Flick Shot Rogues Review

Flick off

I’ve been aiming to do my best in researching games before I pick them up and it’s always great when a game I’ve played the demo of releases. Of course, only for demos that I liked, but it’s a guarantee that I’ll like the full game if I like the slice that the demo presented. There seems to be a stream of releases where I played their demo previously recently, but hey I’m not complaining! I’m glad I’m getting the chance to play the full release. Though these intros where I point out I played the demo may get a bit old haha. Well, let’s dive into Flick Shot Rogues, shall we?

Flick Shot Rogues doesn’t have a story, but does have a frame around the game to give some explanation on why you’re here. A group of five heroes…pirates…adventures…friends… however you want to describe them are sailing on a ship looking for a particular island. This island, which the game takes place at, is not only the host of a giant volcano, but also hosts magnificent treasure. They are all after it, after all who can say no to treasure, but they end up having a teeny tiny shipwreck. Oops. Well, the silver lining is that they all survived and made it onto the island. Now all that’s left is to make it to the top, take out all the island guardians that are in their path, and face the one that guards the fabled treasure.

Honestly, I liked this. I don’t think Flick Shot Rogues needed a story and the brief cutscenes you get at the very beginning and at the end of a run were enough for me. It definitely helps that the gameplay is the star of the show here too. I’m also pretty sure that the ending cutscene does get extended after you complete certain Doom levels as I went from the game sending me back to the map after the “The End…?” title card to showing me the credits and an end credits scene. I could be wrong, since I haven’t unlocked all Doom levels yet, but the game does imply that the main goal is to “open the last door” aka complete a run on the final Doom level.

Well, with that talk of a Doom level, it’s time to get into the gameplay. I wasn’t sure where to start, but I decided to go with how the game starts for new players. You are pretty much thrown into it, just like how every playable character here was thrown onto the island (heh). First up, the map. This mysterious island is made up of seven Areas, or Chapters as this game calls them, spread over three biomes. Of course, your goal is to flick your way to the top of the island’s volcano and take out the final boss so you can get your hands on the fabled treasure. The journey won’t be easy though. To simulate you traveling through the island, Flick Shot Rogues takes on a node-based map system with various different encounters and paths. The different node encounters are what you’d expect: campfire node, where you can either heal up or take experience if you don’t have enough experience to level up, or level up when you do have enough experience; an upgrade node where you’ll get three upgrades to choose from, which will be picked from the pool of upgrades for your selected character and Relic (which has three upgrade slots); a shop so you can buy trinkets that will help you through various effects and synergies; encounter nodes; and of course combat nodes, which will either be a regular combat encounter or an elite combat encounter (which generally has tougher enemies and an additional wave). Encounter nodes are more broad as this is where you’ll be meeting the various…let’s say characters here and they’ll give you two, mainly three, choices. There are a good handful of different characters you can encounter and all of them have different things that they do, as well as some of them even encouraging you to visit them multiple times as they do reward you. Well, if you don’t anger them. You’ll know what you’ll need to give up and generally what will happen, but sometimes the consequences are hidden from you and you won’t know what happens if you pick that option. Oh, and these guys also have some text to go along with them and a drawing so you know what they look like, their description, and what they’re saying. Each different encounter also has its own icon, which is that character’s face, so you know what you’re getting into if you go down their path. For example, there’s The Pale Stranger who asks you for some of your health in exchange for something like giving you gold or increasing your shield; however if you run away you’ll be Cursed. Or there’s the Helpful Rocks which, as you can guess, are rocks that are stacked or decorated in specific ways. You can either do what a sign by the rock(s) say to gain something, just move on for experience, or take whatever the rock has and deal with a consequence (which I’m personally too nice to have tried and plus the reward for doing what the note says is too good to pass up).

So yeah, each Chapter will generate a map with various different nodes and you can plan out your strategy before setting to the first node and as you go along. Letting you avoid nodes you don’t want to deal with or take your chances with a hard battle so you can get to that specific encounter node. Maybe you’ll even need to put hope into yourself that you won’t get too injured in the first battle as there’s no campfires until after the second battle in that path. Or perhaps you throw everything to the wind as you gun for specific achievements. No matter your strategy, the map offers branching paths so you can hopefully turn the tide in your favor. Whether that means playing it safe or taking risks. Each Chapter ends with a Boss or Mini-Boss battle (and of course is followed by an upgrade and campfire node), with a run ending with the Final Boss battle.

