If you yearn for the thrill of seafaring adventures and the power to summon mythical beasts like the Kraken, Rogue Waters is your ticket to pirate paradise. As its name suggests, Rogue Waters is a roguelike, but one with a heavier emphasis on story than a lot of others in the genre. You take control of Cutter, a pirate aiming to be captain one day and who regularly ends up in ship-to-ship battles, boarding them and getting into some good old-fashioned swashbuckling.
Taking place in a turn-based format, your aim is to either disarm enemy cannons aimed at you or try and take out some of the crew to make the next part easier. Once the battle part is over, you board the enemy ship and end up in tactical combat to take over the ship. Utilizing a variety of tactics to outsmart and overcome your foes, you can employ clever manoeuvres, such as trapping enemies between your units or using ropes to reposition them strategically, while also utilizing firearms for ranged attacks.
It’s a lot of fun, and battles only get more complex the further into each run you get, because as with any roguelike worth its (sea) salt, things change. During each run, you can nab things like new weapons, new units, and even the chance to summon the Kraken at points to smash into huge groups of enemies.
Word of warning – there’s a fair amount of reading to be done in Rogue Waters, but it’s for good reason as you’re meant to feel like an important piece in the story – you are a Captain after all – not just a random bystander. That means you’ll have to navigate conversations with your crew, other pirates, and other strange entities as piece together the story surrounding the secrets.
The roguelike genre is an increasingly crowded one, so it’s even more important for games to do things a little differently to stand out – and that’s certainly the case here. In Rogue Waters, the gameplay will keep you coming back for more but it’s the story, and the writing, that’ll make you want to see it through to the end.
