Dark Devotion

My first real impression of Dark Devotion was dying three times in five minutes to regular corridor enemies and then realising -- with a slow, dawning respect -- that I hadn't misread a single tooltip. The game simply meant it. Made by a three-person French studio, this is a side-scrolling action RPG that mashes 2D Souls-style combat with roguelite run structure, and it commits to that hybrid in ways that will delight some players and alienate others in equal measure. The core loop puts you in the boots of a Templar Knight who enters the Filthblood Shelter as a hub and then descends into four interconnected worlds of dimly lit dungeons, sewers, corrupted forests, and ruined underground cities. Combat leans on stamina management, block timing, dodge rolls, and reading enemy tells -- there is no jumping, which takes adjustment, but the dodge roll carries enough weight that you stop missing it. Weapons range from melee to ranged to spellbooks used as off-hand casters, and they slot mystical runes for customisation. The twist on the usual Souls formula is that your character's health is not a levelled stat -- it is tied to your equipment, specifically trinkets that are difficult to reliably source from the blacksmith at run start. Blessings and curses accrue dynamically based on your behaviour in the dungeon: avoid too many fights and a curse might make you drop items on every dodge roll. Lean into faith-gathering by killing enemies and you unlock secret paths and locked chests. Each run shapes itself around what random loot you find, so builds are organic rather than planned. Progression across runs does accumulate. Weapons and armour discovered in a run get permanently unlocked at the blacksmith's forge, and soul points spent at the hub buy passive upgrades across tiered skill trees. A two-percent stamina regen boost sounds trivial until it stacks with a faster dodge and suddenly a fight that felt impossible becomes readable. The Teleportation Altar system -- one-way portals you can activate mid-run to fast-travel back to on the next attempt -- is genuinely clever design that softens the one-way-door structure of exploration without removing the tension. On the downside, every doorway between rooms locks behind you, which means missed loot or a wrong path requires a full restart. That forward-only philosophy is a deliberate design choice, but it butts uncomfortably against the roguelite gear-learning loop in ways that critics and players both flagged at launch. Where Dark Devotion earns its keep is in boss encounters and atmosphere. The 32-bit pixel art is genuinely striking -- oppressively dark in a way that serves the mood rather than just obscuring the screen -- and boss fights demand pattern recognition and telegraphing reads rather than stat-checking. The story is told entirely through scattered lore items, NPC scraps, and environmental details rather than cutscenes, which suits the tone but leaves the world feeling thin for players who want narrative pull to match the gameplay loop. The options menu is sparse even by 2019 indie standards -- volume sliders were absent at launch -- and key remapping gaps frustrated controller and keyboard players alike. The music is atmospheric but loops in ways you will notice on long sessions. This is strictly a solo, single-player experience on PC -- no co-op, no split-screen, no local multiplayer hooks whatsoever. If you are coming in hoping for a Saturday-night couch game, look elsewhere. Where it lands is firmly in the camp of "dark indie for people who want Dead Cells difficulty with less procedural polish and more gothic weight." It sits below Dead Cells and Salt and Sanctuary in terms of overall execution, but at its best -- a well-rolled run, a boss fight finally cracked, a new weapon unlocked -- it delivers the same satisfaction loop those games trade in. For a first project from a self-taught three-person team, that is a genuinely respectable ceiling.

Riley · Scout Team

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