Well, now it’s time to get to the unique mechanic that Flick Shot Rogues has and is named after. When you land on a battle node, it’s time to beat some of those island guardians that just won’t let you pass without a fight. Combat here is turn based, with you going first then the enemies, with at least two enemy waves. Both you and the various enemies spawn in as standees on coins as well. So how does combat work here? Well instead of using cards, or picking an action, or moving on a grid, you instead flick your character. Yep, and honestly it’s more fun and calls for more strategizing than you’d think. To do this, you just click, drag, and aim. Don’t worry, the game does show you a preview of your movement before you commit. The game visualizes this with what I can only describe as a bridge cue but for flicking. You can adjust the direction you want to flick your character at, as well as the power of the flick (which determines how far you’ll go and maybe how hard you’ll hit and bounce off of a wall or enemy) with your initial click. Then you can make some more precise movement if needed, before clicking to flick the character either towards a spot so you can set up for an attack next turn, or towards an enemy to do an attack. Each character has their own attack method, of course, so you have to take that into account (and switch before you flick them). Like one swings his axe around in an AoE attack and another will attack with any enemy they collide with. Each character has their own gimmick that you have to work with, figure out its full potential, and find a way to make it synergize with the other character you have with you. Relics also play a part here, as they cause effects to be applied to enemies when they get hit, like fire that burns them at the end of their turn or bombs that go off after two turns.

On that note, you do take two characters with you on a run, however only one will be out in the arena at a time and share Shield and Health. This aspect might make you a bit unsure about the game, but I do think Flick Shot Rogues balances everything well. It might seem like there are too many enemies for one character to deal with, but it is actually quite manageable (especially once you have some upgrades and trinkets which might also synergize really well). The game also does encourage you to switch, either by how the enemies land, the Relics you might have equipped, or more likely through the trinkets, upgrades, or Curses you picked up that are tied to switching between characters (the first two are more in your favor while the last one is to avoid a penalty).

Anyway, on the enemy’s turn, they also get flicked around the arena and have their own set of moves. Don’t worry though, as they prepare their attack first, which you’ll be able to tell what kind it’ll be based on the indicator(s) they have, before actually doing it in their next turn so you can prepare for it or shake it off if it’s one that tracks you. Your strategy may change depending on the enemies that spawned in and what attacks they’re about to do. Once you deplete an enemy’s health, they’ll despawn by flipping outta existence. For you, though, you have Health and Shield. Shield basically gives you more wiggle room with how much damage you can take and definitely helps as you go further into progression (meta and current run) as you’ll get hit with harder attacks and it regenerates between battles. However, your Health doesn’t regenerate unless you heal at a campfire and if it depletes your run is done.

A wave ends when you defeat all enemies or defeat all Commanders, or enemies with a golden coin. That doesn’t mean you should ignore the other enemies, as some enemies can spawn in more (most of them are bosses), but it’s actually easy to figure out that balance. Also, luckily, any regular enemies that are still alive will also be taken out before the next wave gets spawned in. For bosses, though, the waves act as phases that you go into after taking out their first health bar. This makes the bosses more aggressive and even spawn in more regular enemies or whatever they spawn in. Every boss is different, has you deal with different challenges, and are usually tied to their specific biome. If you survived all of the waves, you’ll be able to progress.

Remember how I said there are different biomes? Well, this is where they come in. Each biome has their own set of enemies, has a different look and set up to their arena (like shape and if there are any walls that make narrow, hallway-esque areas or to just block your way), and even environmental hazards. For that last one, you’ll either be dealing with wall spikes which will hurt you or the enemy if you touch them and will respawn; or spikes that come out from the floor after a certain amount of rounds. The floor spikes do give you a heads up before they come up, they go last (so hope you don’t get pushed onto them), deal a ton of damage, don’t damage the enemies (which I’m guessing is probably due to them being native to that biome), and even spread when you progress to the next wave. The final boss arena has a unique environmental hazard, but I won’t spoil it.

Also between you and me, you can dodge a death if you quit the game fast enough. Can help if you happen to be at the very last location or you think a death was bull.

