Godbreakers Demo Impression
The game has its basics sorted out, so the test of time will be how well the content manages to keep players engaged and coming back.
Godbreakers is a newly-revealed title from Thunderful Publishing and To The Sky. The game is a co-op hack-and-slash roguelike where one-to-four players go through levels and take on various enemies. RPGamer was able to try out Godbreakers’s short demo — available now on Steam — and get an initial feel for it ahead of its planned release later this year for PC (via Steam and the Epic Games Store) and PlayStation 5.
Players control vessels of humanity brought back by celestial beings to destroy an artificial intelligence called the Monad. The vessel in the demo starts as a fairly blank spear-wielding template, with players able to unlock customisation options allowing them to put more of an individual stamp on them, including new Archetypes and abilities. Following a quick tutorial, the demo lets players explore the sandy Uhr zone, with the full game having six different biomes for players to explore. The full game will also feature six different Archetypes, each based around a different weapon and passive ability that helps define a play style.
The game has the expected trappings of a co-op action title, with light and heavy attacks, combos, dashing, and jumping, with enemies having their own tells, animations, and UI indicators to let players know an attack is coming. Players are given a good level of control, including being able to cancel attacks and abilities to dash away if needed. The animations are all very fluid and there’s plenty of vibrancy in Godbreaker’s use of colour. It’s easy to get the hang of the controls and figure out the tells it gives players, but there’s definitely a skill curve for players to work their way up.
However, the game’s main differentiator is the ability to Godbreak enemies. This requires that players reduce an enemy to a certain amount of health and charge up the relevant player meter, after which they can dive inside them and explode them from the inside. This grants the power to then use that enemy’s ability on another foe. This power looks likely to be deeply engrained in its design, such as bosses summoning smaller enemies that can be harvested for the Godbreak abilities. The developer has stated that the boss fights are a focus of the game, with encounters having multiple phases and gaining new abilities and attacks to keep players on their toes. Meanwhile, the game’s progression is more based around unlocking new options, such as picking starter items or giving players a selection of items whenever loot is dropped, rather than obtaining percentage bonuses. The team noted there is a dedicated effort to avoid reliance on grinding for progression by giving players gain variance at the start of runs rather than simply having them get stronger.
Like most games of its type, it’s one that definitely works better when one is playing with others and able to work together to divide enemy attention. During the run, there looked to be numerous places to find lore about the game, though most of it isn’t implemented in the demo, which largely focuses on demonstrating its combat basics. The game has its basics sorted out, so the test of time will be how well the content manages to keep players engaged and coming back. The developers have stated that it intends to listen to players to help determine the direction of its final development and any post-release updates.
Disclosure: This article is based on a demo build of the game provided by the publisher.
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