Sulfur Preview: Give Those Goblins a Good 'Ole Whack
Roguelike games have all but taken over the indie scene with games like Dead Cells, Rogue Legacy and Hades setting an incredible precedent for the genre. So how do new roguelikes elevate themselves above the competition? How do they stand out? My advice would be to take notes from developer Perfect Random, the team behind the upcoming FPS roguelike Sulfur.
Sulfur is an action-adventure game that combines first-person shooter mechanics with RPG elements. Think of it like a roguelike dungeon crawler with guns and grenades. Sulfur is scheduled to release in 2024 and is already setting new standards for roguelikes. You take on the role of a priest who, guided by a mysterious amulet, must undergo a seemingly never-ending onslaught of enemies with the ultimate goal of finding the witch who ruthlessly destroyed his church.
At the heart of Sulfur is an incredibly fun to play dungeon-crawler where you’ll have to gear up before each run, loot while you’re out, and use your new spoils to upgrade even more. Death is inevitable here. Let’s just say, your priest isn’t exactly equipped to deal with a lot at the start. But the more you play, and the more runs you successfully make it back from, the more you’ll be able to upgrade your priest until he’ll be putting the fear of God into his enemies.
You’ll make upgrades at shops which can be found at your home base as well as inside the dungeons, which are all procedurally generated. Shops are manned by a hilarious cast of characters each with their own background stories and motivations. And that’s just the folks that you meet in the current demo build of the game. Sulfur boasts more areas beyond the goblin-infested caves at the start with castles, forests and misty vales on the horizon for those that are able to fight their way through.
Along with gathering items in your runs to help you upgrade the priest, you’ll also be able to craft and enhance your weapons to find your perfect arsenal. Each gun has its own attachments and enhancements for you to experiment with until you find your favorite way to play the game. The only thing stopping you will be the prices in the stores. Unfortunately, there’s no holy discount.
Two of the most impressive elements of Sulfur are its story and art style. Sulfur utilizes a combination of 3D environments with 2D enemies and objects. Characters look silly, sound funny, and some are genuinely adorable. Sulfur still manages to maintain a serious tone in the form of the game's story. Something you don’t always get from a roguelike is a branching story that builds the more you progress; the more characters you meet and the more secrets you uncover, but that’s what you'll have in Sulfur.
Perfect Random has created something familiar but also really and truly unique with Sulfur. The game runs so smoothly, traversal and combat are easy to learn and, once you get your hands on it, you won’t want to put it down. Even after only a few hours into the demo, this is going straight up to the top of my must-play list when it releases later this year.
Preview by Becca Smith