When your run ends, either by dying early or finishing it by killing the final boss, you’ll get to see a Run Results page! This will basically just show you how far you made it, every stat you can think of (like everything you picked up to how much Shield you regained), how much experience you gained, and then whatever you unlocked.

While the game does just throw you into it on a new save, that won’t be the case every time. If you happen to win your first run or die after you encounter your third playable character, you’ll be prepping your next run before actually setting off. This means picking the character duo you want to send out, what Relics both of them will have (both have to have a unique Relic, no double Bombs!) and then pick the Doom Level. Yep, finally time to go into the Doom that I referenced when I was talking about the cutscenes. While other roguelikes have it be a challenge for you to complete your first full run, Flick Shot Rogues first run is actually quite easy (which I liked). This is because the game actually focuses on you climbing the Doom Levels and unlocking more items that you can use in future runs. The difficulty does rise with each Doom Level and each level changes something to do that. It first adds in Idols of Doom nodes that force you to take a Curse, then it progressively makes enemies stronger (through just making them stronger or making reinforcements come early which basically forcibly makes you go into the next wave without despawning the previous one) and even causes campfires to heal less. The difficulty curve is actually quite nice and you might not get stuck until you get to Doom Level 6…which is where I’m stuck right now haha. You can choose to go down Doom Levels, like if you’re going for a specific achievement, but you do need to climb the Doom Level ladder to unlock the other characters and more items.

As for unlocking new items, you do this by basically unlocking achievements. Each achievement unlocks something new that has a chance to spawn in future runs. Other than unlocking all five characters, you’ll also unlock more Relics, trinkets that will be added to the shop trinket pool, and more encounter nodes. You can also check out the Logbook on the main menu to look even more into your stats, everything you unlocked, and check how to unlock things you haven’t yet.

Flick Shot Rogues is definitely a game that is a slow burn in terms of enjoyment. At first, you may not be into it, but the more you play the more it grows on you. The more you enjoy it. I really enjoyed Flick Shot Rogues’ gameplay, which isn’t much of a surprise since I enjoyed the demo, but the game did have me worried a bit there as I was a bit lukewarm on it when I first started. Once I got used to the game again, I went back to really enjoying it. I actually planned to write this review sooner, but I was just too absorbed into the game. The only reason I was able to tear myself away is because I’m currently stuck haha. Like I mentioned before, I do like how the difficulty curve is here. It can be a bit discouraging after a while of not being able to complete a full run, but Flick Shot Rogues did dodge that feeling for me. I liked how the difficulty curve was more with the Doom Levels and I don’t mind that it starts out fairly easy. Especially since it does get hard.

I did also really love the gameplay loop here, as well as all the possible synergies that can happen. Going with you flicking your character around a board was a great idea and not only gave this game a unique identity, but also a fun and satisfying mechanic. I personally didn’t feel like it got old and I do like the depth that the game has. And talking about the depth, I love the synergies that happen here between, well, everything. I like the different ways the characters attack and how they can work together, as well as how the Relics play a part and can even change up how you approach battles. Not to mention how good the upgrades are. Some characters are honestly better than others and pair up better, but I do think they are all doable. The trinkets also help you out a lot and Curses shakes things up, both of which change up how you approach battles as well. Like you may end up switching characters more often to use the advantage you picked up or to avoid a penalty. Or maybe doing a specific action will leave a unique token that has an effect on enemies. Also, while some upgrades have more obvious downsides (like increasing damage in exchange for adding friendly fire), some also have downsides that aren’t as obvious until it happens. Like the Bombs have really good upgrades that may lead you to being more reckless, however they do have knockback and that can cause you to be knocked into an attack or an environmental hazard. I almost forgot to mention this, but the physics also felt good and realistic.

I definitely would say to never abandon a run even if you think it’s not going well. It may not seem like you’ll get that far, but a couple of my wins were actually runs that I didn’t think I would make it to the final boss, let alone defeat the final boss. Some characters just takes a bit to build up and it takes a while to create synergies. You might die and have to restart, but at the same time you might pick upgrades or trinkets that turn the tide in your favor and suddenly you’re an absolute beast that can’t be stopped. And on that same note, I did find that Curses that seem would be a big deal not to be that big of a deal. Granted there’s one or two I still stay clear from, but I did end up not minding how many Idles of Doom nodes there are in a run.

