls are finicky, and an always-online requirement for solo play is a genuine annoyance that the community has flagged loudly. If you have three friends and a tolerance for Early Access friction, Cloudheim is one of the better uses of your co-op budget right now. If you are a solo narrative RPG player expecting a complete story arc, come back in 2026 when the full release fills in those gaps.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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