Sancticide

I want to root for Sancticide. The premise alone earns it at least an hour of your time: a twisted, darkly comic vision of the End Times in which the Apocalypse has bureaucratically stalled because humanity is too stubborn to die on schedule, and divine middle-management has handed the whole messy job to morally compromised humans called Sin Collectors. That setup, drawn from Michal Golkowski's Polish book series "Komornik," has more wit than most indie action RPGs attempt. The world looks the part too, all collapsed cities, smoldering ruins, and thick atmospheric fog that makes every corridor feel genuinely oppressive. You play as Ezechiel, a fresh recruit haunted by guilt, navigating that broken world through a third-person melee combat system with roguelite run structure underneath it. The weapon variety is real: sacred melee options like swords and axes sit alongside unkosher firearms such as pistols and rifles, and the choice carries weight through the game's Kosherness system, which is supposed to affect NPC attitudes, accessible map areas, and available quests depending on how righteous or sacrilegious your loadout is. On paper that is a genuinely thoughtful design, a morality layer baked into your inventory rather than hung on dialogue choices. In practice, most players across the early access period reported it barely registering beyond a few cosmetic reaction changes. The bones are there; the meat has not always followed. Ezechiel also has three categories of Purple Powers, kinetic abilities that move objects or enemies, active powers that slow time or scramble perception, and passive buffs, which give the combat loop a supernatural texture when they connect properly. The friction is the combat itself. Ambushes and multi-enemy arena waves show what the system can feel like when it fires correctly: fast, punishing, oddly satisfying when parries land and a kick breaks a Debtor's guard mid-combo. But one-on-one skirmishes against regular Sinners and Proselytes have drawn consistent criticism for feeling unresponsive, with hit detection that does not always match the animation. The AI voice acting, partially sourced from developer recordings and partially generated, flattens dialogue scenes that the writing occasionally earns. The story, dealing with Ezechiel's guilt and the surreal bureaucracy of divine punishment, has genuine personality; the delivery undercuts it. Optimization concerns and camera drift were also noted by reviewers across the early access window. What keeps Sancticide worth watching, and tentatively worth buying for the right player, is that Red Square Games is a Polish studio with alumni from CD Projekt RED and Techland, and the handcraft shows in the world design even when the systems wobble. The environmental details have a specificity that feels authored rather than asset-flipped. The enemy roster, Sinners, Debtors, Proselytes, each reads as part of a coherent cosmology. Steam reviews at 1.0 sit at a mixed 62 percent across 54 votes, which is honest and probably accurate: this is a game that rewards patience with its setting and forgives players who want to probe its lore, but punishes anyone expecting the combat responsiveness of a polished soulslike. If the Kosherness system gets a meaningful pass and parry windows tighten, there is something genuinely strange and worthwhile here. Right now it is a compelling idea in need of one more serious tuning pass.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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