I also have to mention that I was very surprised with the AI. The AI for the enemies seems to be pretty smart here, which was a bit surprising for me. A stand out moment I had was when there were two big enemies that had a readied attack that let them flick at any direction, however my location by the end of my turn was out of their reach. So, I was safe right? Well, turns out no I wasn’t. They were next to each other (not super next to each other, but they were in the same hallway-esque part of the arena) and instead of trying to go for me, the one on the left (which was the furthest away from me) pushed the right one (the one closest to me, but didn’t have a clear path to me since I was above the wall blockage) so the right one would have a clear path to hit me. Which that enemy did. It certainly surprised me, especially since the enemy that pushed the other was what I’d say was a weak flick, it was just enough to push the other enemy and to me, made it clear the AI wasn’t aiming for me but aiming to give the other one a clear path to hit me.

In terms of negatives, I’d say there are a couple. I did wish that there was some kind of bestiary, just so you can check out all of the enemies, possible bosses you could encounter, maybe get some lore on them, see their stats, and maybe see their moveset. I did find it easy to tell what attack an enemy was going to do and even noticed the color of it determines if you could interrupt it by colliding or striking the enemy, but the tracking eye attacks do have multiple variations and there are still some enemies that I still don’t know what their signature action actually does. It would also be nice if we saw the turn order of enemies, as sometimes it does matter, but I’m not too hung up on it. There were also times during a battle that it felt a bit unfair, though most of the time it was an item or upgrade backfiring on me. I did really wish the map marked out the nodes you already visited as I did have a handful of moments where I lost where I was and naturally looked towards the beginning of the map instead of towards the end of the map where I actually was.

You also have to deal with the usual downsides that comes with the roguelike genre, like being at the mercy of RNG, possible feeling of repetitiveness sinking in, or having a string of run failures and getting stuck (which in this case, would be being stuck at a certain Doom level). You especially have to hope RNG is in your favor if you’re going for achievements as the ones that involve the different map node encounters.

To tie a bow on this, I just have to say the visuals and sound here is great. I really love the art style that was used. The map is nicely detailed, I like the different biomes this island had and how the look changed as you progressed, and I liked the designs for the enemies, characters, and items. You can really tell where every enemy is from based on their design and they are distinct enough that you’ll be able to remember what they do. Even though you don’t get a lot from the playable characters themselves, I did like how you get a glimpse into their personality based on their encounter text when you first find them and the way they’re designed (including the poses and the way they attack). I also did like how each of the playable characters seem to have their own signature color to their design.

The only thing I would honestly change is that I would have gone a step further with the whole pirate theming and made the map look more like weathered, tan parchment paper rather than it just being an off-white color. It’s not that I don’t like it, I do, but I felt like a weathered parchment look would have fit better and could have simulated it being like an old map someone made and finding this bundle of parchment was how this group found out about the fabled treasure on this island. I did also wish that you could visually see how the characters you’re encouraged to encounter multiple times changes, like The Pale Stranger.

As for the sound, the soundtrack does give off that pirate vibe, or at least to me. The music is really nice here and it does allow you to listen to something else if, say, you want to catch up on a podcast while battling your way to the final boss. The star, however, are the sound effects. The sound effects make this game so satisfying and it really rounds out how satisfying the action of flicking your character is. From the sound of the flick device creaking as you aim your shot to the sound of the enemy dying and doing its little coin flip despawn; it’s all satisfying. It was a great decision to put special focus on the sound effects as it does pay off and whoever that did it did a perfect job.

Verdict

I had a lot of fun with Flick Shot Rogues. The gameplay loop here is fun, the flick mechanic is unique and really satisfying, there’s so many synergies you can cook up, the difficulty curve is great, and I love how the game looks. It does have its flaws, but I really enjoyed playing Flick Shot Rogues. If you’re looking for a roguelike that adds a unique, impactful mechanic and is really fun, check out Flick Shot Rogues. Even if you’re someone that doesn’t like a lot of roguelikes, you might like this one. I know I did.

The demo is still up, so you can also try it and see if you’ll like the flicking mechanic before buying!