REMEDIUM

I want to root for REMEDIUM. The setting alone - medieval fortress-cities crumbling under a century-old plague, alchemists who tried to save the world and made everything worse, your infected survivor pushing through the ruins of an Abandoned City with knight armor and a scattergun - is the kind of grim, handcrafted concept that deserves a full game built around it. Sobaka Studio clearly felt that too, because the world-building effort is visible in the journal system, which fills in the protagonist's story as you play and slowly adds a bestiary of the chimeras you encounter. That is a small, attentive touch. I notice those. The core loop is an isometric twin-stick shooter with a non-linear map and fast-travel between zones. You move with one stick, aim and fire with the other, and layer in grenades, a dash, and alchemical special ammo - fire rounds, elemental variants drawn from reagents like sulfur and mercury - to clear horde encounters across locations like catacombs, crypts, and laboratories. The environments carry a genuine dark-fantasy atmosphere, and a recent post-launch update added dedicated boss music and dungeon ambience that the original release was thin on. The soundtrack, when it works, fits the oppressive tone well. Act 2 expanded the map with snowy mountain paths, Fort and Abbey locations, and bosses that are actually distinct from one another - a real improvement over the launch-state problem where multiple boss encounters recycled the same model with a recolor. Here is where honest advocacy gets complicated. At launch, critics noted that combat felt floaty, with deaths coming more from falling into environmental hazards than from actual enemy pressure. The crafting interface was underbaked and the balancing was off in ways that made resource choices feel meaningless. The plague and cure mechanic - where symptoms like nausea or megalomania accumulate and can be flipped into temporary advantages - is conceptually interesting but was poorly explained, leaving players to guess at its rules. Steam reviews sit in Mixed territory, and that reads as accurate rather than harsh: the fundamentals are present but unevenly executed. Sobaka Studio has been patching with genuine intent. The anniversary update addressed audio failures, interface readability, quest objective bugs, and cutscene gaps. The Act 2 update improved the upgrade system, split dash and amalgam inputs for better accessibility, and added unique boss types. That update cadence matters. This is a small studio with a clear attachment to the world they built, and there is a version of REMEDIUM that earns the setting it invented. Whether it gets there before Early Access closes is the real question a buyer has to sit with. Who this is for, honestly: players who find the post-apocalyptic Renaissance concept irresistible and can forgive rougher edges while watching a game develop. If you need tight, polished twin-stick combat right now, something further along in its lifecycle will serve you better. If you are the kind of person who appreciates a journal that fills in the lore as you explore - and who will revisit a game after a major patch to see what changed - REMEDIUM is worth a cautious look. The bones are there. The craft is visible. The patience required is real. Kai, Scout Team