Desta: The Memories Between

I'll be upfront: when someone hands me a game whose central mechanical pitch is turn-based dodgeball, my first instinct is to check the return policy. Stick with Desta long enough to unlock a second teammate and start reading the ability synergies, and that scepticism evaporates. This is a compact but thoughtful tactics game that earned its way onto my radar. The loop runs like this: each night, protagonist Desta falls into a dream version of their London hometown, working through anxiety-soaked memories of old friendships on square grid arenas. Combat operates on a two-Action-Point system - spend them to move, throw, pass, or activate one of your equipped abilities. The physics on the ball are the key wrinkle that separates this from standard grid tactics: a well-lined throw can ricochet off walls and obstacles to clip two enemies simultaneously, or arc back into your hands to preserve possession. Abilities slot into one active and one passive per run, randomised roguelite-style, and the combinations create genuine decision points. A passive that grants bonus damage on ricochet shots completely changes how aggressively you play the geometry of each arena. Defeated opponents convert into teammates, each carrying unique skills - one can teleport across the field, another alters ball trajectories - and building around those teammate synergies is where the strategy earns its label. The PC version ships with the full expanded content: Challenge Mode, Nightmare Mode (the developer's first genuine hardcore difficulty setting, where every positioning error hurts), and a curated set of standalone challenges that unlock additional roster characters. Where Desta loses ground is structural. The roguelite randomisation feels half-committed: ability inventory grows run-on-run but teammate unlock order is always fixed, which means targeted builds around late-unlocked characters require grinding through most of the story repeatedly with a roster you did not choose. Dialogue repeats on subsequent runs with only minor variation, and the main story wraps in roughly three to four hours, leaving Nightmare Mode and Challenge Mode to carry all the long-term replay weight. Critics split fairly neatly on this: narrative-first players found the emotional beats around grief, family rupture, and identity handled with real care; tactics players found the baseline difficulty too forgiving in the first half and the roguelite friction under-cooked compared to the games that clearly influenced its design, Hades and Into the Breach. For strategy veterans, the honest pitch is this: Desta is a short, polished tactics game with one genuinely novel mechanic (physics-based ball geometry inside a grid) and a story that earns its runtime. It is not a 200-hour systems sandbox. The depth ceiling is real and you will hit it. But the Nightmare Mode provides a meaningful test once normal play becomes routine, and the challenge scenarios add curated puzzles that demand you think three bounces ahead. The accessibility options and adjustable difficulty make it a rare tactics title that you can also hand to a lapsed-gamer friend without guilt. Steam user scores sit at Mostly Positive across 121 reviews, which feels about right: not a revelation, but a well-crafted thing that does not waste your time.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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