With the Steam Next Fest sneaking up on us again and approaching slowly in the next few weeks, I’ve been meaning to check out a bunch of demos again and for today’s post, I got the opportunity to play Voltaire: The Vegan Vampire‘s demo, an action-roguelite with farming elements by Digitality Games, ahead of the event – and honestly, I’m really digging it.
Now, I’m a simple man. I see “rogue” in any of the tags, and I hit the download button. It’s quite easy to get me interested and when I saw Voltaire’s store page, I got relatively hooked on it given that it not only is an action-roguelite battle sim with an Undead/Vampire aesthetic and a whimsical art style… but it also is a farming sim, sort of?
See, in the game, Voltaire – Dracula’s last-born – has sworn off meat and decided that the V in his name stands for vegan. Thus, he retreated to some distant hut with a wee bit of farm land where he’d grow his own food. Sadly, though, the crops he’s growing end up attracting monsters at night which is why he has to risk his life (and house!) to protect his food source to sustain this new playstyle.
Voltaire can’t complain, though, as he’s got no beef… Okay, sorry, I’ll see myself out.
At its core, the game resembles more of a Tower-Defense game, I’d say. I mean, you have to defend the crops and depending on what crops you plant, different enemies are coming in… but enemies may also just attack your hut – in which case it could result in a gameover for you.
What I find interesting is that you theoretically can keep going as much as you want in the current build. When you fail to defend your house, you get to choose, after all, between resetting the skill-tree and losing 25% of your resources… or keeping 90% of your resources but just trying again with the current build.
Honestly, though, I have no clue what this is about. Do we want to restart or do we not? I find it a bit confusing.
Also, revives in a roguelike? Udder nonsense… Okay, I’ll stop.
The crops that you plant can also give you buffs on consumption, some of which last a whole day. Some plants also affect the growth of your other plants… and some plants can even protect your crops from hungry onlookers, so keep that in mind.
Doing formwork and foraging for seeds, though, exhausts Voltaire which is why you need to eat food to get your hunger down. With specific “soulstone” upgrades, though, you can possibly lower your hunger at the end of each night or make it so that you receive more nourishment through berries and stuff.
Overall, I find that the game is rather well thought-out and I enjoyed the hour or so that I played of the demo… and that is not to say that there is only an hour of content here. Oh, no, not at all. The demo that is available on Steam at the moment features lots of content… but I didn’t want to burn out before the full release.
If you’re also looking forward to a fun roguelite-battle-sim with farming mechanics, feel free to check out the Steam Page and hit that “Wishlist” button. It helps the developers a lot!
This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well. If you find this post on a website other than Indiecator.org, please write an e-mail to me. Thank you!
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